First updated 2.26.2026

Motion is perhaps the strangest of phenomena, yet at the same time it is the most familiar one. We notice motion and are in motion at all times. Even our subatomic structures consist in coordinate systems of processes that are in constant motion. Yet this constant motion, as entropy suggests, is not necessarily random. In fact, it can never truly be random in the ultimate sense, because components always cohere together to exhibit some definite and outlined forms.

All objects are static concretions of some constant, in-flux set of components in motion. Those components are only abstractions, meaning they are constant as conceptions, both as a mental phenomenon for an observer—where they have a certain quality with a certain being—and at the same time they form a structure for themselves as an objective phenomenon for all other observers, as the same continuous enduring structure in spacetime.

According to the ancient Greeks like Aristotle, there are different types of motion, or more accurately, different levels of motion. Different types of motion are the same as motion existing at different levels of being. First, in order for a thing to exhibit locomotion as we observe and notice in space, it must have been generated into being as a static form of conception. Once it is itself and bears a certain function with a unique quality, it exhibits locomotion, or rather changes location within a plane field observed by an external reference point. It maintains the same identity, yet occupies different positions in space.

However, the existence of this identity was at some point generated into being. This is a kind of first motion. Fundamentally, motion is generational for Aristotle, because generation is the type of motion that brings things into being, and its coexhibitor—its inverse—is degeneration. Things always come into being and also go out of being; they degenerate. The first motion is not locomotion but rather generation.

There are also alterations, which are mediations between generation and locomotion: a kind of change structured within the same identity. It is a locomotion of the body within itself, a shift in form—not as generation into degeneration, but as exhibiting different qualities for an observer. An observer notices alteration within the same identity. Whether this alteration was brought about from the identity itself or brought about by the observer remains a deeper question not necessarily answered by these variations.

In quantum physics, what they define as motion complicates this familiarity even further. At the quantum level, motion is not simply a body changing position from one coordinate to another in a continuous path. Rather, motion is described in terms of state transitions, probability distributions, and quantized changes in energy. A particle does not travel along a neatly traceable line in the classical sense; instead, its “motion” is represented by a wavefunction, which encodes the probabilities of where it may be found upon measurement. Thus, motion becomes less a visible displacement and more a structured evolution of possibility over time.

Even our subatomic structures consist in coordinate systems of processes that are in constant motion, but in quantum theory these processes are not deterministic in the classical mechanical sense. They are governed by probabilistic laws. Yet this constant motion, as entropy suggests, is not necessarily random. In fact, it can never truly be random in the ultimate sense, because even quantum fluctuations obey strict mathematical formalisms, such as the Schrödinger equation, which determines how the wavefunction evolves in time. The apparent randomness only appears at the level of measurement; beneath that, there is coherence, superposition, and entanglement—structured relations that bind particles into definite and outlined forms.

All objects are static concretions of some constant, in-flux set of components in motion. In quantum field theory, what we call a “particle” is itself an excitation of an underlying field. The components are only abstractions, meaning they are constant as conceptions: we isolate an “electron” or a “photon” as if it were a self-contained object, yet it is in fact a localized mode of vibration within a field that extends throughout spacetime. Both as a mental phenomenon for an observer—where it has a certain measurable quality like charge or spin—and as an objective phenomenon for all other observers, it forms the same continuous enduring structure in spacetime, though described through relational properties rather than solid substance.

These so-called “field excitations” of a wavelength are universal, meaning it is true both at the microscopic level and at the macroscopic scale. What we see out in space is the complex of these concerted points of energy in space, known as our “heavenly bodies,” yet they are all particular particle states of field excitations of space.

At the extreme level, the development of these light particles as field excitations is their most advanced form at the macroscopic scale. They are all energy concentrations—stars, galaxies, nebulas—all of these are particular forms of field excitations, concentrated states of form and energy, like a particle state at the mid-microscopic scale.

