1.44 Gravity

Section 34 (first updated 2.02.2021)

“Action at a Distance”

Albert Einstein famously criticized classical notions of instantaneous causation when he referred to quantum entanglement as “spooky action at a distance” (spukhafte Fernwirkung)¹. By this, Einstein meant that the idea of one object influencing another across space without any mediating process was deeply troubling to the classical picture of causality. In Newtonian physics, gravity itself appears to act in this way: two masses attract each other immediately, regardless of the distance separating them, with no account of how that attraction is transmitted.

Classical mechanics presents a world that moves in a straightforward, uniform, cause-and-effect manner. Nature is governed by rational laws to which everything conforms, producing an ordered and predictable universe. Nowhere is this more evident than in the mechanics of the “heavens,” where planets form stable systems orbiting stars according to precise mathematical relations.

Yet ordinary experience presents a more uneven and contingent world. You step on a bug and it is crushed; you see someone walking in an awkward manner; a jellyfish moves fluidly, like a lava lamp. All these phenomena still conform to classical mechanics, but they are warped and reshaped by circumstance. The setting of events is governed by classical laws, yet the content of events—the way those laws are realized in time—is far more unpredictable. Classical mechanics supplies the framework, but not the lived texture of events.

Classical mechanics explains rudimentary motion in two ways. First, locomotion is described as the effect of external forces—gravity, friction, inertia—acting between objects: what goes up must come down; accelerated motion eventually slows due to resistance. Second, and more fundamentally, motion is generative: gravity organizes matter into structured relations. It determines how masses of different sizes, weights, and densities “sit” with respect to one another, how they come together and “fall into place.”

From this perspective, gravity is not merely what causes motion, but what establishes orientation. Light things tend upward, heavy things downward; the sky is above, the ground below; the human body is suspended between opposing forces in a temporary equilibrium. Classical gravity thus limits the world to a set of rudimentary orientations.

However, while classical mechanics explains how objects move and are structured, it does not explain why gravity exists or what gravity is. To say that an object falls because it has weight and is attracted to a larger mass explains the mechanism but not the substance of the relation. Why does the object occupy this position at all within the total web of relations that make gravity operative?

Here it is useful to distinguish between what is real and what is actual. As Charles Sanders Peirce suggests, the real refers to observable properties—what something appears to be. Yet this does not exhaust its truth. A thing is also what it is not yet, what it could become, and what it might have been. Actuality includes these unrealized possibilities, though no finite observer can apprehend them all at once. Gravity, then, must be understood not merely as an external force acting upon objects, but as something constituted by the totality of objects and relations it governs. Why is an object situated so that gravity can act upon it at all?

Gravity as the Way Things Are

Einstein’s general theory of relativity provides a crucial shift in perspective: “Gravity is not a force but a manifestation of the curvature of spacetime.”² Gravity is not an abstract law imposed on matter from outside, but indistinguishable from the very structure of events in spacetime.

The reason a man does not float into the sky is not simply because gravity pulls him downward, but because he is embedded in a continuous sequence of events unfolding through time. At any moment, he occupies one position within a duration—a kind of script—in which certain outcomes are necessary and others impossible. Gravity is inseparable from this temporal ordering. Cause and effect are not merely spatial relations but temporal ones.

Future possibilities, loosely speaking, exert pressure on the present just as a massive object attracts a smaller one. The present moment is stabilized by what must come next, just as much as by what has already occurred. In this sense, gravity is indistinguishable from the process by which events maintain coherence over time.

Apples Falling to the Ground

Isaac Newton himself reflected modestly on the famous episode: “I saw the apple fall, but never thought of gravity before.”³ The falling apple exemplifies how classical physics interprets gravity as attraction between masses.

Yet just because two events occur in the same space does not mean they occur in the same time. Even within a shared perceptual field, infinitesimal temporal intervals exist in which unnoticed changes occur. These micro-events alter outcomes and give duration to what appears instantaneous.

When an apple falls from a tree, it does so because the event of its being on the ground is the next logically available possibility. The future state—the apple resting on the ground—exerts a kind of pull on the present state—the apple hanging from the branch. From our linear experience of time, cause precedes effect: first the apple detaches, then it lands. We never observe the reverse.

But at an infinitesimal scale, these events are part of a single unfolding process. The apple on the tree and the apple on the ground are moments within one continuous event. Gravity names this necessity of transition, not merely a force acting at a point in space.

Gravity as a Force of Time

Gravity is identical with the way things are at a given moment in time. It is not merely spatial, because spatial forces only operate in the present. Time, however, extends beyond the present, encompassing past and future moments that sustain it.

Every action occurs in a present moment, yet the present is mediated by what has been and what will be. Gravity, therefore, stretches from future to past. The Earth’s gravity persists across time, even as objects change position and mass. When something becomes heavier, gravity affects it differently; quantity alters quality. This is why we speak metaphorically of importance as something that “carries weight.”

The Necessity of the Next Event

The necessity of the next event is the force that holds matter together in the present moment. Without this necessity, the present would disintegrate into unrelated fragments. Objects persist because their current state is constrained by what must follow from it. Gravity names this constraint: the requirement that the world continue coherently from one moment to the next.

Matter remains intact not simply because forces act upon it, but because events are ordered in such a way that certain transitions must occur. Gravity is the continuity of becoming itself.

Time as the Essence of Life

The ingredients of life are rooted in time. Life is not defined merely by structure or material composition, but by duration, rhythm, and change. To live is to be stretched between past and future, sustained in the present by necessity and possibility alike. Gravity, understood in this way, is not opposed to life but is one of its fundamental conditions: the temporal glue that allows events, organisms, and meanings to endure.

Footnotes

1. Einstein, A., letter to Max Born (1947), referring to quantum entanglement.
2. Einstein, A., Relativity: The Special and the General Theory (1916).
3. Newton, I., reported in William Stukeley, Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton’s Life (1752).

