Process philosophy, as developed by Alfred North Whitehead, offers a radical departure from the philosophical tradition that dominated Western thought since the ancient Greeks. Instead of viewing reality as composed of static, enduring “substances,” Whitehead posits that the universe is fundamentally a dynamic, interconnected network of creative events or processes. This essay will explore the fundamental tenets of process philosophy, focusing on the central role of “actual occasions” and “prehensions” in defining a reality based entirely on change and becoming.

The Critique of Static Metaphysics: The Illusion of Fixed Substance

To appreciate the significance of process philosophy, one must first understand what it sought to replace. Traditional metaphysics, often tracing its lineage through Aristotle and Descartes, is a substance metaphysics. This view holds that the most real things are fixed, unchanging “stuff” (substances) which possess properties and undergo accidental change. For instance, a rock is a substance, and its properties (colour, temperature) may change, but the rock itself endures. The primary philosophical task was thus to identify these enduring substances that remain constant beneath the flux of experience. This traditional model, heavily influenced by scientific materialism, sees change as secondary and derivative—something that happens to the real entities, rather than being the real entities themselves.

Whitehead viewed this substance-based approach as fundamentally flawed because it failed to account for two crucial aspects of reality: relationship and flux. Our everyday, concrete experience is not of isolated things, but of things that are always changing and always inter-related. When we touch a table, our experience is not of two separate substances (a “mind” and a “table”) but of a single, continuous event: the sensation of pressure, temperature, and hardness.

He argued that traditional philosophy committed what he called the Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness—mistaking an abstract concept (the idea of an enduring, static, isolated object) for the concrete reality of dynamic experience. When we talk about “the electron” or “the human soul,” we are abstracting a pattern of stability over time and treating that pattern as if it were a fixed, independent thing. Concrete reality, Whitehead insisted, is always a flow of events, never a stationary entity. The enduring ‘rock’ is simply a highly stable pattern, or society, of rapidly succeeding, momentary events.

He believed that the only way to accurately describe experience is by prioritising motion over matter, and relationship over isolation. This conviction led him to reformulate the basic building block of existence. As he stated, defining the task of his philosophy:

“The true philosophical question is, ‘What is the nature of the process by which all things are made up of things essentially related?’”

This reframes reality from “What things are there?” to the dynamic query, “How are things happening?”

Actual Occasions: The Fundamental Units of Becoming

In process philosophy, the fundamental units of reality are not fixed particles or substances, but actual occasions (also called actual entities). An actual occasion is a momentary, indivisible quantum of experience or feeling—a transient, ephemeral burst of energy, feeling, and decision. They are the ultimate “drops of experience” that collectively constitute the universe. Crucially, these occasions are not objects in space; they define the space-time they occupy. They are the final facts of reality, the dynamic “atoms” of change.

The life span of an actual occasion is infinitesimally brief, but it is a complete, self-contained event of becoming. Consider the flick of a light switch: the electrical impulse, the chemical reaction in the retina, the neural synapse that registers “light”—each of these micro-events can be modelled as a society of actual occasions.

Subject and Superject: Perishing and Creation

Whitehead introduces a key structural duality for every actual occasion: it is both a subject and a superject.

1. The Subject: The actual occasion is a subject during its brief moment of existence, while it is actively engaged in its process of feeling, deciding, and achieving unity. It is the active, feeling, deciding entity, and during this phase, it is entirely private, inaccessible to observation. It is an experience in the process of being experienced.

2. The Superject: Once that moment of subjective experience is complete, the occasion instantly perishes. It ceases to be a living subject and becomes a superject—an objective, fixed datum ready to be absorbed and felt by the next emerging actual occasion. It becomes a fixed, eternal fact of the past, fully available to the rest of the universe.

