Process Philosophy (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) Cite this entry Search the SEP • Advanced Search • Tools • RSS FeedTable of Contents• What's New• Archives• Projected ContentsEditorial Information• About the SEP• Editorial Board• How to Cite the SEP• Special CharactersSupport the SEPContact the SEP ©Metaphysics Research Lab,CSLI,Stanford University  Open access to the SEP is made possible by a world-wide funding initiative. Please Read How You Can Help Keep the Encyclopedia FreeProcess PhilosophyFirst published Tue Apr 2, 2002; substantive revision Wed Jan 9, 2008First published Tue 2 Apr, 2002The philosophy of process is a venture in metaphysics, the generaltheory of reality. Its concern is with what exists in the world andwith the terms of reference in which this reality is to be understoodand explained. The task of metaphysics is, after all, to provide acogent and plausible account of the nature of reality at the broadest,most synoptic and comprehensive level. And it is to this mission ofenabling us to characterize, describe, clarify and explain the mostgeneral features of the real that process philosophy addresses itselfin its own characteristic way. The guiding idea of its approach is thatnatural existence consists in and is best understood in terms ofprocesses rather than things — of modes of changerather than fixed stabilities. For processists, change of every sort —physical, organic, psychological — is the pervasive and predominantfeature of the real.Process philosophy diametrically opposes the view — as old asParmenides and Zeno and the Atomists of Pre-Socratic Greece — thatdenies processes or downgrades them in the order of being or ofunderstanding by subordinating them to substantial things. By contrast,process philosophy pivots on the thesis that the processual nature ofexistence is a fundamental fact with which any adequate metaphysic mustcome to terms.Process philosophy puts processes at the forefront of philosophicaland specifically of ontological concern. Process should here beconstrued in pretty much the usual way — as a sequentiallystructured sequence of successive stages or phases. Three factorsaccordingly come to the fore:That a process is a complex — a unity of distinct stages orphases. A process is always a matter of now this, now that.That this complex has a certain temporal coherence and unity, andthat processes accordingly have an ineliminably temporaldimension.That a process has a structure, a formal generic format in virtueof which every concrete process is equipped with a shape orformat.From the time of Aristotle, Western metaphysics has had a markedbias in favor of things or substances. However,another variant line of thought was also current from the earliesttimes onward. After all, the concentration on perduring physicalthings as existents in nature slights the equally good claimsof another ontological category, namely processes, events, occurrences— items better indicated by verbs than nouns. And, clearly, storms andheat-waves are every bit as real as dogs and oranges.What is characteristically definitive of processphilosophizing as a distinctive sector of philosophical tradition isnot simply the commonplace recognition of natural process as the activeinitiator of what exists in nature, but an insistence on seeing processas constituting an essential aspect of everything that exists — acommitment to the fundamentally processual nature of the real. For theprocess philosopher is, effectively by definition, one who holds thatwhat exists in nature is not just originated and sustained by processesbut is in fact ongoingly and inexorably characterized by them.On such a view, process is both pervasive in nature and fundamental forits understanding.1. Historical Aspects2. How Process Philosophy Proceeds3. An Evolutionary Perspective4. An Instructive Application5. Diversity/Complexity6. Strawson's Critique7. Processes and Stability8. Quantum Issues9. Process Theology10. A Question of Legitimacy11. InstitutionalizationBibliographyOther Internet ResourcesRelated Entries1. Historical AspectsLike so much else in the field, process philosophy began with theancient Greeks. The Greek theoretician Heraclitus of Ephesus (b. ca.540 B.C.) — known even in antiquity as "the obscure" — is universallyrecognized as the founder of the process approach. His book "On Nature"depicted the world as a manifold of opposed forces joined in mutualrivalry, interlocked in constant strife and conflict. Fire, the mostchangeable and ephemeral of these elemental forces, is the basis ofall: "This world-order … is … an ever living fire, kindling inmeasures and going out in measures" (Fr. 217, Kirk-Raven-Schofield).The fundamental "stuff" of the world is not a material substance ofsome sort but a natural process, namely "fire," and all things areproducts of its workings (puros tropai). The variation ofdifferent states and conditions of fire — that mostprocess-manifesting of the four traditional Greek elements — engendersall natural change. For fire is the destroyer and transformer of thingsand "All things happen by strife and necessity" (Fr. 211,ibid). And this changeability so pervades the world that "onecannot step twice into the same river" (Fr. 215, ibid). AsHeraclitus saw it, reality is at bottom not a constellation ofthings at all, but one of processes: we must at allcosts avoid the fallacy of substantializing nature into perduringthings (substances) because it is not stable things but fundamentalforces and the varied and fluctuating activities which they producethat make up this world of ours. Process is fundamental: the river isnot an object, but an ever-changing flow; the sun is not athing, but a flaming fire. Everything in nature is a matter ofprocess, of activity, of change. Heraclitus taught that pantarhei ("everything flows") and this principle exerted a profoundinfluence on classical antiquity. Even Plato, who did not much like theprinciple ("like leaky pots" he added at Cratylus 440 C), cameto locate his exception to it — the enduring and changeless "ideas" —in a realm wholly removed from the domain of material reality.Heraclitus may accordingly be seen as the founding father of processphilosophy, at any rate in the intellectual tradition of the West. Andthe static system of Parmenides affords its sharpest contrast and mostradical opposition. However, the paradigm substance philosophy ofclassical antiquity was the atomism of Leucippus and Democritus andEpicurus, which pictured all of nature as composed of unchanging andinert material atoms whose only commerce with process was an alterationof their positioning in space and time. Here the properties ofsubstances are never touched by change, which effects only theirrelations. It was this sort of view that Heraclituspreeminently sought to oppose.In recent years, "process philosophy" has virtually become acode-word for the doctrines of Alfred North Whitehead and hisfollowers. But of course, this cannot really be what process philosophyactually is. If there indeed is a "philosophy" of process, it