Process Ontology from Whitehead to Quantum Physics

Abstract

Although Alfred North Whitehead probably did not know much of the new quantum theory of Heisenberg, Schrödinger and Dirac, there seem to be deep similarities between his idea of process and the ideas of quantum theory. Both Whitehead’s metaphysics and quantum theory are theories of observations: The realities which quantum theory deals with are based on observations by scientists who use the theory. And Whitehead’s speculative cosmology is an expansion and generalization of the British empiricists’ theory of perception. Four leading ideas have determined the theoretical sciences in the 19th century: Atomicity, continuity, energy preservation and evolution. According to Whitehead, the challenge to science was not to introduce these concepts but to fuse them together and expand their application. Therefore, the cell theory and Pasteur’s work were more revolutionary for him than the achievement of Dalton’s nuclear theory, “for they introduced the notion of organism into the world of minute beings.…The doctrine of evolution has to do with the emergence of novel organisms as the outcome of chance” (Whitehead, 1925, pp. 146–147).

Up until now, neither individual experiences nor the natural sciences gave reason to believe in invariable subjects. On the contrary, the whole being of reality has been in a process of becoming and passing. “On the organic theory, the only endurances are structures of activity, and the structures are evolved” (Whitehead, 1925, p. 158). Whitehead’s speculative cosmology is based on the results of the theory of evolution. However, he tries to integrate all experiences of reality. Placing the concept of “actual occasions” in the center of his philosophy of organism, he succeeds in resolving handed-down contrasts within a common framework. The world is made of ‘actual occasions’, each of which arises from potentialities created by prior actual occasions. Actual occasions are “happenings”, each of which comes into being and then perishes, only to be replaced by a successor. These experience-like “happenings” are the basic realities of nature.

Similarly, Heisenberg said that what really happens in a quantum process is the emergence of an “actual” from potentialities created by prior actualities. In the orthodox Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory, the actual things to which the theory refers are increments in “our knowledge”. These increments are experiential events. The particles of classical physics lose their fundamental status: They dissolve into diffuse clouds of possibilities. At each stage of the unfolding of nature, the complete cloud of possibilities acts like the potentiality for the occurrence of a next increment in knowledge, which can radically change the cloud of possibilities and potentialities for later increments in knowledge.

A philosophy founded on causality and teleology as basic descriptions of reality must dissolve the distinctions between inside and outside, consciousness and matter, object and subject. To achieve this purpose, Whitehead’s philosophy of organism offers a starting point. Therefore, I would like to introduce his philosophy and compare its results with interpretations of quantum theory. Here, it will be interesting to take a look at Henry Stapp’s theory of consciousness, which is based on quantum theory. He argues that reality is created by consciousness, as consciousness causes the collapse of the wave function that in turn causes reality to “occur”. Stapp claims that Whitehead’s metaphysics is incompatible with quantum theory by virtue of Bell’s theorem and needs to be modified. I disagree with this conclusion because Stapp did not properly take into account Whitehead’s theory of prehension.