Observations placeholder
North Whitehead, Alfred – 05 Quanta
Identifier
025749
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
We have seen [and I will repeat the text here for ease of access and understanding] that the concept of becoming is exceptionally important in Whitehead’s schema, because the executions of the broadcasting and other event processing or desire fulfilling processes determines the click click click that is time – the before and after of history or the future.
As the shuttle of the loom zoots across the warp threads, one execution of the processes takes place and the universe renews itself. A new universe is born every time the shuttle passes, and the old version with all its actual entities and relationships becomes the past – history – but a history that can be explored during spiritual experience [exploring group perception and out of body]
As just one of millions of warp threads we [our consciousness and perceptions] can only perceive the current weft thread. But the shuttle keeps on moving, the flow of control is continuous.
It is worth remembering the link with the one-electron universe postulate, proposed by John Wheeler in a telephone call to Richard Feynman in the spring of 1940. It hypothesises that all electrons and positrons are actually manifestations of a single entity moving backwards and forwards in time. Analogously – the shuttle.
Wheeler suggested that any given moment in time is represented by a slice across spacetime, and would meet the warp lines a great many times. At those points, half of each warp line will be directed forward in time and half will be directed ‘backwards’.
But Whitehead went one further and he did so well before Wheeler. He said a time slice is a quanta – that was his definition. One zoot of the shuttle. Whether it is now is another thing, but quanta were to him ripples in time
The entire system of ‘actuals’ – actual entities and relationships was left consistent logically after this execution of the processes.
Furthermore, and even more fascinating, the matrix of all atoms – the lattice was fixed, but the process execution changed the functional states within each atom. A bit like pixels moving across a 3D screen. If we look at it this way, we can now see where ‘time’ goes, if we are moving across the screen then the trail of time is behind us as we move forward. We are all relatively moving forward in space
A description of the experience
PART II DISCUSSIONS AND APPLICATIONS
Chapter II The Extensive Continuum
Section II
The modification of Zeno’s' ‘Arrow' paradox….. brings out the principle that every act of becoming must have an immediate successor, if we admit that something becomes. For otherwise we cannot point out what creature becomes as we enter upon the second in question. But we cannot, in the absence of some additional premise, infer that every act of becoming must have had an immediate predecessor. The conclusion is that in every act of becoming there is the becoming of something with temporal extension; …….
Section VI
According to Newton, a portion of space cannot move. We have to ask how this truth, obvious from Newton's point of view, takes shape in the organic theory. Instead of a region of space, we should consider a bit of the physical field.
This bit, expressing one way in which the actual world involves the potentiality for a new creation, acquires the unity of an actual entity. The physical field is, in this way, atomized with definite divisions: it becomes a 'nexus' of actualities. Such a quantum (i.e., each actual division) of the extensive continuum is the primary phase of a creature. This quantum is constituted by its totality of relationships and cannot move.
Also the creature cannot have any external adventures, but only the internal adventure of becoming.
Its birth is its end.