Look around you. Our intuition tells us that we are surrounded by static, finished objects—desks, phones, and people. For thousands of years, Western philosophy has been built on Substance thinking: the idea that the primary units of reality are fixed and enduring. Today, we are going to flip that assumption upside down. We are exploring Process Philosophy, a system that argues the universe is not made of things, but of dynamic, momentary events. To understand reality in this framework, we must shift our focus from the noun to the verb.
To begin deconstructing our standard view of reality, consider a candle flame. When we look at it, our instinct is to categorize it as a “thing.” We give it a name; we say the flame is bright. However, if we examine it scientifically, we see that the flame has no fixed material parts. It is a continuous throughput—a rapid combustion of oxygen and fuel. If the flow of energy stops for even a second, the object itself ceases to exist. Alfred North Whitehead argues that the entire cosmos operates on this exact principle. In his framework, there is no such thing as an inert substance that exists independently of its activity. Stability is simply a process that is moving with enough consistency to appear static to the human eye. We aren’t static things that happen to change; we are the change itself.
This brings us to the core ontological conflict. Whitehead famously coined the term “The Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness.” He argued that we often mistake our abstract mental labels—like statue or rock—for the actual concrete reality of the world. Traditional Substance philosophy treats the world as a collection of separate parts with static identities. In this framework, change is an “accident”—it is something that happens to a thing while the thing itself stays essentially the same. In the Process model, the waterfall is the better analogy. A waterfall looks like a thing from a distance, but up close, it is a continuous event. Reality is a web of relations rather than a bucket of parts. Identity is not a fixed essence; it is a stable pattern of flow.
If the world is truly a flow of events, why is it so difficult for us to perceive it that way? Whitehead argues that the primary culprit is the linguistic trap. Our very language is designed around the Substance model. Take the sentence: “The Wind blows.” In English grammar, we are forced to create a subject—a thing called The Wind—and then we assign it an action called blowing. Our brain starts to imagine that there is a static, invisible object called a Wind that exists independently. But in reality, you cannot have the wind without the blowing. The wind is the blowing. There is no hidden thing behind the action; the action is the reality. Whitehead argues that our grammar tricks us into thinking the world is a collection of nouns, when it is actually a collection of verbs.
To further differentiate these systems, let’s look at the classic philosophical riddle known as the Ship of Theseus. Imagine a ship where, over many years, every single wooden plank, sail, and rope is replaced. By the end, none of the original material remains. Is it still the same ship? Substance philosophy generally says no. If the material essence of the ship is gone, the original ship no longer exists. Process philosophy says yes. In this framework, the ship is not defined by its wood, but by the continuous pattern of the process. Your identity is a historical sequence of events. You are the same person not because your atoms stayed still, but because the process of being you has continued uninterrupted. Identity is a performance or series of actions.
Alfred North Whitehead did not create this system in a vacuum. He was a mathematician watching the foundations of 19th-century physics crumble. Albert Einstein’s Relativity proved that matter and energy are interchangeable. Matter is not a thing that sits in space; it is a condensed form of energy. The Quantum revolution dealt a final blow to the idea of the solid, billiard-ball atom. At the subatomic level, there are no static objects, only clouds of probability and discrete packets of events. Whitehead realized that if the most fundamental level of the universe is made of events and energy pulses, then a Substance philosophy could no longer describe reality accurately. He set out to build a metaphysics where the basic building block of the universe is a momentary pulse of experience.
Now we arrive at one of the most provocative claims in Whitehead’s system. If reality is a flow of perishing moments, why do objects like a table seem so incredibly solid? Whitehead’s answer is that stability is a habit. Traditionally, we view a table as dead matter, but in the process worldview, the table is a Society. The table is actually a massive, coordinated repetition of trillions of Actual Occasions. These tiny pulses of energy have inherited the habit of being wood. The table doesn’t feel solid because it is dead; it feels solid because billions of tiny experiencers are all voting to stay in the exact same pattern every microsecond. We move from seeing the world as a collection of passive objects to seeing it as a vast coordination of living choice that has simply become very, very consistent in its habit that it maintains the pattern across many years.
Whitehead calls the basic unit of the universe an Actual Occasion. Think of it as a single heartbeat of existence that follows a three-step cycle. First, it must prehend, meaning to grasp. Every new moment reaches back and grasps the data and influences of the entire past. Second, it must decide. This is the spark of self-creation where the event takes that inherited data and makes a decision on how to integrate it. This is where novelty enters the universe. Third, it must perish. Once an event has become itself, it perishes as a living subject and freezes into fixed data so that the next moment can prehend it. The universe is a constant, rhythmic cycle of grasping the past, making a new decision, and then perishing to become the foundation for the future.
This is how the universe moves forward without falling apart. The moment that has just occurred has already made its decision and has now reached the perish stage. Once a moment perishes, it becomes fixed data. The emerging present is what Whitehead calls the Subject. Its first act is to prehend the perishing past. It doesn’t just look at the past; it inherits it. It takes that fixed data and pulls it into its own new moment of existence. This is why you feel like a continuous person. Once this new Subject makes its own unique decision, it too will perish, becoming the data for the next moment to inherit. This is the chain of existence—a never-ending sequence of perishing and inheriting, where every new moment is a creative integration of everything that came before it.