The entirety of reality is composed of this constant, rapid-fire succession of brief, momentary feelings, making the universe a continuous stream of creative advance, or “perishing and creation.” A person, a tree, or a star is, therefore, not a single substance, but a society (a structured series) of rapidly perishing and succeeding actual occasions that maintain a common structural pattern and historical lineage. A stable, enduring object, like a diamond, is simply a society of actual occasions with an extremely high degree of conformity and minimal change in their inheriting structure over vast periods of time. This concept allows Whitehead to account for both the permanence we observe and the fundamental change that underlies it.

Prehensions: The Mechanism of Interconnectedness and Experience

The most significant and distinct component of Whitehead’s system is the concept of prehension. Prehensions are the fundamental mechanism by which actual occasions are related, ensuring the absolute interconnectedness of all things. The term “prehension” is deliberately chosen to evoke the idea of grasping or taking account of, but in a non-sensory, pre-conscious, and fundamental sense.

A prehension is best understood as a non-sensory act of feeling or grasping the data provided by past actual occasions. When a new actual occasion emerges, it prehends (or takes account of) all the preceding actual occasions that are relevant to it in its immediate past. These prehensions are not merely mental acts or passive observations; they are the physical and conceptual means by which the past literally dictates and informs the present. They are the conduits of causal efficacy, where the energy and character of the past entity flow into and partially determine the structure of the new entity.

Every actual occasion, in its process of formation, incorporates two main types of data through prehension:

1. Physical Prehensions (Causal Efficacy): These are the feelings and energies derived from past actual occasions. They represent the objective compulsion of the past upon the present. This is how continuity and the laws of physics are maintained—the present moment physically feels the pressure, momentum, or preceding state of the past moment. For example, the experience of a person’s memory is a complex society of physical prehensions by which the current actual occasion inherits the data of the past actual occasions of the same historical route.

2. Conceptual Prehensions (Lure for Feeling): These are the feelings derived from what Whitehead calls Eternal Objects. Eternal Objects are pure potentials—abstract, non-spatial, and non-temporal universals, like geometric forms, colours (redness, blueness), mathematical ratios, or abstract ideas. They exist outside of any specific event, but are available to be incorporated by any actual occasion. Conceptual prehensions act as the “lure for feeling,” guiding the new occasion’s subjective aim toward higher complexity or specific definite forms.

The universe is, therefore, a massive, dense web of mutual prehensions. Everything that happens is fundamentally influenced by everything else that has happened, creating a truly monistic, interconnected reality where causality is synonymous with shared experience.

As Whitehead eloquently puts it, emphasising the relational nature of reality:

“The actual occasions are the final real things of which the world is made up. There is no going behind actual occasions to find anything more real.”

This means that you cannot define an actual occasion in isolation; its very reality is its relatedness. Its internal nature is determined by the external world it incorporates. It is a microcosm of the entire relevant past universe.

Concrescence and the Subjective Aim: Creativity and Novelty

The process by which an actual occasion integrates its incredibly diverse and often conflicting prehensions into a unified, definitive experience is called concrescence (a Latin-derived term meaning “a growing together”). Concrescence is the entire, brief lifespan of the actual occasion, from its initial grasp of the past to its final ‘satisfaction’—the moment it completes its own subjective unity and perishes into an objective fact.

This process is driven by the subjective aim. When an actual occasion emerges, it has an inherent, immanent drive toward an optimal outcome—a final unified feeling that maximises its intensity, coherence, and aesthetic value while harmonising the diverse, often discordant, prehensions it inherits. The subjective aim represents the specific way the occasion will integrate its past and potential future.

The process of concrescence involves a constant dialectic:

1. Initial Aim: The initial aim is provided by a higher ordering principle (often termed the divine), which selects a subset of Eternal Objects relevant to the occasion’s specific context (its prehended past) and presents them as the most harmonious possibility. This prevents reality from descending into total chaos.

2. Process of Feeling: The occasion then actively filters, weights, and combines its physical and conceptual prehensions. It decides which feelings to promote and which to discard or diminish, always striving for its ‘satisfaction’. This decision-making process is the source of creativity and non-deterministic freedom in the universe. The actual occasion is not merely a passive recipient of influence; it is a moment of spontaneous, decisive self-creation.