General Happening

Einstein’s special relativity recognizes that there is a general happening going on, but what defines this general happening is a set of infinitely many particular events, each with its own measure of time distinct from the whole and distinct from each other. In terms of motion, each object moves in relation to some other object, and both of them are moving in relation to some third object. Everything moves in relation to something else, and this relational motion is what is generally happening as a measure of time.

However, this general trend of antithetical motions bears a homogeneous form, and this form is what makes each thing into an individual, distinct object different from everything else. In other words, any unique object has a continuous and homogeneous form so as to be the entity that it is. This unity of the thing being identical with itself is a feature of each thing that is different from some other thing. Thus, general continuity consists in the fact that each thing is a harmonious discreteness with itself while remaining different from something else.

The force that maintains these movements in equilibrium is defined by Newton’s general law of gravitation, which, like the idea of absolute time, states first that every point mass in the universe attracts every other point mass. Everything has a gravitational effect on everything else. If one object moves or is displaced, the general gravitation of other objects is affected. Just as there is an absolute time governing the direction of everything, there is also a general force holding everything together. By these general theories, everything is held together and moves in a common directional structure. We can take this law to apply generally to all objects, but we can also take it particularly as what maintains the smaller objects making up a single body. Any single body is intact and moves in a definite direction.

Newton’s law of universal gravitation states secondarily that particles attract every other particle with a force proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between the centers of each particle.¹

We can take the first part to mean that the mass of an object—how big and heavy it is—determines the extent of its gravitational effect on other objects. For example, an object with a smaller mass is attracted to a bigger mass. But the second part of the sentence, the square of their distance, does not explain how an object with a certain mass, separate from other objects, causes them to move. The mass of an object is discrete to that object, so how does it move other objects separated by space without contact? Gravity thus develops a seemingly “magical” element, where things move other things at a distance.

Einstein famously referred to this as “spooky action at a distance,”² meaning the idea that an object can be moved, changed, or otherwise affected without being physically touched by another object. That is, it is a nonlocal interaction between objects separated in space. While this phrase later became associated with quantum entanglement, general relativity already addresses the problem by introducing spacetime. Spacetime functions as a shared medium connecting objects together. When the mass of one object alters this plane, the altered plane in turn affects the other object resting on it. Objects indirectly affect each other by directly affecting spacetime.

The action-at-a-distance problem remains a contradiction if we attempt to solve it purely by appealing to spatial interaction alone. When space is treated as empty separation rather than as a structured field or medium, the contradiction persists.

Action at a Distance and the Electron

Whitehead says:

“According to this conception of scientific objects, the rival theories of action at a distance and action by transmission through a medium are both incomplete expressions of the true process of nature. The stream of events that forms the continuous series of situations of the electron is entirely self-determined, both as regards having the intrinsic character of being the series of situations of that electron, and as regards the time-systems with which its various members are cogredient, and the flux of their positions in their corresponding durations. This is the foundation of the denial of action at a distance: namely, that the progress of the stream of the situations of a scientific object can be determined by an analysis of the stream itself.”Alfred North Whitehead, The Concept of Nature (1920), p. 159³

This passage reflects an early quantum insight. When Whitehead refers to the “analysis of the stream itself,” he suggests that the electron is not merely a succession of externally related states, nor simply a particle moving through space. Instead, its behavior is determined by the continuity of its own series of situations. What appears as contradiction—wave versus particle, distance versus contact—arises from mistaking this stream of situations for either a static object or a purely spatial process.

The idea of a charge acting at a distance is an early empirical discovery associated with the electron. Whitehead argues that “the electron is not merely where its charge is,” because theories of action at a distance must explain what determines transmission through a medium. In other words, what aspect of the electron accounts for its capacity to act beyond its immediate location?

Observation of an action at a distance proceeds roughly as follows. When scientists observe the atom, the proton–neutron nucleus appears closer to the observer, while further away there appears a flickering electrical charge. This charge seems to extend outward, behaving like a wave, and as it approaches the observer it appears as a particle. Thus, closer to the observer it is not a wave; further away it is a wave. The act of observation itself becomes part of the physical composition of the phenomenon and shapes how action at a distance is manifested.

Action at a distance, then, is the physical fact of a potential event—a possible object. Even in ordinary perception, an object at a distance presents itself as a possibility rather than a completed actuality. The fact of action at a distance is simply the potentiality of an event bringing itself into actuality, derived from an actual source. From a first-person point of view, the electron appears as a charge at a distance, but more generally, the place from which the charge is distant and the charge itself form variables within the same congruent duration—analogous in geometry to figures that are identical in form.

“On the other hand, the ingression of every electron into nature modifies to some extent the character of every event. Thus the character of the stream of events that we are considering bears marks of the existence of every other electron throughout the universe. If we like to think of the electrons as being merely what I call their charges, then the charges act at a distance. But this action consists in the modification of the situation of the other electron under consideration. This conception of a charge acting at a distance is a wholly artificial one. The conception that most fully expresses the character of nature is that of each event as modified by the ingression of each electron into nature. The ether is the expression of this systematic modification of events throughout space and throughout time. The best expression of the character of this modification is for physicists to find out. My theory has nothing to do with that, and is ready to accept any outcome of physical research.”Alfred North Whitehead, The Concept of Nature (1920), p. 160.”⁴

Here Whitehead rejects the idea that charges literally act across empty space. Instead, every event is modified by the ingression of every electron into nature. If we think of electrons merely as charges, then it appears that they act at a distance. But this is an artificial conception. What truly occurs is that the situation of each event is modified by the presence of every other electron. The ether, in Whitehead’s terminology, names this systematic modification of events throughout space and time. It is not a mechanical substance, but an expression of relational influence.

The difference, then, is that the internal structure of an object is the unpacked version of its possibilities, while its external behaviour is the actualization of one possibility at a time.

