An ontological interpretation is distinguished from other interpretations when it demonstrates the form among the facts of human experience through imaginative hypothetical deduction, and when it employs Whitehead's desiderata through the decoherence effect and its constituents in the interpretation of quantum mechanics. To further explain his cosmological scheme, Whitehead ventured three references: the “old” quantum theory, the “new” quantum theory, focusing on the “fallacy of misplaced concreteness,” and the other version of the “new” quantum theory, directing its attention to the “vector relationship” between potential and a prior fact. The evolution and consolidation of the “physical pole” and the “mental pole” constitute the final outcome state or the “satisfaction,” which in return has consequences in the future (believed to be the path to openness). Despite this outstanding investigation, the principle of “what happens between” the stages continues to be a mystery. Along with the stages are obligations pertaining to subjective unity, objective identity and diversity, conceptual reproduction and reversion, transmutation, subjective harmony and intensity, freedom, and determination.
An ontological interpretation is distinguished from other interpretations when it demonstrates the form among the facts of human experience through imaginative hypothetical deduction, and when it employs Whitehead's desiderata through the decoherence effect and its constituents in the interpretation of quantum mechanics. To further explain his cosmological scheme, Whitehead ventured three references: the “old” quantum theory, the “new” quantum theory, focusing on the “fallacy of misplaced concreteness,” and the other version of the “new” quantum theory, directing its attention to the “vector relationship” between potential and a prior fact. The evolution and consolidation of the “physical pole” and the “mental pole” constitute the final outcome state or the “satisfaction,” which in return has consequences in the future (believed to be the path to openness). Despite this outstanding investigation, the principle of “what happens between” the stages continues to be a mystery. Along with the stages are obligations pertaining to subjective unity, objective identity and diversity, conceptual reproduction and reversion, transmutation, subjective harmony and intensity, freedom, and determination.
INTRODUCTION One of the virtues which Whitehead claims for his philosophy of organism is that it provides a conceptual framework for quantum theory ( SMW chapter 8, PR 121–2 and 145). The theory which he has in mind is the ‘old’ quantum theory, consisting of the hypotheses of Planck (1901) and of Einstein (1905) that electromagnetic energy is emitted and absorbed in quanta, together with Bohr's model of the atom (1913) in which discontinuous transitions were supposed to occur between discrete electronic orbits. The philosophy of organism was presented in a preliminary form in the Lowell Lectures of 1925 (published in the same year as SMW ) and in its most systematic form in the Gifford Lectures of 1927–28 (published as PR in 1929). It was during the years 1924–28 that de Broglie, Schrödinger, Heisenberg, Born, Jordan, Bohr, Dirac, and others developed the ‘new’ quantum theory, which was more systematic than the old, much more successful in its predictions, and more revolutionary in its departures from classical physics. Whitehead never refers to the new quantum theory, and it would be unreasonable to expect that even so imaginative a philosopher and scientist could have anticipated it except in the most general terms. Nevertheless, it is important in evaluating the philosophy of organism to determine how well its physical implications agree with quantum theory and with contemporary microphysical theory in general. To do this is the primary purpose of the present essay.