3. Satisfaction: The final moment of the concrescence, where the occasion achieves its definitive, unified subjective form and becomes the superject.

This inherent, self-directed decision within every actual occasion is how novelty enters the world, preventing reality from being a deterministic repetition of the past. Even the most seemingly passive physical events contain a minute element of choice in how they harmonise their incoming data.

The subjective aim is intimately connected to a higher organizing principle, which Whitehead frequently discussed in terms of the divine. God, in process philosophy, is not a static, transcendent creator who fixes reality from outside, but the chief agent of order and potentiality—the “Principle of Limitation.”

“God is the ultimate principle of creativity, and the ground for the mutual immanence of all things.”

This conception of God functions as the ultimate lure for novelty and value, ensuring that despite the momentary, perishing nature of reality, there is an overarching structure that guides the world towards greater complexity and value. God, like all other entities, changes through prehending the achieved ‘satisfaction’ of every perishing actual occasion, meaning the entire universe is involved in the divine process.

Implications for Change, Ethics, and Contemporary Thought

By substituting “actual occasions” for “substances,” process philosophy fundamentally transforms our understanding of change and introduces a profound ethical dimension.

Becoming is Primary

As established, change is not something that happens to a substance; change is the substance. Reality is defined by becoming, not static being. This view offers a powerful way to understand duration. A human life is not the persistence of a single, immutable soul or body; rather, it is a continuous stream of experiences, memories, and decisions—a highly complex society of actual occasions, where each moment perishes and hands its definitive data over to the next. The continuity we feel is a result of the extreme conformity (strong physical prehension) between successive occasions in our personal historical route.

Novelty and Responsibility

The inherent freedom and choice contained within the subjective aim of every actual occasion—no matter how small—gives ethical and creative importance to every moment. Since reality is not strictly deterministic, each moment is a fresh, definitive act of composition, contributing its final achieved self (as a superject) to the objective reality of the future.

This means that responsibility is not abstract; it is built into the very fabric of the cosmos. Every decision we make as a complex society of actual occasions affects the data available for all future occasions, not just within our own personal route, but throughout the wider world. The goal of life, therefore, becomes the maximisation of value and intensity of feeling within the concrescence, harmoniously incorporating the complex prehensions of the past to create a novel, worthwhile moment that enriches the future. This places human ethical action directly at the centre of cosmic creativity.

Scientific and Contemporary Relevance

Process philosophy, developed during the revolutionary era of Einstein’s relativity and quantum mechanics, remains highly relevant because it naturally aligns with scientific views that defy classical substance metaphysics.

1. Relativity: The concept of actual occasions defining their own spatio-temporal location and being fundamentally related to all others supports a relational view of space and time, rather than viewing them as absolute containers (a Newtonian view).

2. Quantum Mechanics: The momentary, non-deterministic “drops of experience” mirror the discontinuous, probabilistic nature of quantum events, where an entity suddenly collapses from potentiality to definite actuality.

In contemporary thought, process philosophy has found significant application beyond metaphysics, particularly in ecological ethics, where its emphasis on the radical interconnectedness of all things provides a deep philosophical justification for environmental stewardship. It offers a counterpoint to anthropocentric views, asserting that every entity—from a single cell to a planet—is an experiential actual occasion or a society thereof, possessing intrinsic value and contributing to the creative advance of the world.

In conclusion, Alfred North Whitehead’s process philosophy presents a profoundly dynamic and interconnected view of reality. It challenges the deep-seated assumption of enduring substances, replacing them with a metaphysics where the basic constituents of the universe are momentary, creative events—the actual occasions. Through the mechanism of prehension, these occasions weave together the past and potential future, establishing a universe defined by flowing, vibrant interdependency. Its lasting significance lies in its capacity to offer a coherent philosophical framework that aligns with modern scientific perspectives while providing a rich and demanding context for ethical thought rooted in responsibility for the creative advance of the world.