mustpivot not a thinker but on a theory. What is at issuemust, in the end, be a philosophical position that has a larger life ofits own, apart from any particular exposition or expositor. And in factprocess philosophy is a well-defined and influential tendency ofthought that can be traced back through the history of philosophy tothe days of the Pre-Socratics. Its leading exponents were Heraclitus,Leibniz, Bergson, Peirce, and William James — and it ultimately movedon to include Whitehead and his school (Charles Hartshorne, PaulWeiss), but also other 20th Century philosophers such as SamuelAlexander, C. Lloyd Morgan, and Andrew Paul Ushenko.2. How Process Philosophy ProceedsAgainst this historical background, "process philosophy" may beunderstood as a doctrine invoking certain basic propositions: (1) Thattime and change are among the principal categories of metaphysicalunderstanding, (2) That process is a principal category of ontologicaldescription, (3) That process is more fundamental, or at any rate notless fundamental than things for the purposes of ontological theory,(4) That several if not all of the major elements of the ontologicalrepertoire (God, nature-as-a whole, persons, material substances) arebest understood in process linked terms, and (5) That contingency,emergence, novelty, and creativity are among the fundamental categoriesof metaphysical understanding. A process philosopher, accordingly, issomeone for whom temporality, activity, and change — of alteration,striving, passage, and novelty-emergence — are the cardinal factorsfor our understanding of the real.The demise of classical atomism brought on by the dematerializationof physical matter through the rise of the quantum theory brings muchaid and comfort to a process-oriented metaphysics. Matter in the small,as contemporary physics conceives it, is not a Rutherfordian planetarysystem of particle-like objects, but a collection of fluctuatingprocesses organized into stable structures (insofar as there is indeedstability at all) by statistical regularities — i.e., by regularitiesof comportment at the level of aggregate phenomena. Twentieth centuryphysics has thus turned the tables on classical atomism. Instead ofvery small things (atoms) combining to produce standardprocesses (windstorms and such) modern physics envisions very smallprocesses (quantum phenomena) combining to produce standard things(ordinary macro-objects) as a result of their modusoperandi.For the process philosopher, the classical principle operarisequitur esse (functioning follows upon being) is reversed: hismotto is the reverse esse sequitur operari. As he sees it, allis in the final analysis the product of processes. Process thus haspriority over product — both ontologically and epistemically. Asprocess philosophers see it, processes are basic and things derivative,because it takes a mental process (of separation) to extract "things"from the blooming buzzing confusion of the world's physical processes.For process philosophy, what a thing is consists in what itdoes.And insofar as reality itself is a vast macroprocess embracing adiversified manifold of microprocesses novelty, innovation, and theemergence of new focus is an inherent feature of the cosmic scene.3. An Evolutionary PerspectiveEvolution is an emblematic and paradigmatic process for processphilosophy. For not only is evolution a process that makes philosophersand philosophy possible, but it provides a clear model for howprocessual novelty and innovation comes into operation in nature'sself-engendering and self-perpetuating scheme of things. Evolution, beit of organism or of mind, of subatomic matter or of the cosmos as awhole, reflects the pervasive role of process which philosophers ofthis school see as central both to the nature of our world and to theterms in which it must be understood. Change pervades nature. Thepassage of time leaves neither individuals nor types (species) ofthings statically invariant. Process at once destabilizes the world andis the cutting-edge of advance to novelty. And evolution of everylevel, physical, biological, and cosmic carries the burden of the workhere. But does it work blindly?On the issue of purposiveness in nature, process philosophers divideinto two principal camps. On the one side is the naturalistic (andgenerally secularist) wing that sees nature's processuality as a matterof an inner push or nisus to something new and different. On the otherside is the teleological (and often theological) wing that seesnature's processuality as a matter of teleological directedness towardsa positive destination. Both agree in according a central role tonovelty and innovation in nature. But the one (naturalistic) wing seesthis in terms of chance-driven randomness that leads away from thesettled formulations of an established past, while the other(teleological) wing sees this in terms of a goal-directed purposivenesspreestablished by some value-geared directive force.Process philosophy correspondingly has a complex, two sidedrelationship with the theory of evolution. For secular, atheologicalprocessists evolution typifies the creative workings of aself-sustaining nature that dispenses with the services of God. Fortheological processists like Teilhard de Chardin, evolution exhibitsGod's handwriting in the book of nature. But processists of alldescriptions see evolution not only as a crucial instrument forunderstanding the role of intelligence in the world's scheme of thingsbut also as a key aspect of the world's natural development. And, moregenerally, the evolutionary process has provided process philosophywith one of its main models for how large scale collective processes(on the order of organic development at large) can inhere in and resultfrom the operation of numerous small-scale individual processes (on theorder of individual lives), thus accounting for innovation andcreativity also on a macro-level scale. At every level of reality,“the many become one, and one increased by one”, asWhitehead puts it in Process and Reality (p. 20).But there is one further complexity here. Where human intelligenceis concerned, biological evolution is undoubtedly Darwinian, withteleologically blind natural selection operating with respect toteleologically blind random mutations. Cultural evolution, on the otherhand, is generally Teilhardian, governed by a rationally-guidedselection among purposefully devised mutational variations. Taken inall, cognitive evolution involves both components, superimposingrational selection on biological selection. Our cognitive capacitiesand faculties are part of the natural endowment we owe to biologicalevolution. But our cognitive methods, procedures, standards, andtechniques are socio-culturally developed resources that evolve throughrational selection in the process of cultural transmissionthrough successive generations. Our cognitive hardware (mechanisms andcapacities) develops through Darwinian natural selection, but ourcognitive software (the methods and procedures by which we transact ourcognitive business) develops in a Teilhardian