Time and Temporality – from Whitehead to quantum physics

The question which has to be answered concerning Whiteheads metaphysic is whether his system is completed with Process and Reality [29] or whether his metaphysics only comes fully into view in his later works (esp. Adventures of Ideas [30] and Modes of Thought [31]). It will be argued that his main ideas are already fully developed in Process and Reality. Especially regarding the concept of time and Whitehead asserted that one has to philosophize only about space and time the change of its understanding took already place during his writing of Science and Modern World [26] in 1925. Although he probably did not study the theoretical foundations of quantum theory in detail, ”since there is not a single allusion to any of these developments or to their authors in all of Whiteheads published work“ [14, 215-216], some developments of the early quantum theory led him to his speculative philosophy. Especially Bohrs atom model (1913) and de Broglies wave theory (1924) inspired him Preprint Dresden, 10-13-2008 to critically re-examine his natural philosophy and gained explicitly entry into the chapter The Quantum Theory [26, 119ff] From now on, the particles of reality are no longer material, static forms but spatio-temporal extended events. Whitehead got his inspiration from scientific discoveries without necessarily going into their specific formalism. His doctrine of the epochal character of time depends on the analysis of the intrinsic character of an event, considered to be the most concrete, finite entity, which he calls ”actual occasion“. The change from materialism to Whiteheads organic realism is characterized by the displacement of the notion of static stuff by the notion of fluid energy. Such energy has its structure from action and flowing and is also conditioned by quantum requirements. Both, Whiteheads metaphysic and quantum theory are theories of observations: The realities which quantum theory deals with are certain observations by scientists who use the theory. And, the issue of Whiteheads speculative cosmology is an expansion and generalization of the theory of perception of the British empiricists. By characterizing the basic ideas of scientific development and their consequences for philosophy Whitehead wants to unify different views of the nature of things, and to overcome the dualistic tradition of Cartesianism in modern age. Four leading ideas have determined the theoretical sciences in the 19th century: atomicity, continuity, energy preservation and evolution. According to Whitehead the challenge of sciences was not aimed to introduce these concepts, but to fuse them together and expand their application. Therefore, the cell theory and Pasteurs work were more revolutionary for him than the achievement of Daltons nuclear theory, ”for they introduced the notion of organism into the world of minute beings.“ Putting the concept of actual occasion in the center of his philosophy of organism, he succeeds in resolving handed down contrasts in a common unified ground. 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 re-placed by a successor. These experience-like ”happenings“ are the basic realities of nature. Similarly, Heisenberg said that what is really happening 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, whose occurrence can radically change the cloud of possibilities/potentialities for the still-later increments in knowledge. A philosophy, which is founded on causality and teleology as basic description of reality has to dissolve the distinctions between inside and outside, consciousness and matter, and object and subject. To reach this purpose, Whiteheads philosophy of organism as developed in Process and Reality offers the starting point. But, the question arises whether Whiteheads philosophy of organism could also provide a basis for a metaphysical description of modern quantum theory.