The Least Units of Reality

(This essay originally appeared in the online journal Drops & Buds, Vernal Equinox 2025 edition.)

Last time, we saw that actual entities, also termed, with one important exception, “actual occasions,” are the fundamental building blocks of reality according to 20^th century philosopher Alfred North Whitehead. We saw that they constitute themselves by incorporating aspects of the world around them, a process Whitehead calls “prehension.” This time we’ll take a look at them in more detail.

Whitehead’s view is atomistic; he takes the world to be composed of tiny entities that are not further decomposable. It is also dynamic; in contrast to classical physics, he asserts that these entities are not bits of inert stuff but rather events, and these events are inherently intertwined and related to each other.

He wrote at a time when quantum mechanics was being developed, and the mysterious behavior of reality at the subatomic level informed his thinking.^[1] Entities submicroscopically small are not material as we generally think of materiality. Quantum-level entities do not bounce around at the mercy of external forces like billiard balls; instead, they seem to have a quasi-existence in a field of mere potentiality until they are detected; then they become actual. The interaction between them and someone or something else that detects them is essential to their existence. Reality at that level is relational and dynamic.

Whitehead’s revolutionary insight was to add panpsychism to quantum mechanics. He asserts that these tiny entities are in a rudimentary way aware of their surroundings. Panpsychism is the idea that everything material has also an aspect of psyche, or mind. It asserts that both matter and experience are equally fundamental. Everything, in addition to its material aspect, has an aspect of psyche or mind to it. This theory is rather obviously anthropomorphic, but that’s a feature, not a bug.

Whitehead seeks categories of explanation that can apply to both the quantum level of reality and the world revealed by our unaided senses. In our everyday world it is undeniable that, unless we are asleep or sedated, we are aware of our surroundings and remember our past. And, of course, others can be aware of us. So, Whitehead posits that subatomic actual occasions also are, in a way, aware of their surroundings and of their own past. Whitehead calls them “drops of experience, complex and interdependent”^[2] and “occasions of experience.”^[3] The tiniest actual occasion is structurally similar to a moment of rich human experience, albeit in a rudimentary, attenuated form. Whitehead speaks of actual occasion as being “dipolar,” having both a physical and a mental pole. He says that “No actual entity is devoid of either pole.”^[4]

The process whereby an actual occasion comes into being is called “concrescence.” Concrescence is a term from biology that means the growing together of parts that were originally separate. Whitehead uses it to refer to the process of an actual occasion’s coming into being. That process consists of several phases, the details of which we will get to shortly, and the end result is a fully actual submicroscopic quantum entity.

Occasions and objects

These actual occasions, the least units of reality, are a bit like subatomic particles, with some important differences:

• Each is momentary, coming into being, going through various phases and then passing away.
• The final phase of an actual occasion is not fully determined by the beginning. There is room for novelty, for the possibility of something new coming into being.
• Each actual occasion experiences, in a primitive way, its past and its present surroundings.^[5] Metaphorically, it has an inside, an aspect experienceable only by itself.
• Each actual occasion is experienced by other actual occasions. Metaphorically, it has an outside, an aspect experienceable by others.
• What we think of as a particle is actually a series of these actual occasions. A single electron is a series of momentary electron-occasions that form an enduring object much like the momentary frames of a movie form a continuous picture.
• What Whitehead calls “God” has a crucial role to play in the process that an actual occasion goes through as it comes into being.

Whitehead’s metaphysics is comprehensive and immense, and each element depends for its meaning on all the others, much like reality itself. To fully explicate the idea of actual occasions, I need to introduce two additional concepts, that of eternal objects and that of God.

Eternal Objects

Whitehead’s term “eternal object” includes both what philosophers call “abstract objects” and “universals”. An abstract object is something that, unlike the many physical objects in our world, is neither spatial nor temporal and hence has no causal power.[6] Some examples are numbers, sets, geometrical figures, forms of logical inference, mathematical and logical proofs and the like. A universal is something posited to explain how individual things can have qualities, features or attributes in common. It is something that can be instantiated by different entities.[7] There are three major kinds of such attributes: types or kinds (e.g. mammal), properties (e.g. short, strong, red) and relations (e.g. father of, next to).[8] Such attributes are called “universal” because each extends over, or is located in, many distinct things.[9]

Abstract objects and universals share one common characteristic: we never find them existing on their own. We never find a perfect circle; we find only particular images of circles. We never find just redness; we find only red things. This commonality leads Whitehead to lump abstract objects and universals together, calling them both “eternal objects”:

Any entity whose conceptual recognition does not involve a necessary reference to any definite actual entities of the temporal world is called an “eternal object.”[10]

They are called “eternal” because they do not change. Every time we encounter one, it is the same as it was before. Whitehead’s concern is how to account for such objects in his metaphysics. His solution is to invoke what he calls “God.”