process of rationalselection that involves purposeful intelligence-guided variation andselection. Biology produces the instrument, so to speak, and culturewrites the music — where obviously the former powerfully constrainsthe latter. (You cannot play the drums on a piano.)The ancient Greeks grappled with the question: Is anythingchangeless, eternal, and exempt from the seemingly all-destructiveravages of time. Rejecting the idea of eternal material atoms, Platoopted for eternal changeless universals ("form," "ideas") and theStoics for eternal, changeless laws. But the world-picture of modernscience has seemingly blocked these solutions. For, as it sees thematter, species (natural kinds) are also children of time, notchangelessly present but ever-changingly emergent under the aegis ofevolutionary principles. The course of cosmic evolution brings nature'slaws also within the orbit of process, endowing these laws with adevelopmental dimension, (where, after all, was genetics in themicrosecond after the big bang?). For process philosophy, nothing iseternal and secure from the changes wrought by time and its iron lawthat everything that comes into being must perish, so that mortality isomnipresent and death's cold hand is upon all of nature — laws as wellas things.However, process philosophy does not see this gloomy truth as theend of the story. For process philosophy has always looked toevolutionary theory to pull the plum of collective progress from thepie of distributive mortality. In the small — item by item — nature'sprocesses are self-canceling: what arises in the course of timeperishes in the course of time. But nevertheless the overall course ofprocessual change tends to the development of an ever richer, morecomplex and sophisticated condition of things on the world's amplestage. For there are processes and processes: processes of growth anddecay, of expanding and contracting, of living and dying. Recognizingthat this is so, process philosophy has always accentuated the positiveand worn a decidedly optimistic mien. For it regards nature'smicroprocesses as components of an overall macroprocess whose course isupwards rather than downwards, so to speak. Hitching its wagon to thestar of a creative evolutionism, process philosophy sees nature asencompassing creative innovation, productive dynamism and an emergentdevelopment of richer, more complex and sophisticated forms of naturalexistence.To be sure, there are, in theory, both productive and destructiveprocesses, degeneration and decay being no less prominent in naturethan growth and development. Historically, however, most processphilosophers have taken a decidedly optimistic line and have envisioneda close relationship between process and progress.For them, this relationship is indicated by the macro-process wecharacterize as evolution. At every level of world history — thecosmic, the biological, the social, the intellectual — processphilosophers have envisioned a developmental dynamic in which later isbetter — somehow superior in being more differentiated andsophisticated. Under the influence of Darwinian evolutionism, mostprocess philosophers have envisioned a course of temporal developmentwithin which value is somehow survival-facilitative so that thearrangements which do succeed in establishing and perpetuatingthemselves will as a general tendency manage to have done so becausethey represent actual improvements in one way of another. (A decidedlyoptimistic tenor has prevailed throughout process philosophy.)After all, differentiation is sophistication; detail is enrichment.The person who merely sees a bird does not see as much as the personwho sees a finch, and she in turn does not see as much as the personwho sees a Darwin finch. The realization and enhancement of detailbestows not just complexification as such but also sophistication. Asprocess philosophy sees it, the world's processuality involves not onlychange but improvement — the evolutionary realization — at large andon the whole — of what is not only different but also in some waybetter. Accordingly, novelty and fruitfulness compensate for transiencyand mortality in process philosophy's scheme of things.4. An Instructive ApplicationRecourse to process is a helpful device for dealing with theclassical problem of universals. We are surrounded on all sides byitems more easily conceived of as processes than as substantial things— not only physical items like a magnetic field or an auroraborealis, but also conceptual artifacts like letters of thealphabet, words, and statements. That purported universal — theopening line of a play, say, or a shade of phenomenal red — now ceasesto be a mysterious object of some sort and becomes aspecifiable feature of familiar processes (readings, perceivings,imaginings). How distinct minds can perceive the same universal is nowno more mysterious than how distinct walkers can share the same limp —it is a matter of actions proceeding in a certain particular way. Sinceprocesses are structural in nature, universals are now pulled down fromthe Platonic realm to become generic features of the ways in which weconcretely conduct our cognitive affairs.The philosophy of mind is another strongpoint of processphilosophizing. It feels distinctly uncomfortable to conceptualizepeople (persons) as things (substances) — oneselfabove all — because we resist flat-out identification with our bodies.However, there is no problem with experiential access to the processesand patterns of process that characterize us personally — our doingsand undergoings, either individually or patterned into talents, skills,capabilities, traits, dispositions, habits, inclinations, andtendencies to action and inaction are, after all, whatcharacteristically define a person as the individual he or she is. Once we conceptualize the core "self" of a person as a unifiedmanifold of actual and potential process — of action and capacities,tendencies, and dispositions to action (both physical and psychical) —then we thereby secure a concept of personhood that renders the self orego experientially accessible, seeing that experiencing itself simplyconsists of such processes. What makes my experience mine isnot some peculiar qualitative character that it exhibits but simply itsforming part of the overall ongoing process that defines andconstitutes my life. The unity of person is a unity of experience —the coalescence of all of one's diverse micro-experience as part of oneunified macro-process. (It is the same sort of unity of process thatlinks each minute's level into a single overall journey.) On thisbasis, the Humean complaint — "One experiences feeling this and doingthat, but one never experiences oneself" — is much like thecomplaint of the person who says "I see him picking up that brick, andmixing that batch of mortar, and troweling that brick into place, but Inever see him building a wall." Even as "building the wall" justexactly is the complex process that is composed ofthose various activities, so — from the process point of view — one'sself just is the complex process composed