Section 50 (first updated 02.17.2021)
Event-Particles, Parallel Durations, and Time-Systems
The recognition of an indefinite multiplicity of parallel durations is fundamental to a proper understanding of nature. Each duration constitutes a distinct time-system, composed of instantaneous spaces—moments of zero temporal thickness. These moments are not extended durations but ideal limits, “roots of immediate approximations,” through which nature discloses itself at an instant. Each instantaneous space represents the ideal form of nature at that moment, a moment that is equally a temporal and spatial determination.¹
Every time-system possesses an aggregate of moments that belong to it alone. No event exists simultaneously in multiple time-systems. Rather, each event-particle exists in one, and only one, time-system, and its identity is exhausted by its participation in that system. This implies that the universe is not governed by a single, homogeneous time, but by a plurality of internally coherent temporal orders.²
The Threefold Character of the Event-Particle
An event-particle is not a material object but a unit of occurrence, a minimal actuality of experience. It possesses three essential characteristics.
First, it has an extrinsic character. This is its character as a definite root of convergence among other events—the precise moment of change. Extrinsically, the event-particle is defined by how it relates to other events and by the role it plays in the transition from one state of nature to another.³
Second, it has an intrinsic character, which is the peculiar qualitative determination of nature in its immediate neighborhood. This is the character of the physical field as locally constituted—the way the environment is from within that event. Intrinsic character is not reducible to relations alone; it is qualitative and experiential.⁴
Third, it has a position, which does not precede the event but arises from the aggregate of moments within the time-system. Position is therefore derivative rather than primitive. Space emerges from temporal ordering rather than serving as an independent container.⁵
Objects as Correlated Modifications of Events
An object, in its full metaphysical sense, is not a self-contained piece of matter such as a molecule or an electron. Rather, an object is a specific set of correlated modifications in the character of events. What we ordinarily call a “physical object” is a stabilized pattern distributed across multiple event-particles within a stream of becoming.⁶
Such an object necessarily has relations to events beyond those belonging to its immediate situation. Its presence modifies the character of other events, even those not belonging to its own temporal stream. Objects, therefore, are not enduring substances but relational unities of process.⁷
Events are not single, isolated things occurring at one fixed moment in time. In ordinary, common-sense consciousness, events are typically categorized into definite moments of occurrence. Hegel identifies an inherent fallacy in this ordinary mode of thought: we treat events as if they were static points in time rather than dynamic processes. A clear example of this can be found in legal or forensic investigations, where events are reconstructed as discrete facts attached to precise timestamps. We say, for instance, that at exactly 10:00 o’clock a shoe was found on the floor. Such statements are practically necessary for evidence-gathering, social order, and survival, yet they compress and distort the way events actually unfold in space and time.
In reality, the structure of events is far more complex. Events do not simply occur; they transform. Every event bends into other events, both preceding and following it. When we observe objects operating in space, their interactions appear direct and simultaneous. However, these spatial interactions are always mediated by time. What appears as a simple interaction in space is, in fact, a duration unfolding across multiple moments, each moment conditioning and modifying the next. Time is not a neutral container in which events are placed; it is an active dimension through which events continuously become what they are.
This is why Alfred North Whitehead describes events not as fixed entities but as modifications of events. An event is never self-contained; it is constituted by its relations to other events and by the ongoing process of change that carries it forward. Each event inherits aspects of prior events and contributes to the formation of subsequent ones. What we call an “event,” therefore, is a temporary stabilization within a dynamic continuum of becoming. Events are not merely located in time—they are the very processes through which time itself is articulated.
The Slab of Nature and the Event-Particle
What Whitehead calls a “slab of nature” is a finite thickness of the space-time continuum considered as a unified region of becoming. It is neither a pure instant nor an ordinary extended duration, but a structured field of interrelated events. Within such a slab, event-particles function as the ultimate elements—instantaneous point-flashes composing the continuum.⁸
Each event-particle is as much an instant of time as it is a point of space. At this level, space and time are not fully distinguished. Their separation remains open to multiple modes of discrimination depending on the standpoint of the observer. This indeterminacy is what grounds the relativistic conception of the universe.⁹
We must also understand this in relation to another abstraction of space, namely the concept of a white hole. A white hole is something we do not empirically know, nor have we ever directly observed it. Yet, theoretically, it is conceived as an infinite source of light and matter—one from which light only escapes and is never absorbed. This stands in direct contrast to a black hole, into which light only enters and from which it never escapes.