God

God is a unique part of Whitehead’s scheme. God is an actual entity of a most peculiar sort. God is the one actual entity that is not an actual occasion.[11] Unlike all other actual entities, God is not submicroscopic. All actual entities except God are temporal, meaning that first they don’t exist, then they do, and then they fade and become part of the past. But God is non-temporal (but not eternal).[12] That means that God always exists. God is present in the world of every actual occasion, and is thus available to be prehended, that is, to be incorporated into, every occasion.

Like other actual entities, God is dipolar, having two aspects.[13] The first Whitehead calls the “primordial nature” of God, and the second, the “consequent nature.” The primordial aspect acts as a repository for eternal objects. The consequent aspect is how God interacts with the world.[14] In combination, the effect is that God prehends, or feels, every actual entity and enduring object in the world and offers eternal objects to new concrescing occasions. God’s goal in this offering is “harmony of … universal feeling,” resulting in “truth, beauty and goodness.”[15]

Much more can be said about God, and perhaps that will be a topic for another time. For now, we focus on the role of God in the process of concrescence.

The process of concrescence

As an occasion concresces into something definite and actual, it goes through several phases. Whitehead’s account of this process is extremely complicated. He describes phases and subphases of the process and several varieties of prehensions, the number of which can vary from occasion to occasion.

Even though he speaks of them as occurring in sequence, these phases are not in objective time. They are entirely internal to the actual occasion. Time in Whitehead’s view is not a universal and infinitely divisible Newtonian container. Instead, time is a function of interrelationships of actual occasions. It comes in chunks, a view he calls the “epochal theory of time.”^[16] Citing William James, he says,

Either your experience is of no content, of no change, or it is of a perceptible amount of content or change. Your acquaintance with reality grows literally by buds or drops of perception. Intellectually and on reflection you can divide these into components, but as immediately given, they come totally or not at all.^[17]

Each actual occasion is one of these buds or drops. The time-like sequence of phases internal to each actual occasion is completely private and is incommensurable with the time that arises from the interaction among actual occasions. Viewed from the outside, a quantum object is either detected or it’s not. In Whitehead’s terms, it is either actual or it’s not. Considered from its own point of view, however, it goes through phases.

In this paper I can provide only a simplified description of the internal process of an occasion of experience becoming actual.^[18]

1. The occasion comes into being desiring to be something definite. Whitehead calls that desire its “initial aim.” Initially it might aim at being just a copy of the actual occasion immediately preceding it, or it might aim at being a variation of the preceding occasion. According to his ontological principle—that the only reason for something existing is the existence of something else—, that aim has to come from some actual entity.[19] Whitehead says that entity is God:

God is the principle of concretion; namely, he is that actual entity from which each temporal concrescence receives that initial aim from which its self-causation starts.^[20]

2. Having begun to be, it prehends the physical feeling of its immediate predecessor. Whitehead often uses the term “feeling” as a synonym for prehension.^[21] The concrescing actual occasion feels how it was to be the one just prior to it, including how its surrounding actual occasions and enduring objects appeared to it.
3. It then adds conceptual prehensions, sometimes termed “conceptual feelings,” which are ideas of or about the physical feelings. These become the mental pole of the occasion. These nascent concepts enable the emerging actual occasion to recognize what is around it. The concepts thus prehended are eternal objects, which Whitehead says “ingress” into the occasion.

The conceptual prehensions of the physical feelings are valuational. On the basis of the initial aim, some of the actual entities and enduring objects are selected to be incorporated into the occasion and many more are rejected. Those rejected are called “negative prehensions.” Whitehead says that an actual entity’s entire world is prehended into it, but most of that world is via negative prehensions.

The mental pole of the emerging actual occasion comprises numerous eternal objects. The conceptual prehensions of eternal objects are also valuational. God envisions or contains within Itself all possible eternal objects. Only some become relevant to the concrescing occasion. God provides not only a plethora of eternal objects but a preference for some of them over others. Whitehead calls God in this aspect a “lure for feeling.”

He is the lure for feeling, the eternal urge of desire. His particular relevance to each creative act, as it arises from its own conditioned standpoint in the world, constitutes him [as] the initial ‘object of desire’ establishing the initial phase of each subjective aim.^[22]

4. The occasion in process of becoming integrates these many prehensions, these many physical feelings, conceptual feelings and hybrids of them, into one final feeling that incorporates them all. Whitehead calls this final feeling the occasion’s “satisfaction.” He says,

The problem which the concrescence solves is, how the many components of the objective content are to be unified in one felt content with its complex subjective form. This one felt content is the ‘satisfaction,’ whereby the actual entity is its particular individual self ….^[23]

The notion of ‘satisfaction’ is the notion of the ‘entity as concrete’ abstracted from the ‘process of concrescence’; it is the outcome separated from the process ….^[24]

… the ‘satisfaction’ of an entity can only be discussed in terms of the usefulness of that entity. … The tone of feeling embodied in this satisfaction passes into the world beyond ….^[25]

In other words, an actual entity’s final feeling of satisfaction is what becomes the initial feeling of its successor. Whitehead says,

In its self-creation the actual entity is guided by its ideal of itself as individual satisfaction and as transcendent creator. The enjoyment of this ideal is the ‘subjective aim,’ by reason of which the actual entity is a determinate process.^[26]

Notably, this integration may or may not agree with God’s preference. For Whitehead God does not determine what the occasion is when it finally becomes fully actual. God suggests but does not command.

