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Physical Emergence and Process Ontology

William M. Kallfelz

Committee for Philosophy and the Sciences (CPaS), Department of Philosophy,

University of Maryland, College Park, MD.

Submitted to:

World Futures Journal, special issue on process thought and natural science

Special editors: Franz Riffert and Timothy Eastman

June 3, 2007

Abstract

Alfred North Whitehead introduces in Process and Reality the notion that the “philosophy of organism is a cell-theory of actuality.” I argue here that the most promising venue for a concordance with process ontology vis-à-vis extant physical theory includes the notions of dynamical and ontological emergence in the physical sciences, as described for in Silberstein & McGeever (1999) as well as in Kronz & Tiehen (2002). Here I draw on my previous claims (1997, 2005, 2006) to show in more general terms how process ontology provides a more unified characterization of ontological and dynamical emergence. Read the rest of this entry »