In this sense, what appears to us as massive celestial structures are not fundamentally different in principle from what appears at the quantum level as particles. Both are structured concentrations of energy within fields. The difference is not in kind, but in scale and complexity. What we call a star or a galaxy is a vast, organized excitation of gravitational, electromagnetic, and quantum fields, just as what we call a particle is a localized excitation at a smaller scale.

According to Aristotle, there are different levels of motion—generation, alteration, and locomotion. In quantum physics, something analogous appears. Generation can be compared to particle creation events, where energy converts into matter-antimatter pairs. Degeneration corresponds to annihilation or decay processes, where unstable particles transform into other particles. Alteration resembles quantum transitions between energy levels, such as an electron shifting between orbitals in an atom. Locomotion, in the classical sense, becomes secondary; what is primary is the transition between states. The identity of the particle is maintained through conserved quantities—like charge—even as its state changes.

Thus, fundamentally, motion in quantum physics is generational and transformational before it is locomotional. A particle’s identity is not defined merely by where it is, but by how it persists through interactions and transitions. The observer plays a peculiar role as well: measurement affects the system, collapsing superpositions into definite outcomes. Whether this alteration is brought about from the identity itself or from the observer remains one of the deepest open questions in quantum theory. Motion, at this level, is not simply movement through space, but the unfolding of structured potential into actual events.

Motion is strange because things move, yet they do not change; while at the same time, we notice change all the time, yet maintain some identity throughout. Things maintain identity while enduring change, and change is occurring to things all the time. Things are always changing. This paradox stands at the centre of what the Greeks called kinesis—movement, process, alteration.

Evolution, in its general meaning, involves the process of becoming. The term evolution has its basis in what the Ancient Greeks referred to as movement, change, or process, all of which are defined by the Greek term kinesis.[1] The term kinesis simply means any difference in something’s condition between two different times. Change is not merely displacement in space, but any variation in state—generation, decay, growth, diminution, alteration, or locomotion.

This basic understanding of change is grounded in a more fundamental Greek term, energeia.[2] Energeia means activity—being-at-work, actuality. It defines the development toward and the actualization of a capacity. Something does not merely possess potential; it is active in bringing that potential into fulfillment. Motion, therefore, is not simply external movement but the unfolding of what something already has the capacity to become.

The word “capacity” for the Greeks precisely defines what they called matter (hyle).[3] Matter is that which has the capacity to receive form, to become something determinate. Energeia defines the nature of what they called logos, often translated as reason.[4] In this sense, reason is not merely a mental faculty but the structuring principle of activity itself. Reason is the substance whose activity actualizes matter as capacity. Matter without activity remains indeterminate; activity without matter has no substrate in which to manifest.

Thus, motion is not the contradiction of identity but its condition. A thing maintains identity not by remaining static, but by continuously actualizing its capacities in an ordered way. Identity is the coherence of change. Without motion, there would be no becoming; without becoming, no persistence. The identity of a thing is the pattern of its activity enduring through variation.

Evolutionary metaphysics, therefore, is concerned with the kind of activity necessary for overall development, or equally, the fundamentals of development. It asks: what kind of energeia sustains identity through change? What structure of capacity allows something to endure while becoming other than it was? Evolution, in this deeper sense, is not merely biological adaptation but the universal process of actualization—the constant transformation through which being maintains itself.

Footnotes

[1] Kinesis (κίνησις) in Aristotle denotes movement or change in the broadest sense, including generation, corruption, alteration, and locomotion. See Aristotle.

[2] Energeia (ἐνέργεια) is Aristotle’s term for actuality or being-at-work, contrasted with potentiality (dynamis).

[3] Hyle (ὕλη), meaning matter, is defined as that which has the capacity to receive form.

[4] Logos (λόγος) in Greek philosophy signifies reason, account, or rational principle structuring reality.

Matter as a spectrum does not mean that fundamentally there are no individual objects. On the contrary, matter is made into individual parts by the conception of consciousness, yet the nature of consciousness identifying matter as one individual thing different from another is itself a continuity. The act of distinction presupposes a field within which distinctions arise. Thus individuality emerges within continuity, not apart from it.