“In one respect this is also a tautology. For the physical object is nothing else than the habitual concurrence of a certain set of sense-objects in one situation. Accordingly, when we know all about the physical object, we thereby know its component sense-objects. But a physical object is a condition for the occurrence of sense-objects other than those which are its components. For example: a mirror, which is itself a physical object, is an active condition for the situation of a patch of colour behind it, due to the reflection of light in it.” Alfred North Whitehead, The Concept of Nature (1920), p. 158.”⁵

A physical object is nothing other than the habitual concurrence of certain sense-objects in a given situation. When we know everything about the physical object, we thereby know its component sense-objects. However, a physical object is also a condition for the occurrence of sense-objects that are not its components. The example of a mirror is crucial: the mirror itself is a physical object, but it actively conditions the appearance of a patch of color behind it through reflection. Thus, physical objects are not passive collections of qualities; they are active conditions shaping further events.

“These scientific objects are not themselves merely formulae for calculation; because formulae must refer to things in nature, and the scientific objects are the things in nature to which the formulae refer.” Alfred North Whitehead, The Concept of Nature (1920), p. 154”⁶

This quote emphasizes that scientific objects are not just mathematical conveniences. Formulae must refer to something, and scientific objects are the real features of nature to which these formulae refer. While equations describe relations, they do so because there is something in nature that behaves in a structured way. Scientific objects therefore mediate between mathematical description and physical reality. They are not reducible to symbols, nor are they independent of experience. Instead, they are the enduring patterns through which nature becomes intelligible.

Footnotes

1. Newton, I., Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687).
2. Einstein, A., letter to Max Born (1947).
3. Whitehead, A. N., The Concept of Nature, p. 159.
4. Ibid., p. 160.
5. Ibid., p. 158.
6. Whitehead, A. N., The Concept of Nature, p. 154.

Electron ‘Charge at a Distance’

The left side represents the discrete measure within the wavelength, while the right side represents the wavelength itself as discrete; that is, the wavelength consists of little discrete points of energy. The former is an abstract illustration of the latter, which is the concrete and real way electrons operate within atomic structures.

“A scientific object such as a definite electron is a systematic correlation of the characters of all events throughout all nature. It is an aspect of the systematic character of nature. The electron is not merely where its charge is. The charge is the quantitative character of certain events due to the ingression of the electron into nature. The electron is its whole field of force. Namely, the electron is the systematic way in which all events are modified as the expression of its ingression. The situation of an electron in any small duration may be defined as that event which has the quantitative character which is the charge of the electron. We may, if we please, term the mere charge the electron. But then another name is required for the scientific object which is the full entity which concerns science, and which I have called the electron.”¹

Here, Whitehead rejects the reduction of the electron to a localized charge. The charge is only a quantitative aspect of events; the electron itself is the field of systematic modification across nature. The electron is not a point but a pattern of influence.

“The examples which I have given of the ingression of objects into events remind us that ingression takes a peculiar form in the case of some events; in a sense, it is a more concentrated form. For example, the electron has a certain position in space and a certain shape. Perhaps it is an extremely small sphere in a certain test-tube. The storm is a gale situated in mid-Atlantic with a certain latitude and longitude, and the cook is in the kitchen. I will call this special form of ingression the ‘relation of situation’; also, by a double use of the word ‘situation,’ I will call the event in which an object is situated ‘the situation of the object.’”²

The identification of a cook is always made in relation to a kitchen. The cook takes up a position in the kitchen, and that relation gives us the situation of the event. Situation is not merely spatial placement, but relational embedding.

“It seems so obvious that any object is in such and such a position, and that it is influencing other events in a totally different sense. Namely, in a sense an object is the character of the event which is its situation, but it only influences the character of other events.”³

Whitehead demonstrates that position does not exhaust influence. An object is the character of the event in which it is situated, but it also conditions other events beyond its immediate situation.

“For example, where was your toothache? You went to a dentist and pointed out the tooth to him. He pronounced it perfectly sound, and cured you by stopping another tooth. Which tooth was the situation of the toothache? Again, a man has an arm amputated and experiences sensations in the hand which he has lost. The situation of the imaginary hand is in fact merely thin air. You look into a mirror and see a fire. The flames that you see are situated behind the mirror. Again at night you watch the sky; if some of the stars had vanished from existence hours ago, you would not be any the wiser. Even the situations of the planets differ from those which science would assign to them.”⁴

These examples show that situation is not identical with physical location. Perceptual, temporal, and relational structures intervene. Action at a distance arises when situation and influence diverge.

Hegel similarly criticizes the reduction of reality to an abstract substrate:

“Matters are resolved into forms of one and the same matter, and this process continues to the point where everything is just a form of one and the same abstract, indifferent matter, just like the Thing-in-Itself of Kantian philosophy, beyond and outside experience, just a blank substratum of existence. Matter is a philosophical abstraction representing everything that is outside of and independent of thought… it can explain nothing because it is a nothing.”⁵

For both Hegel and Whitehead, abstraction alone cannot account for concrete processes.

Plasma is often called the fourth state of matter, alongside solid, liquid, and gas. While solids, liquids, and gases are made of atoms where electrons are mostly bound to the nucleus, plasma is a state in which some or all of the electrons have been stripped from atoms, leaving a mix of free electrons and ions. This makes plasma electrically conductive and highly responsive to electromagnetic fields.

Features of Plasma:

1. Ionization: Plasma is created when enough energy is supplied to a gas to separate electrons from atoms. This can happen due to high heat, electrical energy, or strong electromagnetic fields.
2. Electrical Conductivity: Because plasma contains free-moving charged particles (electrons and ions), it conducts electricity and generates magnetic fields. This is why plasma responds strongly to electric and magnetic forces.
3. Collective Behaviour: Unlike gases, where particles move independently, plasma particles interact collectively through long-range electromagnetic forces, forming patterns like filaments, arcs, or waves.
4. High Energy State: Plasma carries a lot of energy, which is why it is sometimes referred to as plasma energy. This energy can be harnessed in technologies such as plasma TVs, plasma torches, and fusion reactors.