These two concepts can be understood as passages of nature, or metaphorically as tunnels or wormholes of absolute structure. The black hole represents the principle of infinite inwardness: an infinite “going in,” where matter, light, and information collapse toward a limit. The white hole represents the principle of infinite outwardness: an infinite “going out,” where light and matter emerge without origin accessible to observation.
Because both black holes and white holes express principles of infinity, they cannot be directly observed or fully perceived in their totality. Infinity, by its nature, cannot be given as a complete object of experience. What we encounter instead are partial perspectives, indirect effects, and theoretical constructions. Our knowledge of these phenomena is therefore necessarily mediated—what we grasp is not the thing in itself, but a limited, heterotopic point of view shaped by our position within space, time, and conceptual frameworks.
Convex Boundary
Events exist only as activities disclosed in discrete durations of instantaneous experience. There is no static being underlying becoming. Apparent stability arises from a convex boundary produced by the interaction of the space-time continuum with the contradiction between universal and particular determinations of time and space.¹⁰
This boundary marks the interaction between individual experience and universal order. Thought and object, observer and phenomenon, are separated by temporal difference yet unified by spatial relations that remain blind to one another. Each event only discloses its immediate neighborhood, while the universal integrates these disclosures into a coherent order.¹¹
Relativity of Events: The Mars Example
Whitehead illustrates this with astronomical observations, such as the apparent position of Mars. What seems to be a single spatial position is in fact a synthesis of multiple event-particles across time. The light observed now left Mars in the past, meaning the “present position” of Mars is already temporally displaced.¹²
Thus, what appears as one position of space at one moment is a different spatial determination at another moment. Space is therefore indexed to time. There is no space in itself, only space as constituted within a given time-system.¹³
In Whitehead’s Mars example, the information—namely the light photons emitted from a distinct object in the universe—travels through space and time before reaching a present observer. When the observer receives this information, the object is perceived only at the moment the light enters the observer’s sensory and cognitive field. However, between the observer’s mind and the object of conception lies an interval of space and time through which the photons carrying that information must pass, and during this passage they undergo change.
This means that whatever is occurring on Mars—whether an object is moving or stationary—exists within its own local time frame. Yet, by the time the light emitted from that object reaches the observer, however slight the delay, time has already elapsed on Mars. During this interval, the object may have changed its position or state. Consequently, the observer never perceives the object as it exists now on Mars, but only as it existed at an earlier moment.
Thus, the information the observer receives from Mars is necessarily information from the past. The present moment of observation corresponds to a past moment of the object observed, because the object has already undergone further change by the time its light reaches the observer. The act of perception therefore always involves a temporal displacement: what is seen is not the object in its present actuality, but the object as it was when the light departed from it.
Universal and Individual Time
From this it follows that the present moment of the individual—the moment in which consciousness is situated within a particular object—is simultaneously the future of that individual from the standpoint of the universal. The universal conception discloses a system of relations that anticipates future events as structurally necessary.¹⁴
The universal thus superimposes the future as the present of the individual, while the individual’s lived present solidifies the past for the universal. Becoming is the mediation between these two standpoints. Time is not a neutral container but the reciprocal determination of individual actuality and universal order.¹⁵
Footnotes
- Alfred North Whitehead, The Concept of Nature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1920), ch. 3.
- Ibid.; see also Process and Reality, Part II.
- Whitehead, Process and Reality, on “nexus” and “prehensions.”
- Ibid., discussion of “subjective form.”
- Albert Einstein, Relativity: The Special and the General Theory (1916), sections on spacetime.
- Whitehead, Science and the Modern World (1925).
- Ibid.; contrast with classical substance metaphysics.
- Whitehead, The Concept of Nature, Lecture IV.
- Ibid.; Einstein, Relativity.
- G. W. F. Hegel, Science of Logic, Doctrine of Being, Measure.
- Whitehead, Process and Reality, on perspectives and extensive connection.
- Whitehead, The Concept of Nature, astronomical examples.
