There are deep similarities between Whitehead's idea of the process by which nature unfolds and the ideas of quantum theory. Whitehead says that the world is made of ''actual occasions'', each of which arises from potentialities created by prior actual occasions. These actual occasions are happenings modeled on experiential events, each of which comes into being and then perishes, only to be replaced by a successor. It is these experience-like happenings that are the basic realities of nature, according to Whitehead, not the persisting physical particles that Newtonian physics took be the basic entities. Similarly, Heisenberg says 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 refer 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. The fundamental difference between these ideas about nature and the classical ideas that reigned from the time of Newton until this century concerns the status of the experiential aspects of nature. These are things such as thoughts, ideas, feelings, and sensations. They are distinguished from the physical aspects of nature, which are described in terms of quantities explicitly located in tiny regions of space and time. According to the ideas of classical physics the physical world is made up exclusively of things of this latter type, and the unfolding of the physical world is determined by causal connections involving only these things. Thus experiential-type things could be considered to influence the flow of physical events only insofar as they themselves were completely determined by physical things. In other words, experiential-type qualities. insofar as they could affect the flow of physical events, could--within the framework of classical physics--not be free: they must be completely determined by the physical aspects of nature that are, by themselves,sufficient to determine the flow of physical events.
There are deep similarities between Whitehead's idea of the process by which nature unfolds and the ideas of quantum theory. Whitehead says that the world is made of ''actual occasions'', each of which arises from potentialities created by prior actual occasions. These actual occasions are happenings modeled on experiential events, each of which comes into being and then perishes, only to be replaced by a successor. It is these experience-like happenings that are the basic realities of nature, according to Whitehead, not the persisting physical particles that Newtonian physics took be the basic entities. Similarly, Heisenberg says 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 refer 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. The fundamental difference between these ideas about nature and the classical ideas that reigned from the time of Newton until this century concerns the status of the experiential aspects of nature. These are things such as thoughts, ideas, feelings, and sensations. They are distinguished from the physical aspects of nature, which are described in terms of quantities explicitly located in tiny regions of space and time. According to the ideas of classical physics the physical world is made up exclusively of things of this latter type, and the unfolding of the physical world is determined by causal connections involving only these things. Thus experiential-type things could be considered to influence the flow of physical events only insofar as they themselves were completely determined by physical things. In other words, experiential-type qualities. insofar as they could affect the flow of physical events, could--within the framework of classical physics--not be free: they must be completely determined by the physical aspects of nature that are, by themselves,sufficient to determine the flow of physical events.
There are deep similarities between Whitehead's idea of the process by which nature unfolds and the ideas of quantum theory. Whitehead says that the world is made of `actual occasions', each of which arises from potentialities created by prior actual occasions. These actual occasions are `happenings' modelled on experiential events, each of which comes into being and then perishes, only to be replaced by a successor. It is these experience-like `happenings' that are the basic realities of nature, according to Whitehead, not the persisting physical particles that Newtonian physics took be the basic entities. Similarly, Heisenberg says 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 refer are increments in `our knowledge'. These increments are experiential events. The particles of classical physics lose thei...
In this article I intend to show that certain aspects of A.N. Whitehead's philosophy of organism and especially his epochal theory of time, as mainly exposed in his well-known work Process and Reality, can serve in clarify the underlying assumptions that shape nonstandard mathematical theories as such and also as metatheories of quantum mechanics. Concerning the latter issue, I point to an already significant research on nonstandard versions of quantum mechanics; two of these approaches are chosen to be critically presented in relation to the scope of this work. The main point of the paper is that, insofar as we can refer a nonstandard mathematical entity to a kind of axiomatical formalization essentially 'codifying' an underlying mental process indescribable as such by analytic means, we can possibly apply certain principles of Whitehead's metaphysical scheme focused on the key notion of process which is generally conceived as the becoming of actual entities. This is done in the sense of a unifying approach to provide an interpretation of nonstandard mathematical theories as such and also, in their metatheoretical status, as a formalization of the empirical-experimental context of quantum mechanics.