We have seen how a table is a society of events, but a human being is something far more complex. Whitehead describes us as a hierarchy of societies—your cells, your organs, and your nervous system are all societies with their own habits of energy. But at the top of this hierarchy is the Regnant Society, the ruling society. This is the personal thread of occasions that occurs within the brain. While the societies of your skin or bones are largely content to repeat the same habits for decades, this personal thread of consciousness is highly specialized for novelty, decision-making, and intense feeling. Whitehead uses a powerful metaphor here: The soul is the President of a trillion-member democracy. You aren’t a ghost sitting inside a machine; you are the presiding process that unifies the million voices of your body into a single, cohesive “now.”
One of the most profound shifts in Whitehead’s system is what we might call the Subject-Object Meltdown. In traditional Western thought, we are taught that there is a rigid wall between us and the world. Process philosophy argues that this wall is an illusion created by Substance thinking. Because every momentary event begins with prehension, the external world is actually the raw material of your own internal experience. The world is not out there; it is the data of in here. You are like a sponge in the ocean. The ocean is not just something you are in; it is something that is constantly flowing through you. You are a creative integration of your entire environment.
If the boundary between the subject and the object has melted away, what is left? Whitehead’s answer is Radical Relationality. We have to stop thinking of ourselves as isolated things that just happen to be located inside a universe. In this system, you are a Nexus. The universe is a vast, interconnected web where every single event is tied to every other event. You are not just in the universe; you are a coordination of it. If you pull one string in this Nexus, the entire web vibrates. We are communal events. This realization shifts our perspective from one of isolation to one of deep, inescapable participation. You are the universe in the act of being you.
Whitehead defines the movement of the universe as The Creative Advance. This is the formal mechanism by which reality transitions from a settled past into an undetermined future. It operates through inheritance, providing the physical continuity required for existence to persist; decision, which serves as the entry point for novelty; and contribution, where the moment perishes as a living subject and becomes Objective Immortality—the fixed fact that every future occasion is then required to inherit. The shift from Substance to Process is a shift from the Noun to the Verb. In this framework, the human soul is defined as a personal thread of events that organizes the body’s data. Because of the constant influx of novelty, the world is viewed as an open-ended, relational coordination of events rather than a collection of isolated, finished objects.
Further Inquiry: Recommended Reading
If the idea of a universe built on events rather than things has captured your curiosity, here are the books I recommend to begin your journey into Process Philosophy and its scientific foundations, ordered from the most accessible to the foundational texts.
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1. The “Entry Points” (Best for Beginners)
These books act as a bridge, explaining Whitehead’s complex vocabulary (like prehension and actual occasions) in plain English.
- “Process-Relational Philosophy: An Introduction to Alfred North Whitehead” by C. Robert Mesle
- Why read: This is widely considered the clearest starting point. It breaks down the shift from “substance” to “process” and explores why this matters for how we view ourselves and the environment.
- “Modes of Thought” by Alfred North Whitehead
- Why read: If you want to read Whitehead himself first, start here. It’s much more accessible than his other works, focusing on the importance of ideas rather than just the technical mechanics of the universe.
- “Science and the Modern World” by Alfred North Whitehead
- Why read: This provides the historical context you mentioned—how 19th-century physics “crumbled” and why a new philosophy was needed to replace it.
2. The “Decoding Manuals” (Essential Companions)
If you decide to tackle Whitehead’s primary work, these books act as a “GPS” to keep you from getting lost.
- “A Key to Whitehead’s Process and Reality” by Donald W. Sherburne
- Why read: Process and Reality is famously disorganized. Sherburne rearranged the text into a logical order for students, making it vastly easier to follow.
- “Thinking with Whitehead” by Isabelle Stengers
- Why read: Stengers is a philosopher of science who provides a more contemporary, sophisticated look at how Whitehead’s “organic” view of the world interacts with modern thought.
3. The “Deep End” (The Primary Sources)
Only go here once you feel comfortable with the “Heartbeat” (Prehension/Decision/Perishing) cycle.
- “Process and Reality” by Alfred North Whitehead (Corrected Edition)
- Why read: This is the “Bible” of process philosophy. It’s a difficult climb, but it is the complete, systematic vision of the universe as a coordination of events.
- “Adventures of Ideas” by Alfred North Whitehead
- Why read: This focuses on how these philosophical “processes” play out in human history, civilization, and sociology.
4. Broader Context (Related Thinkers)
Process philosophy didn’t start and end with Whitehead. These authors explore similar “flow-based” realities.
- “Creative Evolution” by Henri Bergson
- Why read: Bergson was a huge influence on Whitehead. He focuses heavily on “duration” and the idea that time is a lived experience, not just a series of clock-ticks.
- “Process Metaphysics” by Nicholas Rescher
- Why read: A great modern overview that shows how process thinking applies to logic and the history of Western thought beyond just Whitehead.