- Einstein, Relativity, spacetime intervals.
- Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, sections on time and experience.
- Whitehead, Process and Reality, on concrescence and temporal becoming.
Event-Particles as Frames of Reference
This description of the event-particle must not be understood merely as a determination of form and position in space. Rather, the event is equally a moment of time, and more fundamentally, a potential event that contains within itself an infinity of possible determinations. An event is not a static unit but a locus of becoming, a site where nature momentarily resolves itself into a determinate actuality while remaining open to further transformation.¹
When we zoom into the microscopic realm and examine what appear to be particles, they present themselves as if they were building blocks composing the object—indivisible components that assemble to form the body and structure of what we perceive. The object thus seems to be constructed out of smaller, self-contained units, much like bricks forming a wall. However, this picture is already an abstraction, a projection of macroscopic intuition onto a domain where it no longer applies.²
At the most fundamental level, atoms or particles are not best understood as blocks that together build a structure. Rather, the structure is primary, and the so-called particles are moments within an indivisible process. They are indivisible not because they are tiny solids, but because the destruction or isolation of one presupposes the destruction or alteration of the relational whole to which it belongs. Their unity is therefore logical and processual, not merely material.³
Because these fundamental structures form together an indivisible logical sequence of matter, they cannot be broken down any further without losing the very conditions that make them intelligible. They are not objects within a reference frame so much as they are the reference frame itself—the system of relations within which objects can appear at all. They are the material conditions of disclosure, the medium through which distinct objects are differentiated and made present to experience.⁴
In this sense, event-particles are the matter of conception itself. They are not things that appear within thought, but the dynamic field in which things can appear. Because there exists an infinity of possible conceptions, all held together within a unity of nature, there is likewise an infinity of possible frames of reference. Objects do not exist absolutely; they enter into these frames, becoming determinate only relative to the system of events that discloses them.⁵
However, as Whitehead demonstrates through his famous example of Mars, these reference frames in nature are not immediately transparent to one another. The relations between them are mediated by space and time. Each frame is situated at a relative distance from others, such that information passing from one to another must traverse the space-time continuum. In undergoing this traversal, the information is transformed—it changes as it endures through the process. What arrives is never a simple copy of what departed, but a mediated appearance shaped by the conditions of transmission.⁶
Thus, the universe is not composed of static particles occupying a single, absolute space and time. It is a plurality of event-frames, internally unified yet externally related, in which becoming itself is the fundamental reality. Objects, particles, and positions are abstractions from this deeper process of relational endurance and transformation.⁷
Footnotes
- Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality (New York: Free Press, 1978), Part I, ch. 2, on events as potentialities of becoming.
- Whitehead, Science and the Modern World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1925), critique of scientific materialism.
- Ibid.; see also Whitehead’s rejection of “simple location.”
- Whitehead, The Concept of Nature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1920), Lecture III.
- G. W. F. Hegel, Science of Logic, Doctrine of Essence, on conditions of appearance and reflection.
- Whitehead, The Concept of Nature, discussion of astronomical perception and the Mars example.
- Einstein, Relativity: The Special and the General Theory (1916), spacetime mediation; Whitehead, Process and Reality.
Series of Events
Alfred North Whitehead uses the phrase “series of events” to describe the fundamental way reality is structured. For Whitehead, the basic constituents of the world are not substances or objects, but events, which he calls actual occasions. An actual occasion is a moment of experience, a happening that comes into being, achieves a determinate form, and then perishes. Reality, therefore, is not made of enduring things but of these momentary events continuously arising and passing away.
A series of events is an ordered succession of actual occasions that inherit from one another. Each event is shaped by its relations to prior events through a process Whitehead calls prehension, meaning that every event “feels” or takes account of the events that came before it. This inheritance creates continuity without requiring a permanent substance. What appears to us as persistence over time—such as a chair, a tree, or a person—is actually a patterned series of events, each one building upon the past.
Importantly, these series are not merely linear chains stretched along a single timeline. Events form networks and patterns, intersecting with multiple other series at once. Whitehead emphasizes that time and space emerge from these interrelations rather than existing as containers in which events happen. A series of events thus has both temporal order and spatial relations, arising from how events are connected to one another.
