The Event Universe ─ The Revisionary Metaphysics of Alfred North Whitehead

What kinds of things are events? Battles, explosions, accidents, crashes, rock concerts would be typical examples of events and these would be reinforced in the way we speak about the world. Philosophers following Aristotle have claimed that events are dependent on substances such as physical objects and persons. But with the advances of modern physics, some philosophers and physicists have argued that events are the basic entities of reality and what we perceive as physical bodies are just very long events spread out in space-time. In other words, everything turns out to be events. This view, no doubt, radically revises our ordinary common sense view of reality, but as our event theorists argue, common sense is out of touch with advancing science.
Leemon B. McHenry argues that Whitehead's metaphysics provides a sounder basis for achieving a unification of physical theory than traditional substance metaphysics. He investigates the influence of Maxwell's electromagnetic field, Einstein's theory of relativity and quantum mechanics on the development of the ontology of events and compares Whitehead's theory to his contemporaries, C. D. Broad and Bertrand Russell, as well as W. V. Quine. In this way, McHenry defends the naturalised and speculative approach to metaphysics as opposed to analytical and linguistic methods that arose in the 20th century. In this context, Whitehead's process metaphysics, long considered incomprehensible by mainstream philosophers, becomes intelligible.

Leemon McHenry is Lecturer in Philosophy at California State University.