process philosophy

Compiled with AI assistance and selectively reviewed. Please consult the cited passages; the books remain the authoritative source. About this companion

Editorial synthesis · provisional

Definition

Process philosophy is the family of approaches that treats change, development and creative becoming as more fundamental than static substances. The corpus traces it through Heraclitus, Whitehead, Bergson and James while retaining their different commitments. Enduring forms become achievements within process rather than exceptions to it; this shared orientation does not make all process thinkers one theory or turn philosophical resonance into a derivation from quantum physics.

Explanation

RB1’s historical discussion places Whitehead’s occasions, Bergson’s creative time and James’s relational experience within a common reversal of explanatory priority. It also identifies Bergson’s vital impulse as controversial and outside mainstream science. The proposal preserves that particular attribution rather than making every process account depend on a vital force.

RB2 asks how change organizes into durable form: rivers, flames and bodies illustrate coordinated renewal rather than a hidden unchanging ingredient. Its native note distinguishes the author’s retained-constraint explanation of persistence from the systems of Rescher and Nicholson–Dupré. Shared vocabulary is therefore not wholesale adoption of every antecedent.

PB’s autobiographical account says Simondon shaped the project while Whitehead first reached the author through other writers. RB1 also explicitly calls the quantum comparison resonance rather than derivation. The entry retains both the project’s actual intellectual route and its evidential limit, without giving a metaphysical tradition the status of an experimentally demonstrated physical interpretation.

Scope and attribution

Retain the family resemblance, named differences and the author’s own intellectual route.

AB — The Actual Book

An actual entity’s becoming is invoked through Whitehead within the impermanence argument.

Occurrence locators: 121, 122; Thinker register: 227, 233; Notes: 239, 243.

PB — The Possible Book

The author’s intellectual route through Simondon remains distinct from Whitehead’s genealogy.

Occurrence locators: 81.

RB1 — The Real Book, Volume I: The Possible Is Real

Different thinkers share a process priority without one identical doctrine or quantum derivation.

Occurrence locators: 8, 10, 65, 69, 95, 96, 138, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 193, 199, 200, 257, 258, 287, 291.

RB2 — The Real Book, Volume II: Becoming Is Being

Persistence is coordinated renewal, with retained constraint marking the author’s specific account.

Occurrence locators: 184, 185, 188, 189, 204, 205, 206, 232, 256, 276, 280; Notes: 192.

RB3 — The Real Book, Volume III: Murmurations

Source-verified occurrence; see the printed-page references below.

Occurrence locators: 333.

Background used in the editorial explanation

Named theories and mechanisms are distinguished from neighboring background, homonyms and the author’s own synthesis. Reproduced AI passages retain their separate voice.