Whitehead calls stable patterns of these series “societies.” A society is a structured grouping of events that share a common form or organizing principle. For example, what we call an atom, a living cell, or a human body is a society of events maintaining a characteristic pattern across time. The apparent object is simply the ongoing reproduction of that pattern, not a static thing enduring unchanged.
In this view, causation is also redefined. A series of events does not move forward through time like a row of dominoes being pushed. Instead, each new event actively integrates the past into itself while introducing a degree of novelty. Continuity arises from repetition of structure, while change arises from creative variation. Time is therefore a process of becoming, not a sequence of identical moments.
Ultimately, Whitehead’s notion of a series of events replaces the classical idea of substances with a processual ontology. What exists is not “what something is,” but “what is happening.” Objects, identities, and even physical laws are abstractions from the deeper reality of events forming ordered series. The world is a living process, composed of interwoven event-series continually creating themselves anew.
In Whitehead’s view, events do not unfold in a simple, linear sequence moving “forward” through time. Instead, events form groups and clusters, organized into structures that become the very objects involved in those events. Time, then, is not a smooth flow but a complex pattern of interrelated happenings.
Events in time can be understood as microscopic units—like blocks—that connect with one another. Each block contains the conditions and relations that make possible all the moments that will occur for the object formed by these structures. What we perceive as an object is thus not something static or self-contained, but a structured nexus of events.
However, this appearance is only one way these events manifest, dependent on a particular temporal dimension. If we shift that temporal dimension, we encounter these same structures in nature and identify them as atoms. Yet atoms are not truly objects in the classical sense. Rather, they are indivisible relations—events themselves—composed of interconnected reference frames.
Each event is a convergence of reference frames, joined together to sustain continuity for an observer. What appears to us as a stable object is, in reality, a dynamic series of events holding together long enough to be experienced as persistence.
Cluster of Events
In Whitehead’s view, events do not unfold in a simple, linear sequence moving “forward” through time. Instead, events form groups and clusters, organized into structures that become the very objects involved in those events. Time, then, is not a smooth flow but a complex pattern of interrelated happenings.
Events in time can be understood as microscopic units—like blocks—that connect with one another. Each block contains the conditions and relations that make possible all the moments that will occur for the object formed by these structures. What we perceive as an object is thus not something static or self-contained, but a structured nexus of events.
However, this appearance is only one way these events manifest, dependent on a particular temporal dimension. If we shift that temporal dimension, we encounter these same structures in nature and identify them as atoms. Yet atoms are not truly objects in the classical sense. Rather, they are indivisible relations—events themselves—composed of interconnected reference frames.
Each event is a convergence of reference frames, joined together to sustain continuity for an observer. What appears to us as a stable object is, in reality, a dynamic series of events holding together long enough to be experienced as persistence.
Schrödinger’s cat
The Schrödinger’s cat thought experiment can be understood as describing a split dimension between mind and body, arising from an interaction in which the future bears upon the past. Common intuitions about Schrödinger’s cat often reduce the theory to a simple opposition between two mutually exclusive possibilities: when one possibility becomes real, the other is excluded. However, quantum interpretations of this phenomenon point to a more fundamental claim. During a discrete and instantaneous flash of time, multiple possible events coexist as simultaneous instances, expressed through spatially entangled particles that stand in relation to one another rather than as isolated alternatives.¹
Events, in this sense, are not objects occupying three-dimensional space. Rather, events are primary, first-dimensional conceptions that are projected across and aligned with a second dimension, thereby generating duration as a continuous activity. Schrödinger himself emphasizes this point when he writes:
“It is typical of these cases that an indeterminacy originally restricted to the atomic domain becomes transformed into macroscopic indeterminacy, which can then be resolved by direct observation. That prevents us from so naively accepting as valid a ‘blurred model’ for representing reality. In itself, it would not embody anything unclear or contradictory. There is a difference between a shaky or out-of-focus photograph and a snapshot of clouds and fog banks.”
What we perceive as a smooth transition from one event to another arises from an environment that inherits an underlying rigidity between form and matter. When Aristotle distinguishes form (morphē) from matter (hulē), he is not describing two separate things, but two dimensions overlapping within the same conception.² For example, the outline of a circle represents its form, while the color filling that outline represents its matter. The circle is not complete without both; neither aspect exists independently in experience.