When we say that activity is the most fundamental nature of matter, or that a static object at rest presupposes a motion or a cause which makes it at rest, we have to qualify the meaning of the concept activity. To do so requires classifying what is meant by activity. Activity possesses range, and so any activity is essentially a “spectrum.” A spectrum is a concept characteristic of an activity because it explains its range. Range identifies that there are inverse limits, an upper and a lower, and in between there are a variable amount of points, limits, or events indicative of form. When we speak of range, we are saying that the process of change includes a spectrum whereby one form transitions into another.

We must be cautious not to confuse a spectrum with a destination. When we say that activity is a spectrum of change, it is assumed in the most basic sense that we are talking about a process whereby something transitions from point A to point B, the latter being the destination of the former. The notion of a destination assumes a finite end that, once achieved, the process ceases to be. This understanding is derived from immediate empirical experience. From the perspective of a finite point, every process is seen as a transition of one thing going from one place to another.

However, activity as a spectrum is not a process toward some end destination that is outside the activity itself. The activity is rather a relation of two inverse positions. In this sense, the relation that constitutes the activity is a contradiction.

A contradiction in the formal sense is seen as an endpoint that thought reaches—a mistake—such that once arrived at, thought must proceed beyond it and look elsewhere, only to encounter another contradiction. Thus, the system of formal logic became the task of discovering contradictions. But in nature—meaning more fundamentally than the formal system of logic, in natural logic—the contradiction is the very relation of the activity. In nature, the contradiction is the resolution. The contradiction explains that the two inverse parts constitute the limits encapsulating the relation as a spectrum. The activity is defined as a relation that is a contradiction because the way the contradiction supplements the meaning of the relation is the same way the limits explain the meaning of the range as a spectrum.

That is to say, the activity is a spectrum with range; that range is a relation; and the relation is a contradiction. The contradiction explains that the spectrum is held by two limits, and between those limits there is a form acting as the content, the being of the activity, or rather the result in less explanatory terms. The result, like the destination, is not something independent of or outside the activity. The activity is not the efficient cause of the result; rather, the result is the efficient cause of the activity, because it presents it as the kind of activity that it is.[1]

For example, if we take the principle of non-contradiction as a formal principle, we see that it is impossible for the same thing to be and not be at the same time.[2] On its own, this appears as a dead end for understanding, because everything cannot be and not be at the same time. There is nothing further to determine, since everything abides by this principle. The addition of the word “impossible” indicates the certainty that ought to be self-evident from the principle itself.[3]

However, if the application of the principle is seen as an activity, then the very same principle, taken dynamically, determines the definite nature of a particular thing. A thing equals A; it cannot at the same time be and not be. But both being and not-being may exist in succession. For example, a man who is young cannot at the same time be old, but the same man may at one time be young and at another time not young—that is, old. The very thing that cannot be and not be at the same time is precisely what transitions from being into non-being or from non-being into being. When what appears to be two contradictory propositions are subject to time, they exist at two different moments and are therefore not contradictory in the strict formal sense.

If I say “you should do something” and then say “you should not do that same thing,” we call that contradictory because we assume the same temporal reference. It is impossible to both do and not do the same thing at the same time. If you are doing it, then you are not not-doing it; and if you are not doing it, then you are doing the opposite of doing it. However, time is not a fixed constant but proceeds in infinitesimal change. If at one moment you did not do it, and at the next moment you did, there is nothing contradictory about that. This is the way things transition.

In other terms, the same man who is young cannot be old at the same time means that the very same man is young at one time and transitioning into being old at another time. When the principle of non-contradiction is seen as a static universal, it is treated as a purely formal principle. But if it is seen as an organic process, then it becomes natural activity. The activity is always conceived as universal, which is to say that the activity and the forms it takes are absolutes within their range.