Examples of Plasma:

• Natural plasma: The Sun, lightning, auroras, and interstellar space.
• Man-made plasma: Neon signs, plasma screens, plasma torches, and fusion experiments.

Plasma Energy in Physics:

Plasma energy is not just heat; it’s the combination of kinetic energy of particles and electromagnetic energy stored in the motion and interaction of electrons and ions. In advanced physics, especially quantum and astrophysics, plasma energy is important for understanding stellar formation, nuclear fusion, and high-energy phenomena in the universe.

This plasma is the material substance of the mind, or ether, or whatever you want to call it. The main point is that it is pure motion. Prior to forming heat, it is pure kinetic energy, pure physical movement—the substance for forms in which matter takes shape.

Electron as Structural Totality

An electron is the structural totality of the following components:

First, potential events: objects not discerned all at once at any given moment, which as a whole consist of an indeterminacy independent of any single possibility that becomes a real moment called the present.

Second, the present: a single point from which the infinite set of indeterminate potentials form the possibility of becoming real instances. The given present moment is a real instance because it is the actuality of one potential event, from which every other potential event can also be real.

How do you go through ten doors? You start by going into each one individually, eventually going through all ten.

Whitehead’s Rectangle–Mars Example

Whitehead uses the example of a rectangle observed on Earth and the planet Mars to show that spatial position is inseparable from temporal and relational structure. Suppose a rectangle is drawn on a sheet of paper and observed from Earth. That rectangle is a definite physical object situated in a particular event. However, when that same rectangle is considered in relation to Mars, its “position” is no longer simply a matter of geometry on the page. The relation between the rectangle and Mars is mediated by the time it takes light to travel between them.

The distance between Earth and Mars is measured in astronomical units—one astronomical unit being the average distance between the Earth and the Sun. Because light travels at a finite speed, the rectangle as it is now on Earth is not the rectangle as it is for Mars. Mars receives light from Earth after a delay measured in minutes, so the rectangle’s situation relative to Mars belongs to a different temporal slice of the same event.

Thus, the rectangle occupies multiple situations simultaneously, depending on the system of reference. There is the rectangle as situated in the immediate present on Earth, and the rectangle as situated in a delayed past for Mars. These are not two different rectangles, but two relations of situation within a single continuous event.

Whitehead’s point is that no object has a single absolute position in space. Every object is defined by a network of relations distributed across space and time. What we call the “position” of an object is always relative to a system of events and a temporal framework. This undermines the idea that objects act at a distance by transmitting forces across empty space. Instead, objects modify the structure of events throughout spacetime.

In this way, the rectangle–Mars example anticipates both Einstein’s relativity and Whitehead’s own rejection of action at a distance. What appears as distant influence is really the systematic coordination of events across durations, mediated by the finite speed of causal processes.

Orbital Form and Event Structure

The formation of orbital systems prevalent across all scales is a universal form of phenomena wherein an actual present event takes on a central position, circled by a total set of potential events. Each potential event, when actualized, takes the central position and is itself circled by others.

Thus, whether an event is actual or potential depends on its role within the formation. To be a center does not mean occupying a perceptual midpoint, because on an infinite spherical plane any point can be conceived as the center. To be the center is to be the point occupied by conception itself.

The orbiting system projects an event furthest away from its real occurrence, constituting duration toward its actualization. When it comes closest in proximity to its actual occurrence, potentiality and actuality coincide. This coincidence is the real occurrence.

This process aligns with the mechanics of the law of mind: the idea is propelled furthest away from its object through duration, mediated by an object already encompassing a mind–matter unity.

The idea is the impenetrable and incorporeal element. It is propelled away from conditions other than those of its physical object, which itself is a duration moving toward actualization.

Event–Particle Clarification (Whitehead)

For Whitehead, a particle is not a self-contained thing that moves through space as a solid unit. What science calls a “particle” is instead a pattern of events—a structured continuity of happenings that maintain a recognizable form across time. The particle is the persistence of an event-pattern, not a substance that endures unchanged.

An event is a finite region of spacetime with a definite character. Events are not instantaneous points, nor are they purely spatial locations; they are durations in which relations are realized. A particle, such as an electron, is the systematic recurrence of certain event-characters across successive durations. What gives the appearance of a single enduring particle is the stability of this recurrence.

This is why Whitehead says the electron is not merely where its charge is. The charge marks the quantitative character of certain events, but the electron itself is the total field of modification those events introduce into nature. The particle is not inside the event; the particle is the way events are structured.

From this perspective, action at a distance disappears as a problem. The electron does not send a force across empty space to affect another particle. Instead, each event is already modified by the ingression of the electron into nature. What appears as distant action is simply the coordination of event-patterns across spacetime.

The distinction between event and particle can be summarized as follows:

• Event: a localized duration in which relations are actualized
• Particle: the ordered continuity of such events exhibiting a stable pattern

A particle is therefore an abstraction from the continuity of events, not a thing existing apart from them. Its “position” at any moment refers only to the event in which its characteristic quantitative features—such as charge—are most concentrated.

This clarification also explains why particles appear both discrete and continuous. They are discrete insofar as particular events can be distinguished, but continuous insofar as the pattern that defines the particle persists across those events. The wave–particle tension arises from mistaking the abstract event-pattern for a concrete object located at a point.

In Whitehead’s philosophy, then, the true unit of nature is the event, and the particle is a conceptual tool for tracking continuity within the flux of events. The world is not composed of particles that later enter into relations; it is composed of relations that stabilize into recognizable patterns we call particles.

Charge at a Distance and Consciousness

Charge at a distance is simply an effect wherein the conditions of the idea, the physical object, and the idea of those conditions—its form—come together to formulate an event. The element of mind is the recognition of this actualization.

Empirically, we imagine the electron as infinitesimally small, but this smallness signifies that its model is prevalent across all dimensions.

The electron is the supersymmetry of possible events orbiting a single actual occurrence that takes on the conditions of a physical object.

