Alfred North Whitehead’s Process and Reality (1929) is one of the most ambitious and difficult works of twentieth-century philosophy. It attempts nothing less than a comprehensive metaphysical system—what Whitehead calls a “philosophy of organism”—that replaces the traditional substance ontology with a process-based understanding of reality.
The Problem with Substance
Western philosophy since the Greeks has conceived reality in terms of substance—enduring things with changing properties. But Whitehead argues this picture is fundamentally flawed.
The Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness
We habitually mistake abstractions for concrete realities. When physics describes particles in space-time, we imagine these as the truly real things. But “particles” and “space-time” are abstractions from experience—useful simplifications that leave out most of what actually exists.
The concrete reality is experience itself—events, happenings, occasions of experience. The “substance” we imagine persisting through time is an abstraction from a series of experiential events.
The Bifurcation of Nature
Modern philosophy since Descartes bifurcates nature into objective matter and subjective mind. Primary qualities (extension, motion) belong to things themselves; secondary qualities (color, sound) are merely mental.
This bifurcation creates insoluble problems: How do mind and matter interact? Where do secondary qualities come from? Why does objective nature differ so radically from our experience of it?
Whitehead dissolves these problems by rejecting the bifurcation. Nature is not divided into objective and subjective parts—it is through and through experiential.
Actual Entities
The fundamental units of reality are “actual entities” or “actual occasions”—momentary events of experience.
Drops of Experience
Each actual entity is a “drop of experience.” It is not a substance that has experiences but is itself an experience. God and the most trivial puff of existence are both actual entities—they differ in degree of complexity, not in fundamental kind.
The Process of Becoming
An actual entity does not endure through time—it comes into being, achieves “satisfaction,” and perishes. Its being is its becoming. Once it achieves definite form, it becomes objectively immortal—a datum for subsequent actual entities—but it no longer exists as a subject.
This is “perpetual perishing”—the continual passing of subjects into objects, of becoming into being.
Prehension
Actual entities arise through “prehension”—a grasping or taking account of prior actual entities. Each new occasion prehends its predecessors, incorporating them into its own becoming.
Prehension is broader than perception. It includes:
- Physical prehensions: Taking in other actual entities
- Conceptual prehensions: Grasping eternal objects (roughly, Platonic forms)
- Negative prehensions: Excluding certain elements from integration
Eternal Objects
Alongside actual entities, Whitehead’s ontology includes “eternal objects”—pure potentials for realization.
Forms of Definiteness
Eternal objects are like Platonic Ideas but conceived processually. They are patterns of definiteness—ways an actual entity might be determined. Colors, shapes, mathematical structures, and values are eternal objects.
Eternal objects don’t exist on their own—they require ingression into actual entities to achieve any reality. But they are genuinely eternal: the form of greenness is the same whenever it appears.
The Realm of Possibility
The totality of eternal objects constitutes the realm of possibility. Each actual occasion selects from this realm, actualizing certain possibilities while excluding others. This selection is the process of becoming.
God
God plays a unique role in Whitehead’s system—not as creator from nothing but as the principle of limitation and novelty.
The Primordial Nature
God’s primordial nature is the eternal ordering of eternal objects. Without this ordering, possibilities would be chaotic—no basis for selecting some over others. God provides the “initial aim” that orients each actual entity toward particular possibilities.
The Consequent Nature
God’s consequent nature is God’s prehension of the world—God taking in the accomplished facts of actual occasions. Through this prehension, achieved values are preserved in God’s experience.
God is thus both the ground of novelty (through the primordial nature) and the preservation of value (through the consequent nature).
Not a Creator
This is not the traditional God who creates ex nihilo. Whitehead’s God does not determine what happens—actual entities have genuine self-determination. God persuades rather than compels, lures the world toward value without forcing particular outcomes.
Creativity
The ultimate metaphysical principle is creativity—the drive of the universe toward novelty.
The Category of the Ultimate
“Creativity is the universal of universals characterizing ultimate matter of fact.”
Every actual entity is a new creation, a novel synthesis of its prehensions. Creativity is not a thing but the general character of things—the fact that reality is self-creative.
Many Becoming One
Each actual occasion unifies its many prehensions into one novel entity. This is the rhythm of process: “the many become one and are increased by one.” The new unity then becomes a datum for subsequent syntheses.
Applications
Whitehead’s system illuminates many domains:
Philosophy of Science
Process philosophy offers an alternative to mechanistic materialism. Nature is not dead matter in motion but living process. Quantum events, with their indeterminacy and holism, fit better with Whitehead than with substance metaphysics.
Philosophy of Mind
The mind-body problem dissolves when we recognize that both mind and matter are abstractions from a more fundamental experiential reality. Consciousness is not a mysterious addition to matter but the subjective aspect of process that matter also exhibits in simpler form.
Theology
Process theology develops Whitehead’s conception of God as persuasive rather than coercive, suffering with the world rather than controlling it from outside. This God cannot prevent evil but can transform it through inclusion in divine experience.
Ecology
If nature is experiential through and through, environmental ethics gains metaphysical grounding. Nature is not mere stuff for human use but a community of experiencing subjects whose value is intrinsic.
Difficulties and Criticisms
Process and Reality faces serious challenges:
Obscurity
The work is notoriously difficult. Whitehead invents technical terminology, his arguments are often compressed, and the system’s coherence is sometimes unclear.
Panexperientialism
Many find it incredible that atoms or quarks could have any form of experience. Whitehead’s “reformed subjectivist principle”—that all actualities are experiential—seems to attribute mind where none exists.
The Status of Eternal Objects
Are eternal objects genuinely real? How do they relate to actual entities? The Platonic element in Whitehead’s thought raises familiar problems about the reality of universals.
God’s Role
Even sympathetic readers debate God’s function in the system. Is God necessary? Is this really what we mean by “God”? Does the concept do explanatory work or merely label a problem?
Reading Process and Reality
The work rewards persistence:
- Start with Whitehead’s Science and the Modern World for an accessible introduction
- Read the first part of Process and Reality on the “speculative scheme”
- Focus on parts II and III for the theory of actual entities
- Use secondary literature—this is not a work to tackle alone
- Return to earlier sections as the system becomes clearer
Conclusion
Process and Reality offers a radical alternative to substance-based thinking. Reality is not static things but dynamic becoming; not enduring substance but perpetual perishing; not dead matter but experiential process.
Whether or not we accept Whitehead’s system, his questions challenge fundamental assumptions: Is substance the right category? Is experience more fundamental than matter? Can metaphysics address the concerns of science and religion together?
These questions remain vital. Process philosophy continues to develop, influencing theology, ecology, and philosophy of mind. Whitehead’s vision of a universe in creative advance—each moment a new synthesis of the past into novel experience—speaks to those who find static, mechanistic pictures of reality inadequate to the richness of existence.