We separate a predicate of a thing from the conception of a thing, and connect with the predicate its opposite, thereby establishing contradiction only with the predicate conjoined synthetically, not with the subject analytically.[4] For example, if I say that a man who is stupid is not smart, the temporal condition must be added, because one who is at one time stupid may at another time be smart. But if I say that no smart man is a stupid man, the proposition becomes analytical, because the characteristic of stupidity is excluded from the concept of smartness by definition. The negative follows immediately from the principle of non-contradiction.

Footnotes

[1] On efficient and final causation, see Aristotle, Physics and Metaphysics.

[2] The principle of non-contradiction originates in Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Book Γ.

[3] Discussion of the principle as self-evident appears in Immanuel Kant, particularly in relation to analytic judgments.

[4] On analytic and synthetic judgments, see Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason; compare logical analysis in Bertrand Russell.

Activity as spectrum reaches a decisive clarification when we consider Whitehead’s critique of motion. For Alfred North Whitehead, motion is not merely a body occupying successive positions in space, nor is it a random fluctuation of particles in an indifferent void. The classical view reduces motion to change of location—something first “here” and then “there.” But this treats positions as primary and motion as secondary, as though the world were a set of static points stitched together by displacement. Whitehead reverses this: motion, or process, is primary; positions are abstractions from ongoing activity.

In this sense, motion is not random. Even what appears chaotic or indeterminate is internally related within a structured process. Whitehead argues that reality is composed not of enduring substances but of “actual occasions,” events that arise out of prior events and integrate them into a new unity. Motion, therefore, is directed—not necessarily in the sense of conscious intention, but in the sense that each event inherits a past and aims toward a completion. It forms a whole. Every process is a concrescence, a growing-together of many influences into a determinate outcome. What we call a moving object is in fact a serial order of these event-units, each one integrating the past and perishing into the future.

This critique challenges the idea that motion is simply position in space over time. Instead, space and time themselves are abstractions from process. What appears as a trajectory is the ordered continuity of events, each one internally related to what precedes it. Motion is thus creative advance. It is the production of novelty within continuity. The world is not a static container in which objects wander; it is an ongoing becoming in which each movement contributes to the formation of a larger pattern.

Whitehead also resists the notion that motion is reducible to blind mechanism. Even at the quantum level, where indeterminacy prevails, there is still pattern, probability structure, and relational coherence. Motion forms societies—stable patterns of repetition—such as atoms, cells, organisms, planets. These are not inert lumps of matter but structured activities that endure. The directedness of motion is visible in the way processes stabilize into wholes. An organism maintains itself; a galaxy organizes itself gravitationally; even a wave maintains form across changing particles. The whole is not imposed from outside but emerges from the relational activity of its parts.

In this way, motion is neither random nor merely locational. It is the formation of unity out of multiplicity. Each act of becoming gathers many into one and increases by one. Motion is the production of coherence within flux. The spectrum of activity, with its inverse limits and relational contradiction, finds here a concrete metaphysical grounding: activity is always self-organizing, always integrating difference into form. What we abstract as “movement through space” is in fact the visible trace of a deeper process whereby reality continuously composes itself into structured wholes.

Physical “force” is ordinarily conceived as something standing on its own—an external push or pull acting upon objects from the outside. In classical mechanics, force is defined as that which causes a change in motion, something measurable, objective, and independent of the observer. Yet when examined more deeply, force is not a thing in itself but a relation. It is not a substance but a transition between states. A force is known only by the change it produces—an alteration in velocity, direction, or structure. Without change in relation, there is no detectable force.

Motion as a “gesture” clarifies this. A gesture is not merely movement; it is movement that conveys relation. It is an act that expresses direction, orientation, and intention—whether conscious or not. When one body exerts force upon another, what occurs is not the transfer of a mystical entity called force, but a reconfiguration of relational positions. The bodies enter into a new proportion, a new alignment, a new dynamic equilibrium. The so-called force is the name we give to that relational change.