of thosevarious physical and psychic experiences and actions in their systemicinterrelationship.5. Diversity/ComplexityLike any philosophical tendency — realism, idealism, materialism,etc. — process philosophy is a fundamentally prismatic complex and hasinternal variations. The difference at issue is rooted in the issue ofwhat type of process is taken as paramount and paradigmatic. Somecontributors (especially A. N. Whitehead and Henri Bergson) see organicprocesses as central and other sorts of processes as modeled on orsuperengrafted upon them — the conception of an all-integratingphysical field being pivotal even for Whitehead's organic/biologicalreflections. Others (especially William James) based their ideas ofprocess on a psychological model and saw human thought asidealistically paradigmatic. Methodologically, on the other hand, some(e.g. Whitehead) articulated their process philosophy in essentiallyscientific terms, while others (esp. Bergson) relied more on intuitionand indeed an almost mystical sort of sympathetic apprehension. Andthen too, of course, there are cultural processists like John Dewey.But such differences notwithstanding there are family-resemblancecommonalties of theme and emphasis that nevertheless leave theteachings of the several processists in the position of variations on acommon approach. So in the end it is — or should be — clear that theunity of process philosophy is not doctrinal but thematic; it is not aconsensus or a thesis but rather a mere diffuse matter of type andapproach.Accordingly, process philosophy as such is something ratherschematic. There are distinct approaches to implementing its pivotalidea of the pervasiveness and fundamentality of process, ranging from amaterialism of physical processes (as with Boscovitch) to a speculativeidealism of psychic processes (as in some versions of Indianphilosophy). There are rather different ways of being a processphilosopher, varying drastically according to the nature of one's ideasregarding what process is all about. In historical perspective, processphilosophy has accordingly run a somewhat meandering course that tracesback more to the origins of philosophy in the days of Pre-Socraticphilosophy.As such considerations indicate, the process approach has manyassets. But it has significant liabilities as well. It is not unfair tothe historical situation to say that process philosophy at presentremains no more than a glint in the mind's eye of various philosophers.A full-fledged development of the process doctrine simply does not yetexist as an accomplished fact, its development to the point where itcan be compared with other major philosophical projects likematerialism or absolute idealism still remains to be realized.The process approach has been a particularly important developmentin and for American philosophy — especially owing to its increasinglyclose linkage to pragmatism in such thinkers as Peirce, James, andDewey. In recent decades the great majority of its principal exponentshave done their philosophical work in the United States, and it is herethat interest in this approach to philosophy has been the most intenseand extensive, constituting a considerable sub-sector within Americanphilosophy at large. Like American philosophy in general, processphilosophy is too complex and diversified an enterprise to be capturedor even dominated by any one school of thought; it is a highlydiversified manifold that encompasses tendencies of thoughtrepresenting a wide variety of sources.Regrettably, authors of histories and surveys not infrequently failto give process philosophy the recognition that is its due. Forexample, the otherwise excellent survey of American philosophy by theable French scholar Gerard Deledalle omits all mention of processphilosophy as such and takes only perfunctory notice of Whitehead in anAppendix. To take this line is not, perhaps, to give us Hamlet withoutthe ghost, but is at least tantamount to omitting Horatio.6. Strawson's CritiqueP. F. Strawson has argued in his influential book on metaphysicsthat processism in all its versions is doomed to failure becausephysical objects — and, in particular, material bodies — arerequisites for the idea of identifiable particulars in a way that isvirtually indispensable to any viable metaphysical position. Strawsonmaintains that the identification of particulars in communicationbetween speakers and hearers ("referential identification" as he termsit) necessarily requires reference to things possessed of materialbodies, so that "we find that material bodies play a unique andfundamental role in particular identification" (Ibid., p. 56).As he sees it, processes will not do as basis for particularidentification because: "If one had to give the spatial dimensions ofsuch a process, say, [as] a death or a battle, one could only have theoutline of the dying man or indicate the extent of the ground thebattle was fought over" Ibid., p. 57. Strawson accordinglyholds that material bodies are a necessary precondition for any settingin which objective knowledge of particulars is to be possible.In brief outline, Strawson's argument runs essentially asfollows:For objective and identifiable particulars to be knowable, someitems must be (1) distinguishable from other co-existents, and (2)reidentifiable over time.These conditions (viz. distinguishability and reidentifiability)can only be met by material objects (i.e. particulars with materialbodies).If this line of reasoning is indeed correct, processism is untenablein metaphysics. For it is perfectly clear that any viable metaphysicmust have room for identifiable particulars, and if these are to be hadonly on the basis of a material-object substantialism then processmetaphysics is a lost cause.This argumentation, however, has its problems. To begin with,Strawson would have been well advised to add yet a third item, viz. (3)that individuals must not only be distinguishable and reidentifiable bya particular knower, but interpersonally and intersubjectivelydistinguishable and reidentifiable throughout a community ofknowers. Yet even with premiss 1 strengthened in this way, premiss 2does not hold water.Strawson maintained that:The only objects which can constitute [the space-timeframework essential to interpersonal communication] are those whichconfer upon it their own fundamental characteristics. That is to saythey must be three dimensional objects with some endurance through time… They must collectively have enough diversity, richness,stability, and endurance to make possible just that conception of asingle unitary [space-time] framework which we possess. [Page39]The process philosopher will have no quarrel with any of this.However, Strawson then proceeded straightaway to draw a deeplyproblematic conclusion:Of the categories of object which we recognize, only thosesatisfy these requirements which are, or possess, material bodies — inthe broad sense of the expression. Hence given a certain generalfeature of the [space-time committed] conceptual scheme which wepossess, and given the character of available