The distinction between form and matter identified by Aristotle corresponds, at another level, to the distinction between mind and object. These distinctions are not static separations but dynamic differences that emerge through changes in activity, produced by the interaction of different moments in time. What appears as a stable object is in fact a continuity of activity structured across temporal relations.
What it means for one event to change into another is therefore inseparable from the environment in which an organism interacts. The boundary between organism and environment is not sharply defined. What we identify as the body of an organism acting within a habitat simultaneously constitutes an environment for other organisms. For instance, the surface of human skin serves as a habitat for bacteria such as Proteobacteria and Staphylococcus species, which form complex communities deeply intertwined with one another and with their host.³
Thus, the transformation of events is always, at some level, determined by changes in position, location, and arrangement within an environment. Change is not merely internal to an event but emerges from the shifting relations among events, organisms, and the environments they co-constitute.
Footnotes
- This reflects interpretations of quantum mechanics in which superposition represents relational coexistence rather than simple epistemic uncertainty.
- Aristotle’s form–matter distinction appears most explicitly in Metaphysics and Physics, where form and matter are understood as co-principles of being rather than independent substances.
- This example illustrates the ecological and processual view of organisms, aligning with contemporary biology and process philosophy, in which individuality is relational and layered rather than absolute.
Mirroring Effect
The conception of spacetime can be understood as a mirroring effect—what Hegel calls reflection. In modern science, the Schrödinger’s cat thought experiment is often used to demonstrate this complex idea through the concept of quantum superposition.¹
At the quantum level, a system exists in a potential state defined by uncertainty. In this sense, the cat is described as both dead and alive. In other words, when unobserved, the cat exists in a condition that includes both possibilities. The quantum conclusion is not merely theoretical but, according to the formalism, physically real: the cat exists in a superposed state of life and death. However, this formulation is commonly misunderstood. We tend to interpret “alive” as active and “dead” as inactive, but more fundamentally the cat exists in simultaneous processes of generation and degeneration. At every moment, it is losing and gaining molecules, undergoing continuous micro-transformations at an imperceptibly fine scale.
The inaccuracy lies in supposing that “alive” and “dead” are comparable states in the same sense. They are not. Being alive is not simply the opposite of being dead. A more appropriate comparison would be between the moments of birth and death, since both are singular events. Birth marks the moment in which an entity enters a continuity of self-identity over a definite duration, while death marks the point at which the entity ceases to be itself and becomes other.²
Being alive is incomparable to death because life is a continuity of events ordered in sequence, whereas death is a single event—a point of transition. We therefore cannot strictly say that the cat is both dead and alive in the same sense. Death is a binary condition—either being or not being—while life involves conditionality, gradation, and process: an if and or rather than a simple either/or.³
This difficulty reflects the broader counterintuitive nature of quantum superpositions, in which a quantum system—such as an atom or photon—exists as a combination of multiple states corresponding to different possible outcomes.⁴ These states are not merely unknown to the observer but are formally encoded within the system itself.
Singularity and Event Structure
Early developments in quantum theory, including reflections by Einstein and his contemporaries, suggested that there is an instantaneous effect when an atom reaches a limit point—a kind of singularity. This singularity represents a moment of maximal uncertainty that nonetheless forms a systematic relation within the atom’s spacetime manifold. The atom, on this view, is not a static object but the sum of integral moments of change, known as events.
Events are the fundamental units of reality: constantly changing, appearing and reappearing patterns of opposing determinations of motion. Whitehead characterizes these fundamental units as event-particles, which can be understood as the metaphysical analogue of quantum superposition. Each moment of change superimposes upon others, generating a structure of simultaneous determination and order.⁵ As Whitehead writes:
“We can express the properties of this structure in terms of the ideal limits to routes of approximation, which I have termed event-particles.”
All routes that emerge from a single central point represent its potential future events. These potential futures are not external possibilities but constitute part of the entity’s spatial and temporal structure. The future is thus already implicit in the present as a field of determinate possibilities.