Thus, force is motion understood as a change in relation. If two bodies attract gravitationally, nothing visible “pushes” them together; rather, their spatial relation alters according to the curvature or structure of the field between them. If two particles repel electromagnetically, what is observed is not an independent object called force, but a measurable acceleration—a shift in relation. Force is inferred from motion; motion is described as the visible gesture of relational change.

In this way, force cannot be separated from the system in which it appears. It is not external to the interacting entities but emerges from their interaction. A force is always between. It is neither wholly in one object nor wholly in another. It is the event of their relation shifting. Motion, then, is the gesture of this shift—the outward expression of an inward restructuring.

To call motion a gesture emphasizes that it is not random displacement. It is patterned, directed change. A gesture has form; it begins, unfolds, and resolves. Likewise, motion has structure: acceleration, deceleration, oscillation, rotation. These are not arbitrary; they follow lawful relations. The gesture of motion reveals the configuration of the forces at play, and those forces are nothing other than structured relations within a field of activity.

Therefore, physical “force” is not a standalone object but the name for change in relational configuration. Motion is the gesture of that change. What we perceive as objects pushing and pulling each other are abstractions from a deeper continuity of activity, where every alteration in position is the expression of an underlying transformation in relation.

The entire notion of what we mean by a physical “force,” per se, as something standing on its own, objective and outside the observer, while the observer is said to be self-contained and subjective—meaning that he observes the world from his own given capacities—misconducts the deeper relationship between them. It assumes a separation that is only abstract. When we talk about physical forces as being objectively true outside of anyone, we logically presuppose that they are external from the observer. Only in being external from him, not dependent on him, do they derive the quality of objectivity for themselves. However, this presupposition already assumes the other factor it contrasts: that there is a self-contained unity, an identity, that receives these forces we call physical as they are. But does the observer really receive them as they are?

For example, we can take a substance like air, which all living organisms on Earth require in some form of respiration for survival. Does the air itself cause the survival of the species, or does the species have an organ that utilizes a substance like air for its survival? Air exists objectively as a physical force or condition in nature, yet it becomes survival only when the organism makes use of air by the process of respiration. Respiration requires lung tissue, alveoli, blood circulation—organs that translate the physical substance into an event for experience and metabolism. In this sense, the substance passes in one way and comes out another substance. Oxygen enters; carbon dioxide exits. The chemical undergoes a transition, an alteration of chemistry. It enters one way and comes out another way. This change is enacted by the organism.

The organism does not merely receive air as a passive object; it transforms it. Oxygen (O₂) enters the lungs, diffuses into the bloodstream, binds with hemoglobin, and is transported to cells, where it participates in cellular respiration within the mitochondria. There it enables the production of ATP, the energy currency of the cell, by oxidizing glucose. The by-product of this metabolic process is carbon dioxide (CO₂), which is transported back through the bloodstream to the lungs and exhaled. The substance that entered as oxygen leaves as carbon dioxide. The physical force undergoes alteration through organic activity. Thus, what was “external” becomes internalized, processed, and returned to the environment in transformed form.

The same is true of light, which is as fundamental to survival as air. Light exists as electromagnetic radiation, but its role in survival depends upon organs capable of receiving and translating it. In animals, light stimulates photoreceptor cells in the retina, initiating electrochemical signals that the brain interprets as vision. In plants, light is absorbed by chlorophyll and drives photosynthesis, transforming carbon dioxide and water into glucose and oxygen. In both cases, the physical substance is not merely received; it is converted, integrated, and transformed into life-process. The sense organs and biological structures do not create light or air, but they are the mechanism through which these forces become events of experience and survival.

Botanics, literally on a physical level, is the mechanism of change in nature. Through photosynthesis, plants take in carbon dioxide and release oxygen, reversing the respiratory process of animals. The exchange of gases between plant and animal life demonstrates that what we call “physical forces” are part of a reciprocal system of transformation. The organism is not external to force; it is a node within the process of its alteration. Air passes in one way and comes out another substance. Light enters as radiation and becomes chemical energy. The organism experiences that change and therefore produces further change.