Particles as abstractions derived from events:

• Particles, such as electrons or molecules, are not seen directly in isolation—they are scientific objects.
• A particle is defined through its relation to events, specifically the patterns of events it influences or participates in. For instance, an electron is understood in terms of the events it causes or the fields it modifies, not as a standalone “thing.”
• Whitehead calls a particle like an electron a “systematic correlation of events”, meaning it represents the structure of how events are organized around its presence and effects.

• An event is concrete and transitory, happening at a specific point in spacetime.
• A particle is abstract, a model we use to describe recurring patterns or regularities in events. It exists as a stable feature of the ongoing process, but only makes sense in relation to the events it participates in.
• In other words, the particle is the “persistent character” seen across many events, while the event is the moment-to-moment reality that gives rise to the particle’s behaviour.

Implications for physics and perception:

It also aligns with our perception: we never see an event fully; we see objects, which are abstractions of event characters.

This distinction helps explain phenomena like action at a distance or quantum behavior, where we cannot locate a particle in the same way we locate an object.

We understand particles through their effects in sequences of events rather than as solid, isolated objects.

When you look outward, your conception extends beyond you to disclose what is perceived. How can you see outside yourself? There is an extension between you and the object such that you are perceiving your perception perceiving the object. This is apperception.

The object is outside your mind, yet your perceptive ability extends from the mind to disclose it. You perceive the thing as perceived. Your mind interprets what the senses receive, and your ego or consciousness is aware of your mind doing so. Yet it is not aware that it is itself an object perceived by the mind.

At the present moment, you see an object. At a later moment, that present becomes a potential future in which the mind perceives the ego perceiving the object. Thus, the present is always the past of a future perception.

Consciousness is therefore a collage of everything: past perceptions, present actualities, and future recognitions folded into a continuous duration.

Whitehead’s particle–event discussion reframes reality as process-based. Events are the flowing, concrete occurrences, while particles are abstractions of patterns within those events. This perspective bridges philosophy and physics, showing how permanence (particles) emerges from transience (events).

Footnotes

1. Whitehead, A. N., The Concept of Nature, p. 159.
2. Ibid., p. 147.
3. Ibid., p. 147.
4. Ibid., pp. 147–148.
5. Hegel, G. W. F., Science of Logic, trans. Miller, p. 126.

Whitehead on “Event”

Whitehead explains the concept of an event as follows:

“I will use the term ‘event’ because it is the shortest. In order to specify an observed event, the place, the time, and character of the event are necessary. In specifying the place and the time you are really stating the relation of the assigned event to the general structure of other observed events. For example, the man was run over between your tea and your dinner and adjacently to a passing barge in the river and the traffic in the Strand. The point which I want to make is this: Nature is known to us in our experience as a complex of passing events. In this complex we discern definite mutual relations between component events, which we may call their relative positions, and these positions we express partly in terms of space and partly in terms of time. Also in addition to its mere relative position to other events, each particular event has its own peculiar character. In other words, nature is a structure of events and each event has its position in this structure and its own peculiar character or quality.”¹

Whitehead is defining what he means by an event in the most precise way. When he says, “I will use the term ‘event’ because it is the shortest”, he is choosing a term that captures the basic unit of experience or reality. In his philosophy, the universe is not primarily made of static objects (like tables, planets, or electrons) but of events—dynamic happenings that occur in time and space.

To fully specify an event, Whitehead says you need three things:

1. Place – Where the event occurs.
2. Time – When the event occurs.
3. Character – The unique qualities or properties of the event.

But specifying place and time is not just about labeling coordinates. Instead, it is relational: you define an event by how it connects to all other events. For example, when he says:

“the man was run over between your tea and your dinner and adjacently to a passing barge in the river and the traffic in the Strand,”

he is illustrating that an event is always contextual. Its meaning and identity depend on its relation to all the surrounding events. The man being run over is not just isolated—it has a position relative to the broader temporal and spatial network of happenings around it.

Whitehead emphasizes that nature is a structure of events, not isolated objects. Each event has:

• Relative positions to other events (which we interpret as space and time).
• Its own peculiar character—its unique qualities or “what it is like.”

So every event is simultaneously connected to everything else and unique in itself. This is why he talks about the “stream of events.”

What Whitehead means by the “stream of events”?

When Whitehead refers to a stream of events, he imagines reality as a continuous flow of interrelated happenings rather than a collection of discrete objects. Just as a river has water continuously moving in a stream, reality is a flow of events where:

• Each event arises from previous events (it is influenced by them).
• Each event influences future events (it contributes to what comes next).
• Events are interconnected, forming a structured “network” that we experience as the universe.

So, in the earlier quote, the man being run over is one “drop” in the stream, which has its position and character determined by its relation to all other drops—all other events happening around it. This view also explains why, in Whitehead’s philosophy, time and space are relational: they are derived from the connections between events, not existing independently.

• Event: The fundamental unit of reality, defined by place, time, and character.
• Stream of events: The continuous, interrelated flow of all events in nature. Every event’s identity and effect come from its place within this stream.
• Reality is processual (always happening) rather than composed of static substances.

Whitehead emphasizes that even seemingly permanent objects, like Cleopatra’s Needle, are ultimately streams of events:

“Let us now examine the other two statements in the light of this general principle as to the meaning of nature. Take the second statement, ‘Cleopatra’s Needle is on the Charing Cross Embankment.’ At first sight we should hardly call this an event. It seems to lack the element of time or transitoriness. But does it? If an angel had made the remark some hundreds of millions of years ago, the earth was not in existence; twenty millions of years ago there was no Thames; eighty years ago there was no Thames Embankment; and when I was a small boy Cleopatra’s Needle was not there. And now that it is there, we none of us expect it to be eternal. The static timeless element in the relation of Cleopatra’s Needle to the Embankment is a pure illusion generated by the fact that for purposes of daily intercourse its emphasis is needless. What it comes to is this: Amidst the structure of events which form the medium within which the daily life of Londoners is passed we know how to identify a certain stream of events which maintain permanence of character, namely the character of being the situations of Cleopatra’s Needle. Day by day and hour by hour we can find a certain chunk in the transitory life of nature, and of that chunk we say, ‘There is Cleopatra’s Needle.’ If we define the Needle in a sufficiently abstract manner we can say that it never changes. But a physicist who looks on that part of the life of nature as a dance of electrons will tell you that daily it has lost some molecules and gained others, and even the plain man can see that it gets dirtier and is occasionally washed. Thus the question of change in the Needle is a mere matter of definition. The more abstract your definition, the more permanent the Needle. But whether your Needle changes or is permanent, all you mean by stating that it is situated on the Charing Cross Embankment is that amid the structure of events you know of a certain continuous limited stream of events, such that any chunk of that stream, during any hour, or any day, or any second, has the character of being the situation of Cleopatra’s Needle.”²