A view from the inside

To understand this a different way, let’s imagine being an actual occasion. Imagine how things would appear from that point of view.

Occasion 1

A world appears. You take it in. You scan it, assess it, evaluate it. Vague feelings of colors and shapes are there. They seem familiar. You recognize them. Now many things are there. There are directions, feelings of upness and downness. Upness feels more attractive. You decide to proceed up, and you do so.

You take all these things in until you have certain degree of satisfaction with what you are taking in, a certain feeling of having made sense of it. Then the world is gone, and you don’t know it because you are gone. There’s no you who can know.

Occasion 2

A world appears. You take it in. You scan it, assess it, evaluate it. Vague feelings of colors and shapes are there. They seem familiar. You recognize them. Now many things are there. You remember having proceeded up. That’s familiar. You feel a certain momentum of going up, and it feels good to do that. You decide to continue to proceed up, and you do so.

You take all this in until you have certain degree of satisfaction with what you are taking in, a certain feeling of having made sense of it. Then the world is gone, and you don’t know it because you are gone. There’s no you who can know.

Occasion 3

A world appears. You take it in. You scan it, assess it, evaluate it. Vague feelings of colors and shapes are there. They seem familiar. You recognize them. Now many things are there. You feel a certain momentum of going up and find that you are proceeding up. You feel like going down; the idea of going down is attractive. But you decide to keep going up, and you do so.

You take all this in until you have certain degree of satisfaction with what you are taking in, a certain feeling of having made sense of it. Then the world is gone, and you don’t know it because you are gone. There’s no you who can know.

Occasion 4

A world appears. You take it in. You scan it, assess it, evaluate it. Vague feelings of colors and shapes are there. They don’t seem familiar. You don’t recognize them. Now many things are there. You remember a certain momentum of going up, but now you find that you are stationary. You feel like continuing, but you can’t. You have a sense that others around you can sense you, that you’ve been detected.

You feel a certain contentment at having been detected at just that spot, a spot that is perfect for you. It’s as if you have fulfilled a mission that you hadn’t quite known was yours. You decide to stay where you are, and you do so.

You take all this in until you have certain degree of satisfaction with what you are taking in, a certain feeling of having made sense of it. Then the world is gone, and you don’t know it because you are gone. There’s no you who can know.

These scenarios represent a single electron’s path through a magnetic field in a Stern-Gerlach experiment.[27] (Remember, the electron is composed of numerous actual occasions in sequence.) Named after the scientists who first performed it, the experiment consists of sending a series of electrons through a magnetic field, which deflects them. The magnetic field is stronger at one end than at the other, a condition that causes the electron to swerve a bit, toward one pole of the field or the other, as it passes through. On the other side of the field from the emitter is a recording medium, which registers where the electron hits the medium. Each electron is detected at one of two places on the medium, depending on a property of the electron called “spin.” The experiment corroborates the quantized nature of reality at this very tiny level; the electron is detected in one of only two places rather than in a range between them. It also corroborates quantum indeterminacy: you cannot predict in advance where the electron will be detected.

These scenarios may seem quite fanciful. They are guesswork, of course, but they are informed guesswork. The experience of an actual occasion, although quite primitive compared to our everyday wakeful experience, is nevertheless structurally similar. (This comparison is imaginative, of course, as we can’t really experience the world from another point of view, but the alternative is to avoid talking about subjectivity altogether. That won’t do, as subjectivity is an essential element of Whitehead’s philosophy.)

The world’s appearing, the subject’s initial taking it in and the sense of familiarity are intended to portray the early phases of concrescence in which physical prehensions are paramount. The vague feelings represent purely physical prehensions. Familiarity is the prehended feeling of the satisfaction of the prior occasion.

The recognition and the appearance of discrete things are intended to portray the ingression of eternal objects, which give form to the physical prehensions. The feelings of attraction are their valuational aspects.

The decision is intended to portray what Whitehead refers to by the same term. “The word is used in its root sense of a ‘cutting off’,” he says.^[28] The entity makes actual only one possibility, for instance going up rather than down, and thereby discards all the others.