Thus, the distinction between objective force and subjective observer collapses at a deeper level. The observer is not outside the forces of nature but is an organized expression of them. The so-called physical force becomes what it is through interaction with organic structure. Air becomes breath; oxygen becomes carbon dioxide; light becomes vision or glucose. The organism is both mechanism and experience of change. What appears as an external, self-contained force is in reality inseparable from the living processes that receive, transform, and return it.

The question of evolution, as to how something originates, is fundamental because the answer concerns how something is maintained. The modern physics of motion is generally limited to locomotion, which is only a particular form of motion. But physics implicitly relies on the definition of motion as Aristotle describes it: the coming into being, the becoming of something.[1] The becoming into being of something is its maintenance as that which moves from location to location.

Locomotion in physics presupposes that there is an already given substratum of forms bearing physicality, moving in relation to each other. It has to assume “something” in motion, or an object of motion, so that the object is the subject for motion; it is what is moving. This, understood as external relations, explains motion as a secondary quality of an already composed entity. This is challenged by the nature of atomic motion, which cannot assume some already pre-ordinate structure of an entity that causes motion, because an individual atom is not separable from the species of atoms. The sum of its relations seems to come prior to the single entity; the atom is therefore an adjective of its situation.[2]

The textbook formulation of an atom exhibiting some quality is an abstraction of the species of atoms, because quality is not like quantity, measurable as separable entities, but is rather a shared essential nature. A hydrogen atom constitutes the compound generally present in objects made up of the element. For example, a hydrogen atom cannot be isolated from the quality of the chemical, which is the composition of the relation of billions of hydrogen atoms. In atomic motion, relations are internal because there is no single entity separate from the form formed by the relations of atoms. At the atomic level, an entity is no different from the motion that constitutes the composition of the entity.

Aristotle’s principle of rest—that rest must also come to be—implies that that which is at rest constitutes the very principle of atomic motion.[3] In atomic nature, because we cannot merely presuppose an already composed entity, the question of origination precisely springs into action as the bare activity that forms itself into the abstraction of entity.

Atomic motion concerns the kind of activity that maintains what is presupposed by physics as composed objects. What we perceive as objects of sensation are maintained by a motion whose nature is to be at rest in particular configurations of forms. Atomic motion is the kind of activity that is the maintenance by the constant insistence on the being of some form. This is how we have static objects. The motion of evolution seems to be that of bringing into being new kinds of forms, ideas that must be maintained by atomic motion.

Hydrogen implies the activities of atoms as the maintenance of the quality of hydrogen. The motion of hydrogen atoms is the rigidity that is the characterization of the chemical. As Richard Feynman explains in his lectures, two hydrogen atoms cannot simply fit beside each other without forming a molecule; their interaction already implies a structured activity.[4]

In this sense, motion is not merely locomotion but generation: the activity that brings into being and sustains the very forms that later appear to move. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel likewise argues that becoming is the unity of being and non-being, such that motion is internal to the concept of existence itself.[5]

Footnotes

[1] Aristotle, Physics, definition of motion (kinesis) as the actuality of what exists potentially.
[2] The relational interpretation of atomic entities in modern physics, where particles are defined by interaction fields rather than isolated substance.
[3] Aristotle’s account of rest as a privation or limit of motion, yet still dependent upon motion as its principle.
[4] Richard Feynman, The Feynman Lectures on Physics, discussion of atomic interaction and molecular bonding.
[5] G.W.F. Hegel, Science of Logic, section on Being and Becoming (cf. Logic 813).