major categories, thingswhich are, or possess, material bodies must be [epistemologically]basic particulars.To its decisive detriment, Strawson's argument simply begs thequestion here. For all of the features that his analysis require(spatiotemporal stability and endurance, diversity, richness,interpersonal accountability, and the like) are possessed every bit asmuch by physical processes as by the things that "are orpossess material bodies." It is not material substances(things) that can be distinguished and reidentified withinnature's spatiotemporal framework, but occurrence-contexts (processes)as well. Processes are physically realized without being literallyembodied. And the one is no less confrontable and capable of ostensiveindication than the other ("that lion"; "that yawning"). Only by an actof deeply problematic fiat is Strawson able — even within therestricted confines of his own analysis — to advantage and prioritizematerial bodies over physical processes. Even Strawson's insistencethat epistemically basic particulars must be identifiable by ostensionholds every bit as much for instances of physical process as forparticular constrained material bodies. (Indeed, as we shallsee, it is theoretically possible to reconceptualize material bodies ascomplexes of physical processes, while the reverse — the generalreconceptualization of physical processes as complexes of materialobjects — is just not all that plausible (the "Reism" or "Concretism"of Kotarbiński and of the later Brentano notwithstanding).)Strawson's reasoning sets out from the quite appropriate Kantianobservation that objective distinguishably and reidentifiabilityrequires the machinery of a spatiotemporal matrix for the emplacementof our experiential encounters with objects in a unifiedall-encompassing framework of coordination viz. space-time. But atthis point his reasoning goes astray. For as he sees it, aspatiotemporal framework demands — and can only be determined interms of — ordering relations among material objects. But thereare in fact other physically "embodied" items distinct from materialbodies that can serve this function equally well — to wit,processes. For as long as processes have both position andduration — as long as like a flame (rather than a sound) or awedding ceremony (rather than something more ethical like adivorcement) — there are items that have a sufficiently definiteplace and a sufficiently long lifespan to serve as coordinatemarkers. Processes too, in sum, can serve to define and constitute therequired spatio-temporal framework.Strawson's position is plausible only because he accepts thequestion-begging Process Reducibility Thesis that insists on seeing allprocesses in terms of the activities of things (substances). From thisstandpoint, all processes are owned and we are to look at them from aspecifically genitive point of view: the death of Caesar, orthe great clash of the armies of Napoleon and Tsar Alexander Iat Borodino. But this of-indicated object-correlativity (ofthat person, of these two armies) takes too narrow a view ofthe matter. It reflects only the particular (i.e. owned) sort ofprocesses at issue, and not their processuality as such. Whereprocesses are more basically concerned, their object-correlativity candisappear from view.The point is that while we can indication-identify various concreteprocesses genitively — as per "this birth" = "the birth ofJulius Ceasar" — proceeding in terms of process-type plussubstance-correlative possession, we can no less easily in dualismidentify them positionally in terms of process-type pluslocation: "this birth" = "the birth at such-and-such a space-timelocation." And of course the referential markers that orient us inspace-time need not be substantial (the town center of Greenwich) butcan be processual (the pole = the place where the compass needle spinsaround evenly).Accordingly, Strawson's argumentation misses its target. It issimply not the case that material objects are the indispensable basisfor a framework of knowable particulars. Physical processes of asuitable sort can accomplish this essential task equally well.7. Processes and StabilityAs process ontologists see it, enduring things are never more thanpatterns of stability in a sea of process. Like a wave pattern in waterthey are simply pending configurations in a realm of change.The very idea of a process involves trans-temporal constancies.Water evaporates. That is to say, the evaporation of water is a genericprocess. It has many instances, occurring alike after rainstorms in16th century Lima and in 20th century Atlanta. Any and every particularprocess is always an instantiation of a general pattern. One justsimply cannot identify a process that fails to be of a (processual)type and which, in consequence, is not — at that level ofabstraction — capable of repetition. And so the concreta of history,viewed in an epistemic perspective, can in fact manage to transcendtheir space-time settings to instantiate general patterns. Althoughtheir manifestations are inevitably temporal and concrete, thoseprocesses themselves can be atemporal and generic.And of course different concrete instances of a process can produceproducts of exactly the same generic type. Different factories can andoften do produce the same model of car, different cooks can and doproduce the same variety of soup. And this is strikingly so when theproduct happens to be information: different presses can print the sametext, different respondents can give the same answer to the samequestion, different mouths can utter the same sentence, different mindscan entertain the same idea.The point is that in the realm of informational abstractnessproducts can escape the limitations of their (invariably relativized)productive origins. The historical relativization of the productionprocess to a particular historico-cultural context — the factthat the thinking or the assertion of a truth is so relativized — ofitself does nothing to limit the product (the truth that is sothought or asserted) to a historico-cultural context. Once produced, itis generally available — and (insofar as abstract) will becross-temporally accessible via its exemplifications and manifestationsat different times and places.Some sorts of things exist out of space but not time — one'sownership of a piece of jewelry, for example, or one's right toexercise an option to purchase a tract of land. Other sorts of thingsexist neither in space nor in time — numbers, facts, and generalizedrelationships for example. (The Eiffel Tower was erected in Paris inthe 19th century, but the fact that Julius Caesar did not realize thisis something that has no spatiotemporal emplacement.) And informationis like that. The things that information may be about may bespatiotemporal, as will be the speech or writing by which theinformation is conveyed from one person to another. But the informationitself is altogether nonspatiotemporal. It simply lies in the nature ofcertain sorts of things, information included, not to be located inspace and time — to be "abstract."Admittedly, when