Talk:Process physics

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This article has a lot of pro, and no con. Unfortunately, I haven't even heard of it until now. Can someone with more knowledge make it NPOV? NegativeK 06:19, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Contents 1 Some of the Cons 2 Some of the Pros 3 Speed Of Gravity 4 Whitehead 5 Cleanup 6 Discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Physics 6.1 can process physics even begin to explain simple things like Newtonian gravity 6.2 Random matrix stuff? 7 "Claims to explain" XYZ 8 "Gibberish" 9 Too quick to dismiss 10 Cellular automata 11 Synthesis of 3-D space and Model Equations 12 avoid copying cahill's wording. 13 George Jaroskiewicz 14 A.N. Whitehead

[edit] Some of the Cons

I personally am a fan of the theory if only for the mathematical interest inherent in the way that they can produce such a complex system from a single mostly random iterated structure. However, their theory definitly has a great number of downsides. First off, due to the nature of the iterator that they are studying as the basis of their process physics, no rigorous method exists to derive results. This forces many of their results to be almost more devined than derived. Another thing that could be seen as an issue is the fact that it disagrees with GR (and the basic tennants of special relativity as well because you can measure absolute motion), but this could also be a pro depending on your point of view. Another con to their theory is that the scientists themselves that are working on the theory are pushing themselves further and further away from mainstream, resulting in them alianating most other physicists. Restated, this last point is that a con of their theory is the angry ranting rehtoric and metaphysical assertions that begin each and every one of their papers makes it a taboo topic for physists to research. There are of course more pros and cons, but in reality, in my opinion, the biggest is the first problem. They create a sort of model for the universe and then wave at it until we think we see quantum mechanics and a quantum foam based inflow model of gravity. While interesting conjecture, it is far from proof. --Brent Werness 09:22, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

This comment is on along the line of "because you can measure absolute motion". If the original authors implied this then let them. However this concept of 'absolute motion' is not absolutely required. Imagine each "node" being a theoretical construct which has "connections". These connections do not need to have a distinct distance. In fact they merely have to be somehow different to other nodes (perhaps based on which nodes they are connected to or an "ID" number like given to game objects in game engines). Distance does not need to be a factor. There's always the chance here that I have started thinking about something completely different and for that please excuse me. -- kanzure 03:07, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

However after reading further 'distance' could be absolutely measured with respect to the structure of space created within. This does not seem to present the same problem. -- kanzure 03:14, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

I think that it would be difficult to find serious critiques of Process Physics that come from reliable sources because Reg is widely regarded as a nut-job. This is especially the case with people in the relevant areas of physics. Very few people apear to take him seriously. I know a few gravity wave researchers and their opinions of Reg are less than complementary. This is unfortunate because Reg is a great bloke. He isn't a nut-job and Process physics isn't timecube. Anyone who knows him personally would vouch for this.

Is it enough to say that there has been no criticism of his work because it is regarded as fringe physics?. This can be done with NPOV if no judgement is made whether Process Physics is fringe science or not.--150.203.177.218 02:18, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Some of the Pros

Cahill has a large number of papers at LANL, and a number of papers published by associated scientific journals. NewScientist magazine dated 4-APRIL-2005 has a front page article on the "Cosmic Wind", and an experiment planned by an Italian physicist (Consoli?). The device to be used in the experiment is a gas-mode interferometer following the work of Cahill et al (at Flinders University). This single experiment has the potential to overthrow established scientific theories (ie: SR and GR). All of Cahill's publications have been under the banner of "Process Physics" and this term is definitely required within a modern encycopedia. The relation between "process Physics" and "Process Philosophy" (ie: Whitehead et al) is outlined in the earlier papers in the Process Physics archive. An independent archive of all process physics papers is located at this address:

• Process Physics Archive - Resource papers for Process Physics

[edit] Speed Of Gravity

I'm only able to read the meta- stuff and not the actual math. Of course the interative process is not a single arithmetic operation, so why is it that the process universe updates itself entirely in a (planck?) instance. I think this is the premise behind intantaneous communication of gravity. Trusting the claimed properties of this initially "blank" neural net generating patterns resembling matter in space, it's too much of a coincidence. Seems to me that a natural neural net behaves differently than a computer simulated neural net, and it's the natural behavior of a self updating neural net that process physics really needs. Am I making any meta- sense inspite of being mathless?

Furthermore, seems to me that propagation, the limit of which is the speed of light, should be related to planck time and length by some process.