The satisfaction is intended to represent the final phase of concrescence. Satisfaction is a state of completeness. When a meal leaves you satisfied, you quit eating; you are done with it. Just so, when an occasion’s concrescence reaches satisfaction, the process ceases and the occasion becomes actual.

Final Thoughts

Whitehead was a mathematician and philosopher, not a healing professional. Nevertheless, the process of concrescence that an occasion of experience goes through in becoming actual may be likened to the process of personal and transpersonal growth that a person goes through in healing from trauma and becoming, as Stanislav Grof might say, more whole.[29] An occasion of experience integrates into one unified whole many physical and mental prehensions of actuality and many ingressions of eternal objects. Similarly, a process of personal growth involves integrating and understanding many different components of personhood, including past experiences; present bodily feelings; present, past and hoped-for future relationships with others; emotional feelings and their somatic release; and one’s own ideal of what sort of person one would like to be. To this list Whitehead would add the ideal of unique personhood that one receives as if by grace from a reality much greater and wiser than oneself, a topic to which I hope to return. The goal of the actual occasion is to become fully itself in harmony with its world. The goal of the growth facilitated by numerous therapeutic techniques and spiritual traditions of the world is the same.

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References

Grof, Stanislav. “The Theory and Practice of Holotropic Breathwork.” Online publication https://holotropic-association-na.org/breathwork/how-to-ensure-safety-quality-criteria-for-gtt-facilitators as of 28 February 2025.

Harrison, David M. “The Stern-Gerlach Experiment, Electron Spin, and Correlation Experiments.” On-line publication http://www.upscale.utoronto.ca/GeneralInterest/Harrison/SternGerlach/SternGerlach.html as of 29 August 2007.

James, William. Some Problems of Philosophy: A Beginning of an Introduction to Philosophy. New York: Longman, Greens and Co., 1911. Online publication https://dn720400.ca.archive.org/0/items/someproblemsofph01jame/someproblemsofph01jame.pdf as of 10 February 2025.

Lawrence, Nathaniel. Alfred North Whitehead: A Primer of his Philosophy. New York: Twain Publishers, 1974.

Rodriguez-Pereyra, Gonzalo. “Nominalism in Metaphysics”. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2019 Edition), Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman (eds.) Online publication https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2019/entries/nominalism-metaphysics/ as of 5 January 2025

Whitehead, Alfred North. Adventures of Ideas. New York: The Free Press, 1967.

Whitehead, Alfred North. Process And Reality: An Essay in Cosmology, Corrected Edition ed. David Ray Griffin and Donald W. Sherburne. New York: The Free Press, 1978. Abbreviated in the notes as “PR”.

Wikipedia. “Stern-Gerlach experiment.” On-line publication https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stern–Gerlach_experiment as of 29 August 2007.

Zimmerman, Dean W. “Universal.” Britannica Encyclopedia Online publication https://www.britannica.com/topic/universal as of 3 November 2024.

Notes

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[1] Whitehead, PR, p. 116. See also pp. 78 and 91.

[2] Whitehead, PR, p. 18.

[3] Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas, p. 221.

[4] Whitehead, PR, p. 239.

[5] Technically, it experiences the surroundings of its immediate past, but for our purposes the less precise formulation is sufficient. Whitehead was conversant with Einstein’s theories of relativity as well as with quantum mechanics. He says “… the general philosophical doctrine of relativity … is presupposed in the philosophy of organism…” (PR, p. 66).

[6] Rodriguez-Pereyra, “Nominalism in Metaphysics”, single column PDF p. 4

[7] Rodriguez-Pereyra, “Nominalism in Metaphysics”, single column PDF p. 2

[8] Rodriguez-Pereyra, “Nominalism in Metaphysics”, single column PDF p. 7.

[9] Zimmerman, “Universal.”

[10] Whitehead, PR, p. 44.

[11] Whitehead, PR, p. 88.

[12] Whitehead, PR, p.7.

[13] Whitehead, PR, p. 345.

[14] Whitehead, PR, pp. 87-88.

[15] Whitehead, PR, p. 346.

[16] Whitehead, PR, p. 283.

[17] Whitehead, PR. p. 63. James, Some Problems of Philosophy, p. 155.

[18] In this section I draw from numerous places in PR and from Lawrence, Alfred North Whitehead, chapter 3, pp. 68-78.

[19] Whitehead, PR. p. 24.

[20] Whitehead, PR, p. 244.

[21] Whitehead, PR, p. 220.

[22] Whitehead, PR, p. 344.

[23] Whitehead, PR, p. 154.

[24] Whitehead, PR, p. 84.

[25] Whitehead, PR, p. 85.

[26] Whitehead, PR, p. 85.

[27] Wikipedia, “Stern-Gerlach experiment”; Harrison, “The Stern-Gerlach Experiment.”

[28] Whitehead, PR, p. 43.

[29] Grof, “The Theory and Practice of Holotropic Breathwork.”