In classical physics there is, in accordance with common sense, an objective world ‘out there’. That world evolves in a clear and deterministic way, being governed by precisely formulated mathematical equations. This is as true for the theories of Maxwell and Einstein as it is for the original Newtonian scheme. Physical reality is taken to exist independently of ourselves; and exactly how the classical world ‘is’ is not affected by how we might choose to look at it. Moreover, our bodies and our brains are themselves to be part of that world. They, also, are viewed as evolving according to the same precise and deterministic classical equations. All our actions are to be fixed by these equations - no matter how we might feel that our conscious wills may be influencing how we behave. Such a picture appears to lie at the background of most serious 1 philosophical arguments concerned with the nature of reality, of our conscious perceptions, and of our apparent free will. Some people might have an uncomfortable feeling that there should also be a role for quantum theory - that fundamental but disturbing scheme of things which, in the first quarter of this century, arose out of observations of subtle discrepancies between the actual behaviour of the world and the descriptions of classical physics. To many, the term ‘quantum theory’ evokes merely some vague concept of an ‘uncertainty principle’, which, at the level of particles, atoms or molecules, forbids precision in our descriptions and yields merely probabilistic behaviour. Actually, quantum descriptions are very precise, as we shall see, although radically different from the familiar classical ones. Moreover, we shall find, despite a common view to the contrary, that probabilities do not arise at the minute quantum level of particles, atoms, or molecules - those evolve deterministically - but, seemingly, via some mysterious larger-scale action connected with the emergence of a classical world that we can consciously perceive. We must try to understand this, and how quantum theory forces us to change our view of physical reality.
The general view is that all fundamental physical laws should be formulated within the framework given by quantum mechanics (QM). In a sense, QM therefore has the character of a metaphysical theory. Consequently, if it is possible to derive QM from more basic principles, these principles should be of general, philosophical nature. Here, we derive the formalism of QM from well-motivated epistemic principles. A key assumption is that a physical theory that relies on entities or distinctions that are unknowable in principle gives rise to wrong predictions. First, an epistemic formalism is developed, using concepts like knowledge and potential knowledge, identifying a physical state S with the potential knowledge of the physical world. It is demonstrated that QM emerges from this formalism. However, Hilbert spaces, wave functions and probabilities are defined in certain well-defined observational contexts only. This means that the epistemic formalism is broader than QM. In the fundamental layer of description, the physical state S is a subset of a state space S={Z}, such that S always contains many elements Z. These elements correspond to unattainable states of complete knowledge of the world. The evolution of S cannot be determined in terms of the individual evolution of the elements Z, unlike the evolution of an ensemble in classical phase space. The evolution of S is described in terms of sequential time n∈N, which is updated according to n→n+1 each time an event occurs, each time potential knowledge changes. Sequential time n can be separated from relational time t, which describes distances between events in space-time. There is an entire space-time associated with each n, in which t represents the knowledge at sequential time n about the temporal relations between present and past events.
Reviewed by: Quantum Processes: A Whiteheadian Interpretation of Quantum Field Theory Henry J. Folse Quantum Processes: A Whiteheadian Interpretation of Quantum Field Theory. Frank Hättich . Munster: Agenda Verlag, 2004. xiv + 280 pp. Euro 29.90, pbk.3-89688-204-x. Many philosophers and physicists—including the current reviewer—have argued that Whitehead's process philosophy provides a conceptual framework better suited for understanding the quantum theoretical account of the atomic domain than does the substance ontology that has dominated Western metaphysics. However, apart from calling attention to this issue, few (with the notable exceptions of Henry Stapp and Jorge Nobo) have attempted to do anything about it. Frank Hättich has now changed this situation by providing a sustained analysis of quantum field theory (QFT) in terms of Whitehead's ontological scheme. The result is interesting for two reasons: (1) by extending the match between Whitehead's specific metaphysical proposals and the mathematics of algebraic QFT to a level of detail never before attempted, Hättich greatly strengthens the hope that process ontology can help resolve quantum mysteries; and (2) in noting the points of noncompatibility between QFT and Whitehead's metaphysical conclusions, he suggests ways of revising Whitehead's pioneering effort to enhance the match between speculative ontological scheme and contemporary physical theory. Hättich's book is in three unequal parts: the first two are exegetical, and the third, constituting nearly half the book, is synthetic. Part I presents a "simplified version" of those parts of Whitehead's ontology pertinent to the interpretation of QFT to be presented, and Part II presents an algebraic formulation of [End Page 283] QFT susceptible to that interpretation. Although Part I is "self-contained" from the point of view of its intended application, it is unlikely that a reader wholly ignorant of Whitehead's process ontology would gain enough enlightenment to appreciate much of the author's argumentation; but