[edit] Whitehead

It seems odd to me that this article doesn't mention Alfred North Whitehead, author of Process and Reality. --Goethean 16:32, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I'd agree with this, and note that Whitehead is now mentioned on the main page. If anyone has more details of this aspect I think it would be of benefit. Whitehead does seem to have been well ahead of his time (sorry about the pun), but explaining his 'philosopy of organism' etc., in which elementary particles have something along the lines of proto-mentality is not easy and is often misunderstood.Davy p 19:36, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cleanup

Ok, we need to go through and put some NPOV in this article. This theory is fringe science, to a degree that I'm not yet 100% sure of, and the article severely overstates its ability to "replace" other areas of physics. There is also a lot of very POV language about physics and how it works, like the statement that physics suggests that certain things are "random facts"--on the contrary, the replacement of arbitrary pieces of information with mechanisms and causes and explanation lies at the very heart of physics. However, the theory's authors are making predictions and proposing how to test them, so that's something. This just needs a lot of work. -- SCZenz

Can whoever wrote this article cite papers for some of the more outlandish claims? In particular, this theory is no good for replacing GR--and the article should say so--unless it properly models Newtonian gravity. Does it? -- SCZenz 08:15, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

OK, excitingly enough, my friend and I are doing a 3 week research project with Dr Cahill, starting next Monday. Perhaps I can attempt some sort of cleanup on this article after that. Very interesting man, I could listen to him talk for hours. Feel rather sorry for him at times, really, most people seem to think he's a nut-job. — riana_dzasta • t • c • e • ER • 02:42, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Physics

A copy of discussion from Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Physics concerning this article:

Process physics seems to be in need of a NPOV check and additional cleanup. Fredrik | talk 12:36, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

And possibly more. I clicked the link, then looked up their references. They publish in Infinite Energy, which is certainly a psuedoscience journal. But they've published in some others I've not heard of, like Relativity, Gravitation, Cosmology, that could be legitimate. (Does anyone know?) Plus they seem to have been featured in some popular magazines. So I'm thinking they article should be there, but of course clearly identify the idea as a fringe theory. -- SCZenz 17:07, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

I checked another journal, Apeiron. The editorial board is a strange mix of real academics and people who are well known for their pseudoscientific work see here. Perhaps this is a form of symbiosis. The pseudoscientists get their journal with some real scientists in the editorial board, while reputable scientific journals get less submissions from pseudoscientists. Count Iblis 23:08, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

Gack. Were it not for the university reference, I'd call this pure, unadulterated pseudophysics. Hell, even with the university reference, its still unadulterated pseudoscience. My patented smell-o-meter finds the following problems:

• Uses the words quantum foam
• Explains everything, everywhere (rather than focusing on single, verifiable claims)
• Must be correct because it explains dark matter
• Must be correct because it makes predictions about things which haven't ever been measured, e.g. Gravity Probe B
• Finds support in controversial experiments (the coax-cable interferometry experiments) and the Pioneer anomaly.
• Fails utterly and completely to explain how we ever got this far without such a far-reaching vision. (Forget the Pioneer anomaly, can process physics even begin to explain simple things like Newtonian gravity?)

-- linas 18:17, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

I agree with linas it seems to be in the same league as Autodynamics Salsb 18:38, September 11, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] can process physics even begin to explain simple things like Newtonian gravity

There have been some recent developments in process physics in regard to this.

Newton described gravity as an acceleration field. In some recent papers by Cahill, he develops a new theory of gravity... one which from what i've read so far seems to be complete (complete in that it hasn't had any failures yet...) After a change of variables in the Newton gravity equation from acceleration to velocity, then expanding out the equation, you then have gravity described as a velocity flow formalism. In essence, this theory predicts/states that reality is a velocity field, the direction of which determines the flow of space into matter (mentioned in passing in the main article). This velocity flow formalism is mathematically just a generalisation of Newtonian gravity, and predicts dynamical effects in addition to and quite distinct from Newtonian gravity (eg. an alternative explanation of the 'dark matter' effect). Within process physics, Newtonian gravity is then seen as a special case (spherical matter distribution) of this velocity formalism.

it stands to reason that newton could have been wrong about his theory of gravity - or at least incomplete. It was hundreds of years ago that he came up with it, and he only had the experimental capacity to observe the solar system, which is spherically symmetric... so conceivably his theory only works correctly when applied to a spherically symmetric system... by extension, einstein's GR formalism, one of the postulates of which is that it must conform to newtonian gravity, also only works with spherically symmetric systems. Hehe, but that line of reasoning begins with if Newton was wrong.