At first glance, Cleopatra’s Needle seems like a permanent, unchanging object. We say, “It is on the Charing Cross Embankment,” as if it has always been there and will always be there. Whitehead challenges this:

• If you consider the long temporal history of the Earth, Cleopatra’s Needle did not exist millions of years ago.
• Its current location is temporary, like any event, because the physical world is constantly changing.

Thus, the apparent permanence of objects is an illusion generated by practical everyday language.

Objects as streams of events

Whitehead reframes objects like Cleopatra’s Needle in terms of streams of events:

• A “stream of events” is a continuous series of occurrences that collectively maintain the object’s identity.
• For Cleopatra’s Needle, this includes all the atoms, molecules, and physical interactions that constitute the Needle over time. Even as it loses or gains molecules, the overall pattern of events preserves its identity in our perception.
• When we say, “There is Cleopatra’s Needle,” we are referring not to a timeless thing but to a chunk of transitory events that forms a recognizable pattern.

Permanence as abstraction

Whitehead points out that permanence is relative to the level of abstraction:

• At a daily life level, Cleopatra’s Needle seems permanent: we see it in the same place day after day.
• At a physical level, it is constantly changing: molecules shift, dirt accumulates, and electrons move.
• The “object” is defined by the continuity of events, not by unchanging matter. The more abstract our definition (ignoring small changes), the more “permanent” the Needle seems.

• Objects are not timeless substances but temporary, structured patterns of events.
• The identity of an object comes from a continuous stream of events, not from fixed matter.
• Permanence is relational and abstract—it depends on how we choose to observe and describe these streams.

In simpler terms: Cleopatra’s Needle exists because we can identify a recognizable sequence of events that form its pattern. Without this stream, there is no Needle—it’s the events that define the object, not some eternal essence.

Whitehead further connects the concept of events to fields of activity, which shape subsequent events, and explains how scientific objects, like electrons or molecules, are abstractions derived from these events:

“The analysis of these adventures makes us aware of another character of events, namely their characters as fields of activity which determine the subsequent events to which they will pass on the objects situated in them. We express these fields of activity in terms of gravitational, electromagnetic, or chemical forces and attractions. But the exact expression of the nature of these fields of activity forces us intellectually to acknowledge a less obvious type of objects as situated in events. I mean molecules and electrons. These objects are not recognised in isolation. We cannot well miss Cleopatra’s Needle if we are in its neighbourhood; but no one has seen a single molecule or a single electron, yet the characters of events are only explicable to us by expressing them in terms of these scientific objects. Undoubtedly molecules and electrons are abstractions. But then so is Cleopatra’s Needle. The concrete facts are the events themselves—I have already explained to you that to be an abstraction does not mean that an entity is nothing. It merely means that its existence is only one factor of a more concrete element of nature. *So an electron is abstract because you cannot wipe out the whole structure of events and yet retain the electron in existence. In the same way the grin on the cat is abstract; and the molecule is really in the event in the same sense as the grin is really on the cat’s face.”³

Whitehead’s concept of “field of activity” and its relation to the limits of objects in this way. What is a “field of activity”?

In Whitehead’s process philosophy, an object is never just a static thing. Instead, it is a pattern of events unfolding over time, and this pattern is what he calls a “field of activity.”, in three ways:

• Events define the object: Every object is made up of events that happen in relation to each other. For example, an apple on a table is not just a solid thing—it is the collection of all the processes that maintain it in its form: atoms, molecules, chemical interactions, gravity, and so on.
• Activity, not substance: The focus is on what the object does or how it participates in other events, rather than on a fixed substance. Whitehead sees reality as a web of interrelated processes, not isolated, permanent objects.
• Relational existence: The “field” extends beyond the visible object to the network of relations it has: other objects it interacts with, forces affecting it, and the environment.

Think of it like ripples in a pond: the ripple pattern is the field of activity; it exists because of water, wind, and other ripples interacting, not because there is a static “ripple object.”

How does this relate to the limits of objects?

Traditionally, we think of objects as having fixed boundaries: a table ends here, a cat ends there. Whitehead challenges this. In his framework:

1. Limits are relational, not intrinsic:

• The “edge” of an object is where its influence or activity fades relative to other events.
• Example: The ivy plant doesn’t have a strict boundary; its growth is a field of events interacting with the wall, sunlight, and air. Its limit is defined by where the activity of ivy ceases relative to its environment, not by a fixed line.

1. Objects are abstractions from the field:

• When we point to a chair and call it an object, we are abstracting a portion of the field of activity.
• The chair exists as a stable object only because of the continuous pattern of events maintaining its structure: atoms, molecules, forces, and interactions.

1. Limits are dynamic:

• The field of activity can expand, contract, or shift. For example, if a leaf grows or falls off, the ivy’s field changes, and so do its “limits.”
• Objects are not permanently bounded; they are temporarily stabilized patterns in the broader field of activity.

the synthesis is as follows:

• Field of activity: The web of events, relations, and interactions that constitute the object’s existence.
• Limits of the object: The temporary, relational boundaries that arise from the object’s field of activity.

Objects are not things that have fixed edges—they are patterns of processes, and their boundaries are emergent from the field of activity.