Einstein’s theory of special relativity attempts to distinguish space from time as rigorously as possible while simultaneously seeking a framework for their synthesis. However, this very act of distinction results in a collection of facts about space and time without a sufficient basis for demonstrating their deeper unity. The challenge remains to show how space and time are not merely coordinated dimensions, but expressions of the same underlying factor of nature—process itself.⁶
Footnotes
- Hegel’s concept of reflection (Reflexion) refers to the self-mediating structure of appearance, where distinctions emerge within a unified process rather than between independent substances.
- Aristotle treats birth and death as changes of substance, marking the coming-to-be and passing-away of a being (Physics, Metaphysics).
- This distinction parallels Whitehead’s critique of substance metaphysics in favor of process and continuity (Process and Reality).
- Standard formulations of quantum mechanics describe superposition as the coexistence of multiple eigenstates prior to measurement.
- Whitehead’s event-particles are not physical particles but metaphysical limits of processual relations (Process and Reality).
- This tension motivates later developments in spacetime ontology and process philosophy, including attempts to reconcile relativity with a non-substantialist metaphysics.
Externality of Externality
The externality of externality refers to the way that what appears “outside” an entity or event is, paradoxically, already constituted by its own internal relations. In ordinary thought, we assume that an object or organism has an independent exterior—a space or environment entirely separate from itself. However, from the perspective of process philosophy and relational ontology, this separation is provisional. What we call the “external” is in fact a network of other events, processes, and entities whose structures are partially co-determined by the very entity observing or interacting with them. The externality of any event is itself external, meaning that it is only defined relative to the interplay of events that constitute it. For instance, the human skin hosts bacterial communities such as Proteobacteria or Staphylococcus, which are “external” in the sense that they are not the human body, yet their existence and organization are integrally related to the body’s processes.ⁱ Externality, then, is not a simple spatial or ontological separation; it is a relative condition, a perspective on the ongoing mutual constitution of interiority and exteriority. Every event, in being what it is, projects a horizon of externality, and that horizon itself participates in the web of other horizons, creating an infinite regress of relational exteriorities—an externality of externality. This highlights the radical interconnectedness of reality: there is no isolated object, only a continuum of mutually defining events.
Event Structure
The most abundant physical substance in the universe is space, because it is the self-external object: the object that is always outside itself, providing the necessary addition of a negative to determinations.¹ As Alan Watts explains, for example, when the distance between two bodies increases, we are referring to the “lack of thing” or the nothingness between them. Space, however, is not the subject performing the action of increasing distance; rather, it is the object utilized by the bodies themselves as they increase the distance between one another.
The definition of space as a self-external entity is paradoxical. The moment space is external, it also becomes the container of objects, internally holding what it ostensibly surrounds. Space does not end where a solid begins, because solids can be moved or shifted within it without altering space itself. There is always space remaining at the ends of the solid, regardless of its movement. The three coordinates of space—length, breadth, and depth—remain fixed, through which runs a single coordinate of time. Space is thus the locus where a particular object is not, and therefore where everything else exists in a state of indeterminacy, undifferentiated as this or that object.²
From the perspective of a particular object, space appears as the external world within which it maneuvers. Yet from outside that object, space contains it. This duality—the self-externalized object that also internally contains—is the basis of the relation between extension and duration. Extension is the external form derived from the internal energy of the object, while duration is the internal energy derived from external forces acting on the object.³
Whitehead explains this in terms of event structure:
“When we seek definitely to express the relations of events which arise from their spatio-temporal structure, we approximate to simplicity by progressively diminishing the extent (both temporal and spatial) of the events considered. For example, the event which is the life of the chunk of nature which is the Needle during one minute has to the life of nature within a passing barge during the same minute a very complex spatio-temporal relation. But suppose we progressively diminish the time considered to a second, to a hundredth of a second, to a thousandth of a second, and so on. As we pass along such a series we approximate to an ideal simplicity of structural relations of the pairs of events successively considered, which ideal we call the spatial relations of the Needle to the barge at some instant. Even these relations are too complicated for us, and we consider smaller and smaller bits of the Needle and of the barge.”⁴