we are viewing something, the only views we canpossibly obtain are views from somewhere (and from view-pointsbelonging to us and not to God). But when the viewing is done with theeyes of the mind, and its object is the realm of information ratherthan the realm of physical reality then what the view is a view of issomething ahistorical. For information as such exists outside ofhistory even though our acquiring it is invariably an historicaltransaction. We must avoid the category mistake of confusing processwith product here: of conflating the information that we access withthe historical actions and events of our accessing it.Of course we have no way to get to the abstract (the belief) savevia the historical (the believing). But what we achieve (the product)is something of a nature different and status distinct from the mode ofits realization (the process). When we engage ourselves in intellectualprocesses that carry us into the informational domain we impelourselves from history into an ahistorical sphere. The same idea (thesame thought-process, the same belief) is accessible to people atdifferent times and places. Were it not so, communication would bealtogether impossible.The overall situation in matters of abstraction is triadic (to usethe term favored by C. S. Peirce). There are: (i) the various andsundry concrete green things; (ii) the abstract property at issue(viz., the property or characteristic of being green); and (iii) themediative conception or idea of greenness which is thethought-instrumentalility through which that abstract property comes tobe imputed to those concrete items that putatively manifest it. Themedieval metaphysical dispute between nominalism, conceptualism, andplatonism needs to be resolved conjunctively: all three areneeded: a nominalism is required for concrete particulars, aconceptualism for particular-applicative concepts, and a platonism forabstractions (e.g., in prime mathematics). The situation is not one ofeither/or; we must endorse all those doctrinal positions — each in itsown place.Yet how can temporalized thought deal in timeless information? Howis it that particularized episodic thought can make episode-abstractivegeneralizations? The long and short of it is that that's just howthought works. To puzzle about this is like puzzling about any of theworld's brute facts. And once those realities are taken in stride theproblem has been left behind. One might as well ask "How is it thatmoney can be used to buy things? or that words can be used forspeaking?" No matter how much we may wonder at the phenomena we have toaccept them as part of the world's realities.There indeed are fundamental problems that lie in the backgroundhere: how standardized exchange is possible or how verbal communicationis possible. But once such fundamental background issues are resolved,the original question is dissolved as such: something that is not amedium of exchange would not be called money, nor wouldsomething that could not play a generalized role in verbal or writtencommunication be called a word. Even so something would not becalled thought if it could not function abstractly to convey generalinformation transcending the episodic occurrences at issue.8. Quantum IssuesAs Whitehead's own reaction shows, the rise of the quantum theoryput money in process philosopher's bank account. The classicalconception of an atom was predicated on the principle that "bydefinition, atoms cannot be cut up or broken into smaller parts," sothat "atom-splitting" was, from the traditional point of view, simply acontradiction in terms. Here the demise of classical atomismbrought on by the dematerialization of physical matter in the wake ofthe quantum theory did much to bring aid and comfort to aprocess-oriented metaphysics. For quantum theory taught that, at themicrolevel, what was usually deemed a physical thing, a stablyperduring object, is itself no more than a statistical pattern — astability wave in a surging sea of process. Those so-called enduring"things" come about through the emergence of stabilities in statisticalfluctuations.The quantum view of the world is inherently probabilistic — indeedit has trouble coming to terms with concrete definiteness (with the"collapse of the wave packet" problem). And this too is congenial toprocessists, seeing that process philosophy rejects a pervasivedeterminism of law-compulsion. Processists see the laws of nature asimposed from below rather than above — as servants rather than mastersof the world's existents.Twentieth century physics has thus turned the tables on classicalatomism. Instead of very small things (atoms) combining toproduce standard processes (windstorms and such), modern physicsenvisions very small processes (quantum phenomena) combining in theirmodus operandi to produce standard things (ordinarymacro-objects). The quantum view of reality has accordingly led to theunravelling of that classical atomism that has, from the start, beenparadigmatic for substance metaphysics.Process metaphysics envisions a limit to determinism that makes roomfor creative spontaneity and novelty in the world (be it by way ofrandom mutations with naturalistic processists or purposeful innovationwith those who incline to a theologically teleological position).Moreover, process philosophers have reason to favor quantum physicsover relativistic physics. For relativity sees space time as a blockthat encompasses all real events concurrently, leaving the timedifferentiation of earlier-later to be supplied from the subjectiveresources of observers relative to their own mode of emplacement withinthe grand scheme of things. Special relativity with its preoccupationwith time-invariant relationships in effect suppresses time as a factorin physical reality and relegates it to the penumbral status of asubjective phenomenon. This serves to explain why Whitehead sought toprovide a new theoretical basis to relativity theory and reconstruespace-time, as well as the conception of other physical objects, asbeing a construction made from "fragmentary individual experiences."Processes are not the machinations of stable things; things are thestability-patterns of variable processes. All such perspectives ofmodern physics at the level of fundamentals dovetail smoothly into theprocess approach.9. Process TheologyThe God of scholastic Christian theology, like the deity ofAristotle on whose model this conception was in part based, is animmaterial individual, located outside of time — entirely external tothe realm of change and process. By contrast, process theologians,however much they may disagree on other matters, take the radical (butsurely not heretical) step of according God an active role alsowithin the natural world's spatio-temporal frame. Theyenvision a foothold for God within the overall processual order of thereality that is supposed to be his creation. After all, activeparticipation in the world's processual commerce need not necessarilymake God into a physical or material object. (While the world indeedcontains various physical processes like the