Whitehead also examines the limits of object definition and the permanence of material entities:

“Where does Cleopatra’s Needle begin and where does it end? Is the soot part of it? Is it a different object when it sheds a molecule or when its surface enters into chemical combination with the acid of a London fog? The definiteness and permanence of the Needle is nothing to the possible permanent definiteness of a molecule as conceived by science, and the permanent definiteness of a molecule in its turn yields to that of an electron. Thus science in its most ultimate formulation of law seeks objects with the most permanent definite simplicity of character and expresses its final laws in terms of them.”⁴

Finally, Whitehead clarifies that recognition of objects is distinct from recognition of events, emphasizing the irreversibility of events:

“As you are walking along the Embankment you suddenly look up and say, ‘Hullo, there’s the Needle.’ In other words, you recognise it. You cannot recognise an event; because when it is gone, it is gone. You may observe another event of analogous character, but the actual chunk of the life of nature is inseparable from its unique occurrence.”⁵

Whitehead’s concept of objects as streams of events connects closely to the law of irreversibility in physics and philosophy.

The Law of Irreversibility

• In thermodynamics and general physics, the law of irreversibility says that natural processes proceed in one direction: the past cannot be exactly restored, only approximated.
• Once an event occurs, it leaves its mark on the system (entropy increases, information is transformed), and the exact past state cannot be perfectly recreated.

Relation to Whitehead’s stream of events

Whitehead sees objects as continuous sequences of events rather than fixed substances. Each “chunk” of an object is a particular event in time, like a frame in a movie:

• Once a particular event has occurred (e.g., a molecule in Cleopatra’s Needle shifts), that exact moment cannot be repeated.
• The past event exists only as an idealized reference for understanding the present or predicting the future.

So, when we perceive permanence—like the Needle staying “the same”—we are actually reconstructing the past event in our minds to approximate it in the present.

The idealization of past events

• Whitehead emphasizes that the present event is influenced by past events, but we never “relive” the past exactly.
• For instance, if a scientist recreates the conditions of a chemical reaction, they can only approximate the past state, because all physical processes are irreversible.
• This mirrors how we perceive objects: Cleopatra’s Needle is “the same” as yesterday because our mind and observation treat the past stream of events as a model, even though the underlying matter is slightly changed.

• Past events shape the present, but they exist only as ideals or references, not exact realities.
• The irreversibility of time ensures that the stream of events moves forward; each moment is unique and contributes to the ongoing structure of the object.
• Whitehead’s metaphysics aligns with this: objects are processes over time, not static entities, and their identity is a continuous approximation rather than a fixed repetition.

The past event is gone, but its influence guides the present and informs the future. Permanence is a mental abstraction, and irreversibility ensures that the world of events is always moving forward, never exactly repeating.Footnotes

1. Whitehead, A. N. Process and Reality, p. 166.
2. Whitehead, A. N. Process and Reality, pp. 166–167.
3. Whitehead, A. N. Process and Reality, pp. 170–171.
4. Whitehead, A. N. Process and Reality, pp. 171–172.
5. Whitehead, A. N. Process and Reality, p. 169.

An event cannot be recognized but the character of an event can be recognized. Whitehead says:

“But a character of an event can be recognised. We all know that if we go to the Embankment near Charing Cross we shall observe an event having the character which we recognise as Cleopatra’s Needle. Things which we thus recognise I call objects. An object is situated in those events or in that stream of events of which it expresses the character. There are many sorts of objects. For example, the colour green is an object according to the above definition. It is the purpose of science to trace the laws which govern the appearance of objects in the various events in which they are found to be situated. For this purpose we can mainly concentrate on two types of objects, which I will call material physical objects and scientific objects. A material physical object is an ordinary bit of matter, Cleopatra’s Needle for example. This is a much more complicated type of object than a mere colour, such as the colour of the Needle. I call these simple objects, such as colours or sounds, sense-objects. An artist will train himself to attend more particularly to sense-objects where the ordinary person attends normally to material objects. Thus if you were walking with an artist, when you said ‘There’s Cleopatra’s Needle,’ perhaps he simultaneously exclaimed ‘There’s a nice bit of colour.’ Yet you were both expressing your recognition of different component characters of the same event. But in science we have found out that when we know all about the adventures amid events of material physical objects and of scientific objects we have most of the relevant information which will enable us to predict the conditions under which we shall perceive sense-objects in specific situations.” (170)

Whitehead emphasizes the distinction between an event itself and the character of an event. He notes that we cannot directly “recognize” an event in its entirety because an event is a unique occurrence that passes and is gone once it happens. However, we can recognize its character, meaning the qualities or features that it expresses. For example, when we look at Cleopatra’s Needle, we do not perceive the totality of all the events that make up its existence, but we can recognize the event that has the character we identify as Cleopatra’s Needle. This recognition allows us to abstract an object, which is defined not as the event itself but as the identifiable character situated in a stream of events.

Whitehead further distinguishes between different types of objects. Some objects are simple, such as sense-objects like colors or sounds. For instance, the green of the Needle is an object in itself, distinct from the Needle as a physical entity. Other objects are more complex, like material physical objects (Cleopatra’s Needle itself) or scientific objects (e.g., molecules or electrons that constitute it). These objects are abstractions from the events; they express the character of the events but are not reducible to the events alone. In essence, objects are patterns or consistencies within events, which allow humans to recognize and study them.

Whitehead also points out how recognition varies depending on perspective or expertise. An ordinary observer might focus on the Needle as a material object, while an artist might simultaneously notice the color, shape, or texture—the sense-objects that are part of the same event. Both observers are recognizing different components or characters of the same underlying event. This shows that perception is selective, emphasizing certain aspects of events depending on the observer’s focus or training.

Finally, the quote connects this understanding to science. By studying both material physical objects and scientific objects, scientists can trace the laws governing how objects appear in various events. Understanding the behavior of these objects allows us to predict conditions under which sense-objects (like color or sound) will appear in specific situations. In other words, science abstracts general principles from the patterns of events and the objects recognized within them, enabling us to predict and explain phenomena without needing to observe each event in its entirety.