When the scale between two objects is restricted, the spatial relation between them is extension informed by duration. Extension-duration allows objects to move, transition into one another, and interact. For instance, a minute is a duration encompassing a particular spatial extension. If we break that minute into seconds, hundredths of a second, or milliseconds, the moment at the smaller scale has not yet disclosed the relation between the two objects. The space between them at this finer scale is simultaneously a locus where the objects are not, yet it discloses other objects at entirely different scales.⁵
At the molecular level, the spatial positions of the molecules that compose an object occupy different moments in time than the macroscopic body formed by those molecules. In other words, the spatial extension of molecules and the spatial extension of the body they form are temporally asynchronous. The molecules represent a past configuration relative to the macroscopic object. Similarly, when an event follows another during a given duration, the spatial extension of the objects involved is inseparable from the temporal succession. During a second of a given minute, the objects may not yet have interacted, constituting an entirely different event than the interaction of the same objects across the full minute. Each scale thus represents a different type of being.⁶
Whitehead formalizes this through the concept of event-particles:
“Thus we finally reach the ideal of an event so restricted in its extension as to be without extension in space or extension in time. Such an event is a mere spatial point-flash of instantaneous duration. I call such an ideal event an ‘event-particle.’ You must not think of the world as ultimately built up of event-particles. That is to put the cart before the horse. The world we know is a continuous stream of occurrence which we can discriminate into finite events forming by their overlappings and containings of each other and separations a spatio-temporal structure. We can express the properties of this structure in terms of the ideal limits to routes of approximation, which I have termed event-particles. Accordingly event-particles are abstractions in their relations to the more concrete events. But then by this time you will have comprehended that you cannot analyse concrete nature without abstracting. Also I repeat, the abstractions of science are entities which are truly in nature, though they have no meaning in isolation from nature.”⁷
When the space between objects is infinitely restricted, no particular point can serve as a reference for a duration leading into another duration. If spatial extension is reduced to a measurable plane, then events unfold sequentially in duration. However, if we continue this infinite reduction, the regression itself becomes fixed, and the only remaining “event” is the duration itself—as a point rather than as discrete points in succession. Without spatial extension, time itself ceases to operate, for no object can pass or transition. At this limit, what remains is the total possible set of potential events, the ultimate locus of all temporal and spatial possibility.⁸
Footnotes
- Watts, Alan. The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are. Space is described here as the “self-external object” because it exists as an object always beyond any particular entity.
- Space is not merely a container of solids; it is the indeterminate field of all other possibilities in which objects occur.
- The relation between extension and duration mirrors the duality of internal and external energy in process philosophy.
- Whitehead, Process and Reality, pp. 172–173.
- The notion of space at multiple scales aligns with the idea that spatial relations are temporally relative, with finer scales disclosing events invisible at coarser scales.
- The molecular-to-macroscopic distinction illustrates the temporal asynchrony between components and wholes.
- Whitehead, Process and Reality, pp. 172–173.
- This is the conceptual limit in which space, time, and events converge into a totality of potentiality rather than discrete occurrences.
Light as the Manifestation of the Constant
The idea that a “spatial point-flash” is an instantaneous duration reflects a fact about the whole being prior to its parts, in the sense that a duration serves as an ideal framework from which particular events can be singled out as point-durations. When we say that the whole duration is prior to events, this does not imply that the occurrences of events are predetermined as a totality before they occur in time. Rather, it indicates that there exists a single physical manifestation forming a whole, from which particular behaviors may be derived as single point-durations. In order for an entity to act, it must exist as an object capable of action, and the actions it performs follow precisely from what it is as an object—its duration. It acts exactly in accordance with its nature.¹
Micro-Macro and Observer-Object Relations
The contrast between observer and phenomenon—or, in Ancient Greek metaphysics, between thought and object—is a fundamental fixed relation of the universe. This distinction explains the relation between universal and particular, both of which form magnitudes within the inter-dimensional substructure of spacetime. Macroscopic and microscopic magnitudes are layers through which the observer conceives objects, and through which objects disclose the observer.