To add to the previous argument: Buddhism does not take seriously that there is a self-contradiction as a constitutive principle of being; this is the problem. Where dialectical philosophy sees contradiction as internal to becoming, classical Buddhist metaphysics often treats contradiction as illusion arising from attachment to substantial being.[1]

As Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel writes:

“Essence as the completed return of being into itself is thus at first indeterminate essence. The determinateness of being are sublated in it; they are contained in essence in principle but are not posited in it. Absolute essence in this simple equality with itself has no determinate being; but it must develop determinate being, for it is both in itself and for itself, i.e. differentiates the determinations which are implicit in it. Because it is self-repelling or indifferent to itself, negative self-relation, it sets itself over against itself and is infinite being-for-self only in so far as it is at one with itself in this its own difference from itself.”[2]

The centre of a sphere is the extent of the conception. For example, from where your eyes begin in your head to the extent of the vision where it ends: this reach is the diameter, with one side of the radius being where the vision begins from the eye, and the other being the extent of the vision’s scope, which is potentially 360 degrees in duration. The centre is not merely a point in space but the organizing return of the circumference into unity.

Take a spinning ring, for example. The question as to how it spins can be explained not merely by reference to external force but by the relation of its parts to its centre. The spinning is not an addition to the ring; it is the manifestation of its internal relation of unity and difference. During the intense spin of the ring, the circumference of the circle is moving so fast in every position and direction that it appears that the diameter of the circumference is full, meaning it appears as if it is occupying all places at once. The ring appears like a sphere for a brief moment. This is not a mere analogy but a physical observation of a fundamental notion of how motion actually causes physical change: it generates forms from where they were not into being.

We explain that being and nothing are not static categories but are the principles of a relation. The form is a spectrum of some activity whose extremities are distinguishable. Motion, as a physical concept, implicitly includes the ordinary definition meaning gesture. In the legal system, a motion is a proposal for an order or rule of court. These definitions of motion are ontological because they assume that there is someone capable of motion. A gesture is made by someone; a proposal is for someone.

In physics, motion is understood as the process of moving or being moved, both of which assume that motion is a secondary attribute of some predisposed entity. That motion occurs when before there was no motion, or an entity moves and from that gesture there is motion, or the entity is moved and thus there is motion. But unlike the ordinary or legal meaning, there is absolutely no explanation as to the reason for the motion itself.

Hegel explains that it is the mediating movement between being and nothing that constitutes becoming, which is the quality of the physical phenomenon motion, the latter being the quantity of the former.[3] Being and nothing are rational principles, meaning that they are logical conducts. The mere proposal of being produces the motion toward nothing, and the proposal of nothing advances to being. It is the logical presupposition of one by the proposition of the other that constitutes the actual transition whereby becoming is each one toward the other and not each as a fixed category set aside from the other.

As logical principles, being and nothing are conceptions of consciousness. They are actions from the perspective of consciousness as it grasps reason. Motion is the mediation of consciousness as it transitions between indivisible logical relations. This involves what Charles Sanders Peirce frames as the complex relation between mind and matter, outlined by the law of mind.[4] When the mind proposes a form, that form becomes an active tendency in experience.

The falling in and out of consciousness concerning some object is its motion. This is why everything has a beginning and an end. At the beginning, the mind proposes the form of the object, which it loses attention of due to the compulsion of a logically inverse proposition that takes the attention of the mind. The previous form proposed and forgotten takes on the duration of not being paid direct attention to, but works behind the attention of its inverse principle, which took the focus. This occurs simultaneously with the inverse principle, and there we have the loss of attention of both and the focus on a third form, which necessitates the continuously working background of the newly found focus.

When a principle is not directly focused on, it is what we call in its material condition, which, occurring instantly with its abstract conception, is still always preceded by the abstract conception, because the latter is the mind’s nature of elusiveness, the focus being taken away onto an inverse principle.

This constant process of moving on to the inverse creates the need to move to the inverse of that. This means that the mind sets a form in time which acts as the future aim for the already working activity toward that aim. During the activity it forgets it, with its attention being focused on inverse principles, the focus of which also diverges away into infinitum. But the mind ultimately comes to rediscover the form it set into motion when the time for that reconnection is ripe, and it is inevitable, as the lost form now becomes the inverse of the one recognized. The mind returns to the idea as an experience.