evolution of galaxies, italso contains immaterial processes such as the diffusion of knowledgeor the emergence of order.)For process theology, then, God does not constitute part ofthe world's making of physical processes, but nevertheless in somefashion or other participates in it. Clearly no readyanalogy-model for this mode of participation (spectator, witness,judge, etc.) can begin to do full justice to the situation. But whatmatters first and foremost to the angle of process theology is thefact that God and his world are processually inter-connected —the issue of the manner how is something secondary that can beleft open for further reflection. So conceived, God is not exactlyof the world of physical reality, but does indeed participatein it processually — everywhere touching, affecting, andinforming its operations. Thus while not emplaced in the world, theprocessists' God is nevertheless bound up with it in an experientialprocess of interaction with it. In general, process theists do notbelieve that God actually controls the world. The process God makes animpact persuasively, influencing but never unilaterally imposing theworld's process.Process theology accordingly invites us to think of God'srelationship to the world in terms of a process of influence like "thespread of Greek learning in medieval Islam." Greek learning did notbecome literally internal to the Islamic world, but exerted asubstantial and extensive influence upon and within it. Analogously,God is not of the world but exerts and extends an all-pervasiveinfluence upon and within it. After all, processes need not themselvesbe spatial to have an impact upon things in space (think of a priceinflation on the economy of a country.) The idea of process provides acategory for conceptualizing God's relation to the world that avertsmany of the difficulties and perplexities of the traditional substanceparadigm.Even apart from process philosophy, various influential theologianshave in recent years urged the necessity and desirability of seeing Godnot through the lens of unchanging stability but with reference tomovement, change, development, and process. But, the process theoristsamong theologians want to go beyond this. For them, God is not only tobe related to the world's processes in a productive manner, but musthimself be regarded in terms of process — as encompassingprocessuality as a salient aspect of the divine nature.To be sure, process theologians differ among themselves in variousmatters of emphasis. Whitehead sees God in cosmological terms as an"actual occasion" functioning within nature, reflective of "the eternalurge of desire" that works "strongly and quietly by love," to guide thecourse of things within the world into "the creative advance intonovelty." For Hartshorne, by contrast, God is less an active forcewithin the world's processual commerce than an intelligent being ormind that interacts with it. His God is less a force of some sort thana personal being who interacts with the other mind-endowed agentsthrough personal contact and love. Hartshorne wants neither to separateGod from the world too sharply nor yet to have him be pantheisticallyimmanent in nature. He views God as an intelligent world-separatedbeing who participates experientially in everything that occurs innature and resonates with it in experiential participation.Such differences of approach, however, are only of secondaryimportance. The crucial fact is that the stratagem of conceiving of Godin terms of a process that is at work in and beyond the worldmakes it possible to overcome a whole host of substance-geareddifficulties at one blow. For it now becomes far easier to understandhow God can be and be operative. To be sure, the processual view of Godinvolves a recourse to processes of a very special kind. Butextraordinary (or even supra-natural) processes pose far fewerdifficulties than extraordinary (let alone supra-natural)substances, seeing that process is an inherently more flexibleconception. After all, many sorts of processes are in their own wayunique — or, at any rate, radically different from all others.Clearly, processes like the creation of a world or the inauguration ofits lawful order are by their very nature bound to be unusual, but muchthe same can be said of any particular type of process. Moreover,through its recourse to the idea of a mega-process that embraces andencompasses a variety of subordinate processes, process theology isable to provide a conceptual rationale for reconciling the idea of anall-pervasive and omnitemporal mode of reality with that of a manifoldof finitely temporalized constituents.The processist view of nature as a spatiotemporal whole constitutingone vast, all-embracing cosmic process unfolding under the directiveaegis of a benign intelligence is in various ways in harmony with theJudeo-Christian view of things. For this tradition has always seen Godas active within the historical process which, in consequence,represents not only a causal but also a purposive order. After all, theonly sort of God who can have meaning and significance for us is onewho stands in some active interrelationship with ourselves and ourworld. (Think here of the Nicene creed's phraseology: "the maker of allthings … who for us men and for our salvation …".) But ofcourse such an "active interrelationship" is a matter of the processesthat constitute the participation and entry of the divine into theworld's scheme of things — and conversely.And of course not only is it feasible and potentially constructivefor the relation of God to the world and its creatures to be conceivedof in terms of processes, but it is so also with the relationship ofpeople to God. Here too process theology sees such a relationship asthoroughly processual because it rests on a potentially interactivecommunion established in contemplation, worship, prayer, etc.In particular, for processists there is little difficulty inconceiving God as a person. For once we have an account ofpersonhood in general in process terms as a systemic complex ofcharacteristic activities, it is no longer all that strange to see Godin these terms as well. If we processify the human person, then we canmore readily conceive of the divine person as the focal source of acreative intelligence that engenders and sustains the world and endowsit with law, beauty (harmony and order), value and meaning.Then too there is the problem of the Trinity with its mystery offitting three persons into one being or substance, which has alwaysbeen a stumbling block for the substantialism of the Church Fathers. Aprocess approach makes it possible to bypass this perplexity. Forprocesses can interact and interpenetrate one another. With the layingof a single branch a woodsman can be building a wall, erecting a house,and extending a village. One act, many processes; one mode of activitymany sorts of agency.For process theology, then, God is active in relation to the world,and the world's people can and should be active in relation to God.People's relationship to the divine is a two-way street, providing