Enough preaching for now. Please note this is in the talk page, so i'm just letting myself rant. I plan to help actually clean the article up, but i'm a bit biased as i know Reg personally.... On the cleanup note, there is no sub-heading for 'space' in the main article. That is one of the key aspects of the process physics theory, that space has structure, not "matter floating in empty space" as suggested in Einstein's general relativity postulates. I'd appreciate any and all feedback, be it negative or even downright abusive.

-- Quantim 17:57, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Random matrix stuff?

This article started ringing a bell ... so I googled. I have a partial explanation for the mixture of legit/pseudo physics seen here. Circa 2000, Reg Cahill and Chris Klinger iterated a random matrix of some kind, with some extra non-linear terms, and found some kind of phase transition ... It was noted that the the result looked like a lattice with random connectivity, and that the nearest-neighbor connectivity was three-dimensional. The claim was made that this was a model of 3D space (explaining why space is 3D), and that "mass" appeared somehow naturally, and also that there were quantum-like effects of some kind ... It actually sounded pretty interesting, and sounded like more-or-less legit math, although it was clear that it would take a lot more work to turn this into a full-fledged physical theory. After some googling, I've discovered that these are the same people I'd heard about.

(FWIW, random matices are fairly hot in physics, being applied to both models of the nucleus, and to various quantum gravity models, including loop quantum gravity. And lets not forget the statistical distribution of the zeros of the Riemann zeta are modelled by a random matrix as well).

I found one reference (below) to the actual hard math behind this thing (although it looks weak). Also, it was clear from the original description that the 3D connectivity was "novel and interesting" but that clearly, a lot had to be done to turn this into something that was compatible with quantum mechanics and/or turn it into something that explained mass/intertia & was consistent with special relativity. I can't find refs to how this was done.

Anyway, the WP article, and process physics in general, seems to have shamefully taken this maybe-viable model of spacetime and turn it into something that sounds like pseudoscience. Which I admit is something that I have a habit of doing myself ... but that's another topic.

A review of the actual results of the random matrix stuff in the Cahill theory is called for. And the WP article should be trimmed of the wilder-sounding claims. linas 05:40, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

but Linas, the process physicists make such claims. shouldn't an article about process physics at least mention the claims they make? the wording should be such that its clear that this is a "within process physics" claim so as not to offend others.

It's only consider psuedoscience because Cahill disagrees with einstein, so publishers just won't touch him. Most people who've been brought up on general relativity won't even read his papers, let alone critique them. Einstein disagreed with his predecessors about the photoelectric effect. Even smart people can make mistakes. -- Quantim 17:57, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

• pop-sci review
• Arxiv preprint
• excellent level-headed critique

The magic google search phrase is "gebit quantum" linas 05:50, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] "Claims to explain" XYZ

It's better than writing "explains," but I don't think it's appropriate to write that process physics "claims to explain" something if there isn't a credible explanation. Is there some way that I can look at what process physics has actually been shown to do, without reading every single paper linked from that website? There should be, since the burden is on whoever writes a non-obvious statement to cite it. I don't ask more of this theory than I ask of string theory; the string theory article differentiates clearly between what string theory has been rigorously shown to do and what string theorists expect it will be able to do when it's developed. -- SCZenz 04:55, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] "Gibberish"

Ok, now I read quantum mechanics and cosmological stuff for fun, but this article simply makes absolutely no sense. Could somebody rewrite this in such a way that a layman can actually understand (some) parts of it?

I've yet to get very far into the details of the math behind this TOE, but my take on it is: start with the principles that enable technology such as ultra-low-power Y-branch reversible switches to work. Set out random networks of these, and the rest follows from information theory. It should actually be possible to run simulations on a small, closed mini-universe to verify that the 'necessary consequences' ie: 4D spacetime, quantum mechanics, gravity and dark energy all function as specified. -- 70.29.131.204 23:40, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

The worst is the (crucial) text in the boxes at the section Modeling process physics. It is sub-standard English with sentences that do not flow. I do not see the point of having boxes here. Paragraphs would serve as well. --Lambiam^Talk 07:04, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Too quick to dismiss

Some people here seem way too quick to dismiss this, read the articles and you may change your mind. I'm on the fence myself, I'm sure current theory is wrong but not sure this is right. Having worked with Reg, I know he's no fool and his work is gaining interest all the time. Anyway as I said read that articles then judge. I agree however that this site needs a clean up and really needs work on POV. Bartimaeus 14:16, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