it is equally unlikely that such a person would be reading this book. Part II presumes considerable mathematical sophistication and familiarity with the formalism of at least quantum mechanics and some knowledge of field theory. It is "introductory" only in the sense that it introduces the particular version of QFT, algebraic QFT (AQFT), to which process ontology is to be applied. Of course, both Whitehead's metaphysics and quantum theory have been subjected to many and various rival interpretations, and in selecting among them Hättich has clearly, and reasonably, been led by choices that maximize the connections he wishes to explore. It is misleading to see the goal here as developing yet another argument for why quantum theory must (or must not) be interpreted realistically. Rather, this investigation presupposes a realist interpretation and then gets to work constructing an ontological framework to show how this is possible, thereby suggesting that those who have argued that a realist interpretation of quantum theory is conceptually impossible have done so because they remain committed to ontological presuppositions moored in classical physics. In presenting the ontological framework for his project in Part III, Hättich accounts for the process of each occasion's creative concrescence from pure potentiality to determined actuality in terms of three Whiteheadian concepts: (1) the extensive continuum; (2) eternal objects; and (3) the underlying activity. Each one of these ontological elements is then matched up with an aspect of the mathematical formalism by which AQFT represents the quantum state of a region in spacetime. Hättich then shows that given these identifications, various consequences of the mathematical formalism imply that some of the ontological claims made by Whitehead are either inconsistent or incompatible with the presumption that AQFT gives us a true account of the world. Thus although the final conclusions of this investigation are critical of Whitehead's specific metaphysical conclusions, the extent of the applicability of his ontological categories to quantum mechanics and QFT provides persuasive grounds for hoping that future realist interpretations of quantum theory can learn much from process metaphysics. For this reason, Hättich is to be commended for keeping the project of process ontology alive by proposing specific reasons for revising Whiteheadian conclusions based on our best scientific theories of the microdomain, rather than arguing...
What is consciousness? Some philosophers have contended that qualia, or an experiential medium from which consciousness is derived, exists as a fundamental component of reality. Whitehead, for example, described the universe as being comprised of occasions of To examine this possibility scientifically, the very nature of physical reality must be re-examined. We must come to terms with the physics of space-time--as is described by Einstein's general theory of relativity--and its relation to the fundamental theory of matter--as described by quantum theory. This leads us to employ a new physics of reduction: which appeals to a form of quantum gravity to provide a useful description of fundamental processes at the quantum/classical borderline (Penrose, 1994; 1996). Within the OR scheme, we consider that consciousness occurs if an appropriately organized system is able to develop and maintain quantum coherent superposition until a specific objective criterion (a threshold related to quantum gravity) is reached; the coherent system then self-reduces (objective reduction: We contend that this type of self-collapse introduces non-computability, an essential feature of consciousness. OR is taken as an instantaneous event--the climax of a self-organizing process in fundamental space-time--and a candidate for a conscious Whitehead occasion of experience. How could an OR process occur in the brain, be coupled to neural activities, and account for other features of consciousness? We nominate an OR process with the requisite characteristics to be occurring in cytoskeletal microtubules within the brain's neurons (Penrose and Hameroff, 1995; Hameroff and Penrose, 1995; 1996). In this model, quantum-superposed states develop in microtubule subunit proteins (tubulins), remain coherent and recruit more superposed tubulins until a mass-time-energy threshold (related to quantum gravity) is reached. At that point, self-collapse, or reduction (OR) abruptly occurs. We equate the pre-reduction, coherent superposition (quantum computing) phase with pre-conscious processes, and each instantaneous (and non-computable) OR, or self-collapse, with a discrete conscious event. Sequences of OR events give rise to a stream of consciousness. Microtubule-associated-proteins can tune the quantum oscillations of the coherent superposed states; the OR is thus self-organized, or orchestrated (Orch OR). Each Orch OR event selects (non-computably) microtubule subunit states which regulate synaptic/neural functions using classical signaling. The quantum gravity threshold for self-collapse is relevant to consciousness, according to our arguments, because macroscopic superposed quantum states each have their own space-time geometries (Penrose, 1994; 1996). These geometries are also superposed, and in some way but when sufficiently separated, the superposition of space-time geometries becomes significantly unstable, and reduce to a single universe state. Quantum gravity determines the limits of the instability; we contend that the actual choice of state made by Nature is non-computable. Thus each Orch OR event is a self-selection of space-time geometry, coupled to the brain through microtubules and other biomolecules. If conscious experience is intimately connected with the very physics underlying space-time structure, then Orch OR in microtubules indeed provides us with a completely new and uniquely promising perspective on the hard problem of consciousness.