fora benevolent God's care for the world's creatures and allowing thoseintelligent beings capable of realizing this to establish contact withGod through prayer, worship, and spiritual communion. Process theologyaccordingly contemplates a wider realm of processes that embrace boththe natural and the spiritual realms and interconnect God with the vastcommunity of worshippers in one communal state of macroprocess thatencompasses and gives embodiment to such a comprehensive whole.To be sure, process theologians usually see the divine as one poweramong others and view God's role in relation to the world as ratherdiffused and indirect and limited. But this seems to be more because anovel perspective appeals to those of theologically liberal andunorthodox orientation than to the inherent demands of a processappraisal. In theory a process theology could take a more theologicallyconservative form than has been the case.10. A Question of LegitimacyFrom the days of the Pyrrhonian sceptics of antiquity we are toldagain and again throughout the history of philosophy that speculativesystematization is inappropriate — that such knowledge as we humanscan actually obtain is limited to the realm of everyday life and/or itsprecisification through science. Repeated in every era, this strictureis also rejected by many within each. The impetus for big-pictureunderstanding, for a coherent, and panoramic view of things that putsthe variegated bits and pieces together, represents an irrepressibledemand of the human intellect as a possession of "the rational animal."And process metaphysics affords one of the most promising and seriousoptions for accommodating this demand.11. InstitutionalizationProcess thought constitutes one (albeit only one) very prominentsector of the active philosophical scene in the USA at the presenttime. Apart from the proliferation of books and articles on the topic,it has achieved considerable institutionalization during the yearsafter World War II. Indications of this phenomenon include theformation of the Society for Process Studies, as well as the prominenceof process philosophizing within the aegis of the Society for AmericanPhilosophy and the American Metaphysical Society. Another clear tokenis the journal Process Studies, Published by the Center forProcess Studies in Claremont CA, and founded in 1971 by Lewis S. Fordand John B. Cobb, Jr., a publication that has in recent years become amajor vehicle for article-length discussions in the field.Representatives of process philosophy occupy influential posts indepartments of philosophy and of religious studies in many of Americanuniversities and colleges, and some half-dozen doctoral dissertationsare produced annually in this field. In 2002 the publishing house Ontosin Frankfurt, Germany launched a book series on "Process Thought."American philosophy is at this historic juncture an agglomeration ofdifferent cottage industries, and process philosophy is prominent amongthem.BibliographyBrowning, Douglas, 1965, Philosophers of Process, NewYork: Random House.Cobb, John B., 1965, A Christian Natural Theology,Philadelphia: Westminster Press.Cobb, John B. and David R. Griffin, 1976, Process Theology: AnIntroductory Exposition, Philadelphia, Westminster Press.–––, 1982, Process Theology as PoliticalEcology, Philadelphia, Westminster Press.Gray, James R., 1982, Modern Process Thought, Lanham, MD.:University of America.Hartshorne, Charles, 1932, "Contingency and the New Era inMetaphysics (I/II)," Journal of Philosophy, 29/16: 421-431,29/17: 457-469.–––, 1970, Creative Synthesis and philosophicMethod, La Salle, IL.: Open Court.–––, 1971, "The Development of ProcessPhilosophy," in Process Theology, Ewert H. Cousins (ed.), NewYork, Newman Press.–––, 1948, The Divine Relativity: A SocialConception of God, New Haven: Yale University Press.–––, 1967, A Natural Theology for OurTime, La Salle, IL: Open Court.–––, 1972, Whitehead's Philosophy: SelectedEssays, 1935-1970, Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.Lucas, George R. Jr., 1979, Two View of Freedom in ProcessThought: A Study of Hegel and Whitehead, Missoula, MT: Scholar'sPress.–––, 1983, The Genesis of Modern ProcessThought, Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press.–––, 1986, Hegel and Whitehead: ContemporaryPerspectives on Systematic Philosophy, Albany: SUNY Press.–––, 1989, The Rehabilitation of Whitehead:An Analytical and Historical Arsenal of Process Philosophy,Albany, NY: SUNY Press.Palter, Robert M., 1979, Whitehead's Organic Philosophy ofScience, Albany, NY: SUNY Press.Rescher, Nicholas, 1996, Process Metaphysics: An Introductionto Process Philosophy, New York: SUNY Press.–––, 2000, Process Philosophy: A Survey ofBasic issues, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.–––, 2006, Process PhilosophicalDeliberations, Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag.Seibt, Johanna, 1990, Properties as Processes: A Synoptic Studyof W. Sellars' Nominalism, Reseda, CA: Ridgeview.Strawson, P. F., 1959, Individuals, London: Methuen.Weber, Michel (ed.), 2004, After Whitehead: Rescher on ProcessMetaphysics, Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag.Whitehead, A. N., 1919, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles ofNatural Knowledge, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press;reprinted New York: Kraus Reprints, 1982.–––, 1920, The Concept of Nature,Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.–––, 1972, The Principle or Relativity,Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.–––, 1925, Science and the Modern World,New York: Macmillan.–––, 1926, Religion in the Making, NewYork: Macmillan.–––, 1929, Process and Reality: An Essay inCosmology, New York: Macmillan. Critical edition by D. R. Griffinand D. W. Sherbourne, New York: Macmillan.–––, 1927, Symbolism: Its Meaning andEffect, New York: Macmillan; reprinted New York: G. P. Putnam'sSons.–––, 1929, The Function of Reason,Boston: Beacon Press.–––, 1933, Adventures of Ideas, NewYork: Macmillan.–––, 1934, Nature and Life, Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.–––, 1938, Modes of Thought, New York:Macmillan.–––, 1948, Essays in Science andPhilosophy , New York: Philosophical Library.Whittemore, Robert C., (ed.), 1974, Studies in ProcessPhilosophy, New Orleans: Tulane University Press.–––, 1976, Studies in Process PhilosophyII, New Orleans: Tulane University Press.–––, 1975, Studies in Process PhilosophyIII, New Orleans: Tulane University Press.Other Internet ResourcesProcess Philosophy, entry by J. R. Hustwit,Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.Center for Process Studies A Synopsis of Process Thought, by Sheela Pawar.A Perspective From Process Theology, by WilliamStegall.Process Philosophy and the New Thought Movement (C.Alan Anderson, Emeritus, Curry College)Related Entries causation: causal processes | evolution | God: concepts of | Hartshorne, Charles | theism: process | Whitehead, Alfred North Copyright © 2008 byNicholas Rescher<rescher+@pitt.edu> |
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