Whitehead reconceives reality as a web of processes and events rather than enduring substances. In his process ontology, the fundamental units of being are actual occasions, each a relational event that integrates and responds to prior events while contributing to the ongoing constitution of the world.
Possibility is embedded in process: each actual occasion inherits the potentialities of the relational field it emerges from, while simultaneously shaping the horizon for subsequent occasions. Becoming, not being, is primary; relational interdependence structures the realisation of potential, making actuality inseparable from context, interaction, and history.
Whitehead’s framework synthesises and extends prior relational insights. Heraclitus’ flux, Spinoza’s interdependence, and Leibnizian monadic networks converge in a vision where relationality is processual, dynamic, and constitutive of both individual and collective actuality. Knowledge, agency, and creativity are grounded in the capacity to navigate and contribute to this ongoing web of relations.
By positioning events rather than substances as the locus of being, Whitehead provides a relational ontology that accommodates novelty, emergence, and temporal evolution. Possibility is neither static nor pre-determined; it is continuously actualised through relational processes, illustrating a mature articulation of relational principles that will inform subsequent existential and phenomenological thought.
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