Classical mechanics

Classical mechanics presents a world that moves in a straightforward, uniform, and cause-and-effect manner. The classical mechanics of nature are rational laws everything conforms to, so that there is order in the world. When we examine the mechanics of the “heavens,” or how planets form systems that orbit around stars, we see that classical mechanics is most evident. But from ordinary experience, even though the orientation of the world is built around classical mechanics, direct experience also presents a more chancy, uneven, “wiggly and wacky” world; e.g., you step on a bug and it gets squished, you see someone walking in a funny manner, you see a jellyfish and it moves like a lava lamp. All these instances conform to classical mechanics but are taken and then warped and changed in accordance with the situation of a time event. The setting of the event is governed by the laws of classical mechanics, but what happens during this setting—the content of the event, the actual event itself—is much more unpredictable.

Classical mechanics explains rudimentary motion in two ways. First, locomotion is the external effects of gravity having on the relation of two objects; e.g., what goes up must come down, once an object accelerates it eventually slows down due to friction, etc. These instances are based on the second way motion is described, which is more fundamental than the first definition of locomotion: that motion is also generative. In this case, this refers to how gravity itself formulates the orientation of matter—in other words, how different masses with varying degrees of quantitative measures like size, weight, density, etc., “sit” in relation to each other, or how they all come together—“fall into place,” per se. Gravity, from a classical definition, limits the concept to a set of rudimentary orientations. For example, what is lightweight comes up and what is heavy goes down; the sky is up and the ground is down; the man is somewhere in the middle, maintained intact by an equilibrium of two opposing forces of attraction and repulsion.

A classical mechanical definition of gravity explains how objects move and are structured, but it does not tell us why this is the case. In other words, it does not tell us the substance of gravity—what gravity is and why an object, for example, does not just float off into space from the ground. Classical mechanics can explain all day long that the object has weight and that is why it falls to the ground because it is attracted by the heavier object, and so on and so forth, but this tells us nothing about the reasons why the object has the position that it does within the complex of its actual relations. Note here an important distinction between something being “real” as opposed to being “actual.” What is “real,” as Peirce puts it, denotes properties—that it is observed in a certain way with certain features. In reality, you see the thing as it presently is; however, this does not cover the total truth of it. You can see something as it is, but what about as it is not itself, or as something other, or as something it ought to be, which is also something it ought not to be? Actuality involves all these routes of possibilities, but all of them cannot be apprehended all at once by a being limited to any one point of them. How gravity has an effect on objects must be supplemented by how objects, in the first place, are therefore gravity, or in other words, how gravity itself consists of the totality of objects it is subjecting general laws over. Why is an object in the scenario that it is in order for gravity to be a factor in its existence?

Gravity and the Way Things Are

The essence of gravity, or rather gravity as a content of nature, is not just an empty abstract law that objects conform to in order for them to bear a specific kind of relation. Gravity, moreover, is indistinguishable from the event that takes place in spacetime. The reason why the man does not float into the sky is because he is held into place by a sequence of possible events, or in other words, the man at the particular moment he is in is one part of a sequence of moments forming the duration of an event that is transpiring over a period within spacetime. He is part of a “script,” per se, and in that there are laws that necessarily have to be in a certain way for certain kinds of things to happen. The cause and effect of gravity is also an element of time and not just space. There are potential, loosely speaking, “future” events that maintain a necessary cause for the present to be in a certain way. The future compels the present just like a heavier object attracts a lighter one. Gravity is just indistinguishable from this process.

Gravity is Force of Time

Just because two events happen within the same space does not mean they are of the same time. In one sense, this means that time deals with minute small distances, so that even two objects within the same perceivable space—i.e., the space they share for the same observer—there are small and minute spaces that are imperceptible to the observer, in which a series of things can happen in between that change the outcome, or which take a certain unrecognized amount of time for one event to turn into the other. The event where the apple is on the ground attracts the event where the apple is on the tree to fall down.

When the apple falls from a tree, it falls because it being on the ground is the next logical possible event. The event where the apple is on the ground compels the event where the apple is still on the tree, because both do not need to necessarily presuppose each other at different times. It is not necessarily the case that an apple needs to be first on a tree and then after that on the ground, because this is part of a particular duration where the sequence needs to happen in this way. But in an infinitesimal sequence of events where both these events concur in an instantaneity, they are both in a simultaneity, and one attracts the other, or rather causes the other to be in the way that leads to the other. From a linear duration of time, which is how we experience time as always heading in one direction—never repeating, ever persisting—we see cause and effect happen in a linear duration also; e.g., the apple somehow falls from the branch, and then, and only then, it is on the ground. Moreover, we never witness the reverse of the process happen—that the apple falls from the ground up into the branch.

Gravity is identical with the way things are at the situation of time; it is simply the way things are in a given plane of time. Gravity is a force of time. It is not a spatial force merely, because any force of space is only a force observable in the present, but time extends beyond the present and covers all possible moments of a duration. In order for any force in space to attract or repulse any two or more objects, it must be in the present moment, because space itself must be present in order for the action to happen. In other words, every action was made at some point during the present moment. Space is the present moment of time. But the present is only one domain of time, mediated by the past and future, both of which maintain the present. Gravity generally is not only a spatial factor, but is also extended from future to past. The events of the past and future must have some gravitational influence on the way things are during the present. For one thing, this claim is very simple: the Earth in the past moment has the same gravity as the Earth in the future. But clearly things move around and things change, and the influence of gravity on them also changes. For example, if something gets heavier, gravity now affects that differently than the way it was before when it was lightweight. Weight is a very interesting factor of gravity because it is the measure of how quantity measures quality. Quality is always quantitative; we say something with importance “carries” weight with it.

The necessity for the next event is the force that maintains matter at the present moment intact.

The ingredients of life are in the essence of time.

last updated 26.12.2025