Read what articles? I read everything I could google up, and it was shallow and unworkable. The problem is that there does not appear to be a testable theory; only a bunch of rather wild-sounding results. In order for something to be called a theory, it must not only make predictions, but provide a mechanism which others can exercise to derive their own results. It's not clear that there's such a mechanism here: that there's any theory here, other than the poorly-described random-matrix stuff. linas 04:46, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

Read journal articles, not crap you "google up". No offence but have you ever even studied physics? I'm not saying Reg has it right but the way people here dismiss his work out of hand without even trying to understand it is just stupid and it holds back science. I give you as an example Robin Warren, nobel prize winner who was laughed at and insulted (I was there and saw it) for suggesting that Helicobacter pylori causes stomach ulcers. He was right though, that is why he won the nobel prize. Now Reg may be wrong but he gives convincing evidence to support his case and if people would investigate his theory instead of ignoring it we'd soon discover its validity. There is growing interest in process physics as it does help to explain things physicists have chosen to ignore. Bartimaeus 07:31, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

I reiterate: read what articles?. At this point, this article has no references at all. Everything that google can find is about five years old and sounds like crank science. Maybe its legit science, I don't know. Maybe Dr. Cahill has lots of marvelous, valid ideas. I don't know. But the way that this current wikipedia article is written, at this point in time, makes him sound wacky and untrustworthy. If you are sufficiently knowledgable on this topic to make this subject sound less kooky, then please edit the article and fix these deficiencies. (p.s. I have a PhD in physics, people have laughed at my ideas, and I've been right. Having these types of meta-meta-meta conversations does not advance things.) linas 01:49, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Indeed, Iwe read the article Process Physics: From informationn theory to quantum space and matter, and it seems really interesting. His equation is incredibly simplistic, and the behaviour of it that he describes is fascinating. It seems far from proven though, he only shows how its behaviour paralels the known macroscopic laws of physics, but he doesnt make that into a proof, just a strong analogy. The basic idea of laws of physics being an emergent phenomena of some computational algorithms is powerfull, though Wolfram has similar ideas, these seem to be much more detailed. Now as far as his critique of Einstein goes, first I dont understand why he makes it such an important part of his theory. I didnt get the idea that it is necessary for the basic theory (atleast if understood more generaly than simply the form it has in his work) to be right that there be an absolute motion. And he attacks Einstein even on a personal level - accusing him of deliberatly supressing research. He again makes a strong case, but maybe the question should be kept separate from the research into computational processes that have physical laws as their emergent properties. All in all, a fascinating, and novel approach, even if wrong, has a poverfull basic idea, I hope such theories get more detailed research, and in the meantime, Im gonna code some small implementation of his equation and pretend that Ive made a new big bang in my computer :D -aryah

His metaphysical notions, based od Godel, seem radical but true to me. Now even physicist have to deal with that 'abominable' proof, and that could clarify its reall implications. His critique of syntactical systems, and axiomaticly - founded theories is all I hoped it would be :)

As for the idea that its unscientific - well abstract theoretical physics realy does show the limits of scientific puritanisam. Take superstring theory and its many incarnations for example - all the tweaking of it to make it compatable with experiments has a bit epyciclycal nature, and indeed some physicists consider it barely scientific, especially since strings themselves will never be experimentally proven... I dont think that the question of what method some field of study can use is so clear-cut - metodology should certanly be debated, and a theory can fail on the basis of metodology but where exactly the border lies is not so sure. This theory is certanly experimentably testible, and since in its current form it predicts absolute motion, it even claims that misinterpreted experimental data from experiments done a century ago can serve as its evidence. Its true that the theory is currently far from being a proven TOE, but young theories allways have a long way from an elegant idea to something to be tried in an accelerator - and usually having an elegant idea is all the theory has for quite a long time before it being subjected to some tests,,, And maybe an even better experiment for this theory would be a big compuation experiment, to demonstrate the emergence of quantum physics from the basic equation. A pretty simple experiment, all you need is enough computing power. The author didnt try different computational approaches from a pretty generalised 'neural network' - or maybe simply a graph - he does show how his equation can mimic other types of networks as its special cases, but doesnt try different models - he says simply because such networks are a well-researched field - so there is no principal reason against those same ideas being modeled in some other computational systems. All in all, something that requires much more study, hope it gets it. And it being novel in its approach doesnt make it a pseudoscience unworthy of serious scientific interest - such an attitude seems to me to be blind to the wery process sciences develop..