The One and the Many

In Ancient Greek philosophy, the problem of the one and the many forms the very basis of metaphysics and later atomism.[5] How can reality be one continuous being and yet composed of many distinct entities? Atomism answers by positing indivisible units, while dialectic answers by showing that unity and multiplicity are internally related.

Aristotle proposed the law of non-contradiction and the law of the excluded middle to elaborate their inverse notion, that is, the principle of moderation.[6] A thing cannot both be and not be at the same time in the same respect, and between affirmation and negation there is no middle. This form of logic serves as the basis for later scientific reasoning and even for quantum formulations, where determinate states are defined through logical exclusion.[7]

Footnotes

[1] Classical Buddhist doctrine of anatta (non-self) and dependent origination; see early Buddhist metaphysics.
[2] G.W.F. Hegel, Science of Logic, Doctrine of Essence.
[3] Hegel, Science of Logic, Doctrine of Being, section on Becoming.
[4] Charles S. Peirce, “The Law of Mind,” in The Monist (1892).
[5] Pre-Socratic debates: Parmenides (the One) and Democritus (atomism).
[6] Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book Γ (Gamma), on the law of non-contradiction and excluded middle.
[7] Logical structure underlying quantum state determination (cf. early 20th-century quantum theory).

The Notion of Motion

For Hegel, the term notion means the idea in motion: the generation of the idea. The notion is the driving principle for Reason to actualize itself as self-identical, and that identity, being contained in an externality, is by containing equally contained by the identity. How the externality is contained is explained by how the identity presupposes its externality in such a way that the identity itself becomes the form that is perceived as the external layer of the object.¹

To understand the true notion of how external relations are the sublation of internal relations, such ontologies underpinning what is identified as science require clarification. The Newtonian three laws of motion are the scientific ascertainment of external relations:²

• Mass is the velocity of motion (how strong motion is correlates to how much mass).³
• These laws of motion are the objective form external relations take on. For example, the third law: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction (f = −f).

This involves every particular instance of motion in the process of external relations. What this does not involve is how the laws of motion operate in their most general form. Einstein developed this notion to involve the external relations between the inorganic macroscopic scales of the universe. Light and gravity characterize the inorganic states of being as externally related to each other, yet they are actually internally related.⁴

What Einstein implicitly uncovers about the nature of external relations is that they are invariably internal relations. This is the very basic notion of quantum mechanics, where the laws of motion not only involve every reaction for every action but that every action is itself the reaction. In the quantum state, the process of external relation is internal relation. Newton and Einstein’s investigation into motion is analytical; it conceives the process of motion by way of sense perception and outlines the process as it is perceived, in the way that it is, and in no other way.⁵

Ontology Must Take Its Hypotheses Literally

This is where ontology differs from empirical science, because ontology must take every hypothesis it makes as literally as possible. In other words, it operates on the assumption that every abstract notion it makes has, as if, a real existence as physical objects do and feel to the senses. Every object notion is real to the mind as every object is real to the senses.⁶

While empirical science must take literal only what is observed and felt and not what is merely thought of, in some cases the hypothesis does not conform with the experiment. Its conclusion conceives motion as mechanical and determined as such. It does not leave room for motion as free determination.⁷ Whitehead defines “free determination” as the capacity of actual occasions to self-direct activity within constraints of prior conditions. Kant provides a similar analysis of motion in matter through the laws of repulsion and attraction (Hegel, Logic). Quantum mechanics, unlike general relativity, characterizes motion as free determination, allowing for inherent spontaneity within physical processes.⁸

¹ Hegel, Science of Logic, §69.
² Newton, Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, 1687.
³ Ibid., Laws of Motion, 2nd Law.
⁴ Einstein, Relativity: The Special and General Theory, 1916.
⁵ Dirac, Principles of Quantum Mechanics, 1930.
⁶ Whitehead, Process and Reality, 1929.
⁷ Whitehead, Science and the Modern World, 1925.
⁸ Kant, Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, 1786.