Abstract Contemporary theology has realized the importance of integrating what we know from the “new physics”-quantum mechanics and relativity theory-into the metaphysical and ontological categories used by theology to consider God, the world, and the God-world relationship. The categories of subjectivity and relationality have risen to prominence in these discussions. Both academic and popular presentations can obscure the vital distinction between what physicists agree on concerning quantum mechanics and the contested interpretation of quantum mechanics, or what quantum mechanics reveals about reality. After (1) summarizing the significant distinction between quantum mechanics per se and the interpretations of quantum mechanics and (2) the agreed upon quantum mechanical experimental procedure and its attendant mathematical formalism, as well as a few of the foremost interpretations, this paper (3) attempts a minimalist culling of some rudimentary but clear ontological principles and categories from what is agreed upon in quantum mechanics, without appeals-tacit or explicit-to one of the many controversial interpretations or to contestable philosophical assumptions and deductions, and these are: experience, subjectivity, relationship, and event. The paper closes by (4) commending one speculative scheme that is especially conducive to developing an interpretation of quantum mechanics consonant with the ontological principles and categories so derived, that of Alfred North Whitehead
One of the virtues which Whitehead claims for his philosophy of organism is that it provides a conceptual framework for quantum theory (SMW chapter 8, PR 121-2 and 145).1 The theory which he has in mind is the 'old' quantum theory, consisting of the hypotheses of Planck (1901) and of Einstein (1905) that electromagnetic energy is emitted and absorbed in quanta, together with Bohr's model of the atom (1913) in which discontinuous transitions were supposed to occur between discrete electronic orbits. The philosophy of organism was presented in a preliminary form in the Lowell Lectures of 1925 (published in the same year as SMW) and in its most systematic form in the Gifford Lectures of 1927-8 (published as PR in 1929). It was during the years 1924-28 that De Broglie, Schr6dinger, Heisenberg, Born, Jordan, Bohr, Dirac, and others developed the 'new' quantum theory, which was more systematic than the old, much more successful in its predictions, and more revolutionary in its departures from classical physics. Whitehead never refers to the new quantum theory,2 and it would be unreasonable to expect that even so imaginative a philosopher and scientist could have anticipated it except in the most general terms. Nevertheless, it is important in evaluating the philosophy of organism to determine how well its physical implications agree with quantum theory and with contemporary microphysical theory in general. To do this is the primary purpose of the present essay. It will appear that the agreement is only partial and that there are several crucial discrepancies both in detailed predictions and in general spirit.
Amid the wide variety of interpretations of quantum mechanics, the notion of a fully coherent ontological interpretation has seen a promising evolution over the last few decades. Despite this progress, however, the old dualistic categorical constraints of subjectivity and objectivity, correlate with the metrically restricted definition of local and global, have remained largely in place – a reflection of the broader, persistent inheritance of these comfortable strictures throughout the evolution of modern science. If one traces this inheritance back to its ancient roots in Plato and Aristotle, it is clear that the coherence, scientific utility, and historical durability of the various natural philosophies that followed have been directly proportional to their commitment, tacit or explicit, to object-oriented realism. As Simondon might put it, it is a commitment to the primacy of individuated substance over the process of individuation. For Whitehead, it is the misplaced assimilation of becoming to being, of potentiality to actuality. Quantum mechanics has challenged this commitment with a combined breadth and depth of force that far exceeds any other theory in the history of science. The theory’s objectively demonstrable empirical application is manifest only by way of a fundamentally subjective, context-dependent mechanism of measurement. More compelling still, actual system states are always actualizations of locally contextualized yet globally conditioned potential system states, such that “globally objective” reality is no longer merely the object of local measurement, but also its product. Thus, any coherent, ontological interpretation of quantum theory must include a conceptual framework by which objectivity and subjectivity, actuality and potentiality, global and local, being and becoming, individuated fact and process of individuation, are no longer understood as merely epistemic, mutually exclusive category pairs descriptive of an already extant, closed reality – but rather as mutually implicative ontological categories explicative of an ontogenetic, open reality-in-process.
This chapter intends to give a brief background to quantum mechanics and Alfred North Whitehead's cosmology. Several interpretations in quantum mechanics were found to be incompatible with Whitehead's desiderata. Whitehead viewed an analysis as being incompatible with his according to its coherence, logic, applicability, and adequacy. Some of the examples cited are as follows: Niels Bohr's principle of complementarity, David Bohm's “implicate order,” and quantum cosmogonic models by Stephen Hawking and James Hartle. In addition to this, there are two notable differences between quantum mechanics and Whiteheadian concepts: “pure” potentia and “inherited” potentia. Aside from this, Whitehead brings the term “satisfaction” into the picture, which he considers to be the final state of the expected output in the process of evolution.
In Process and Reality and other works, Alfred North Whitehead struggled to come to terms with the impact the new science of quantum mechanics would have on metaphysics. This book is the first extended analysis of the intricate relationships between relativity theory, quantum mechanics, and Whitehead's cosmology. Illuminated here is the intersection of science and philosophy in Whitehead's work, and details of Whitehead's attempts to fashion an ontology coherent with quantum anomalies. Including a non-specialist introduction to quantum mechanics, the book adds an essential new dimension to our understanding of Whitehead.