Superficially, the macroscopic can be understood as everything outside the observer, while the microscopic is everything inside the object. These constitute internal and external relations: from the perspective outside the observer, the object contains the conception; from the perspective inside the object, the conception discloses the object. Microscopically, inside the object, we encounter molecules and ultimately atoms. These factors of nature are analogous to macroscopic structures such as galaxies, except they are conceived inter-dimensionally, which alters quantitative properties like size and mass while preserving form and motion. For example, the form of the atom exhibits structural similarity to orbital systems on a cosmic scale.²
The difference between macro- and micro-perspectives explains how an object is conceived by an observer versus how it discloses the observer. When an object contains an observer, there is a limitation on the conception: the observer is constrained to a macro-scale, defined by objects large enough to have a recognizable form. Magnifying a rock sufficiently into its microscopic structure, for instance, dissolves its characteristic form, revealing only a mixture of minerals. Progressing infinitesimally into an object, we enter the microscopic scale—a dimension in its own right.³
If we remove the factor of the object containing the conception and consider only the conception as disclosing the object, the object exhibits no relative measure to the conception. In this framework, atoms can be conceived as as large as galaxies, since their scale is purely relational to the conception itself. Microscopic magnitude is particularly interesting: diminishing the object as much as possible frees the conception from material constraints, while magnifying the conception maximally toward the object idealizes the understanding of the object. These are ideals—limits approached but never fully attained.⁴
When we speak of an ideal, we do not refer to an aim or intent initiating an activity, but to the limit approached in the relationship between conception and object. Increasing the magnitude of the object collectively limits the conception, as the observer’s attention is distributed among many variables. Conversely, exploring an object microscopically isolates individual variables, freeing the conception from material interference. In this sense, matter becomes more abstract: it loses the resistive relations that constrain the observer. For example, the more white is added to a color, the lighter and more abstract it appears; microscopically, matter similarly fades in its perceptual and conceptual effect.⁵
Infinitesimal Distance and Uncertainty
Each object consists of an abstraction of multivariate relations among its components. There is always an infinitesimal distance, or difference, between any two components within a system. This tripartite formation—two components forming a third, contained within a relational whole—is what underlies impenetrability. Impenetrability itself is the distinction between factors, even if the distinction cannot be fully distinguished. The inherent distance between any two elements, therefore, represents uncertainty.⁶
From a quantum perspective, this indeterminacy is a “packet” of space in which a factor is not yet determined as a particular entity. Classical examples, such as two people standing shoulder to shoulder where a car hits one and misses the other, illustrate this: even in a shared spatial and temporal frame, each individual’s experience occupies a distinct set of proceeding events. The person hit and the person untouched have different experiential durations, because what occurs to each depends on a unique set of preceding possibilities.⁷
The objective measure of time emerges from the rational perspective of an observer. For instance, someone observing a traffic jam from an airplane or from the ground will always perceive the front of the cars as white and the back as red, even though the observer’s position determines the perspective. If only a single car is observed, the front or back is seen from a particular vantage point. In other words, each factor occupies a distinct space and time, giving rise to separate conceptions of the event. The observer serves as a medium through which objects are conceived, and in this sense is not merely an object but also the determination of objects, their “life and activity.”⁸
Event Duration
The experiences of the body unfold according to durations determined by the mind, which conceives a set of possible events. An idea arising in the mind manifests outwardly in the body as a temporal event. As that experience reaches completion, other possibilities are already unfolding, forming the next sequence of events. The instantaneous conception in the mind is therefore inseparable from the duration of events in the body, and the totality of possibilities is constantly projected into actuality.⁹
Footnotes
- Whitehead, Process and Reality, pp. 172–173. Duration is prior to point-events in the sense of forming an ideal whole from which discrete events are abstracted.
- The micro-macro analogy follows Whitehead’s concept of scales of events and inter-dimensional relationality, wherein atomic and cosmic structures share formal characteristics.
- Aristotle, Physics, and Metaphysics: the distinction between form and matter parallels micro-macro conceptualization.
- Ideals in process philosophy refer to limits approached asymptotically, not predetermined ends.
- Conceptual abstraction of matter parallels perceptual abstraction, in which finer scales reduce the resistive effect of material constraints.
- Whitehead, Process and Reality: impenetrability as relational distinction; distance between events as a measure of uncertainty.
- Quantum mechanics and classical probability illustrate that shared space does not guarantee shared temporal events.
- The observer is not merely a passive recorder; it constitutes the relational determination of objects (Process and Reality, 172–173).
- The sequence of mental conception and bodily duration illustrates the interpenetration of mind and event, a core principle of Whiteheadian process philosophy.
last updated 1.21.2026