-aryah

[edit] Cellular automata

What is the relationship between the matrix described in process physics and the world of cellular automata? -- kanzure 03:12, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Synthesis of 3-D space and Model Equations

I have read some of Reg Cahill's work. I wrote a small program to reproduce his results regarding the synthesis of 3-dimensional space from the random matrices. By properly choosing the parameters in the iterative scheme, something roughly resembling a 3-D space emerges. The dimension of the space seemed to be fractal and roughly close to 3-D; however, I wasn't able to do a large enough space to really get a handle on whether its long-range behavior was really that of a 3-D space. However, I am concerned about the fact that his random matrices interact over extremely large (essentially infinite) distances. I think this will give too much nonlocality to physical space which makes points even infinitely far apart instantaneously interacting. This occurs because his scheme allows for new connections between any two nodes to be formed. So instantaneously, a connection could open between say earth and a galaxy 100 billion light years away, allowing information to flow directly and nearly instantaneously between them. Because of the potential connections between remote points, the space that emerges does not resemble a continuous manifold, whereas in evertday experience spacetime appears to resemble a continuous manifold. This appears to be a fundamental weakness of his model.

I don't understand his gravity equations or how he arrives at them. He seems to be basing many of his claims on experiments done nearly a hundred years ago and by applying interpretations to those experiments which are unconventional. He takes some results that were published negative for ether movement (speed of light measurements) and says they actually give a positive result. Given that the many of the original researchers did not interpret them this way, it seems a bit unusual. Still, I think he raises a lot of important questions which need followup experiments to test. I would be nice if the wikipedia article could present a couple of his main equations and explain how he arrived at them.

[edit] avoid copying cahill's wording.

I've read most of Cahill's work on this subject, and found his use of the word "boot-strap" to be confusing. I think we should try and explain this stuff using as few direct quotations from his work as possible. wtf is a boot-strap process? I know, from reading the literature, that he means we start with a broadly descriptive model of what reality may be, then slowly pull this model to match closer to what we know reality to be - like tightening a boot-strap. However just using that word "boot-strap" is not enough to explain that process
IMHO we shouldn't use the words that cahill uses unless absolutetly necessary.
Quantim 03:20, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Why be so aggressive? ; To me it sounds like you are reacting quite badly to PP for no genuine reason, it sounds like it scares you? does the idea of bootstrapping challenge your worldview?. It is my opinion that refusing to quote the work is just as bad as damning it from the outset, PP's lexicon is a big part of the key to understanding it. I Personally really like PP's concept of 'boot-strapping' which I think is an easy-to-grasp concept that is related to self-organization. It only takes a small amount of experience with automata and information mechanics to be able to appreciate this, so I think it is actually a good word to use. I'm not saying PP is definately right about everything, but for me at least, the language that PP uses is carefully chosen, descriptive and even aesthetically pleasing in places. I reckon these are good reasons to follow it by example, and speak in its language.

Bootstrapping is a well-known term in many fields, referring in this case, I'm pretty sure, to self-starting the process. (The reference is, by the way, "pulling yourself up by the bootstraps", not "tightening the bootstraps".)

Essentially, iterations over a random state will cause patterns to emerge. If the process itself has a built-in mechanism that increases the likelyhood of such patterns staying stable, you will soon end up with a system with ordered, emergent properties.

For example, if you use random data to seed the classic Game of Life program, you will end up with (usually) stable patterns that appear ordered, although as a different set of inputs would yield different patterns. In a sense, the entropy has been shifted to a macrolevel, in that it is still there, just no longer as apparent on the regular scale.

If I've understood the theory correctly, a random initial state of entangled gebits iterates through several passes of entangling/disentangling, arriving at a random universe; in this case, ours. I don't know what the difference in number of possible outcomes is, but string theory also posits a pretty huge variability of possible universes.

Also essential to my understanding of the theory, is that any developed universe would be valid, as the process simply iterates indefinitely against the background noise, with a tendency towards stable states, whereas if I have understood string theory correctly, there are some (as of yet unknown) constraints on which potential universes are actually possible.

Again, not sure I've got everything right, but depending on how the process goes, a single entropy pool could presumably end up with disjoint regions that essentially end up as the equivalent of many-worlds, provided the right links were disentangled.

Expansions of the article would be indeed be appreciated. Also, this particular theory is one that seems possible to explain in less math-heavy terms than is usual, for the benefit of the readers that don't actually know all this stuff up front. The ones who do probably have better resources than WP at their disposal. Zuiram 01:14, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

I think the point is simply that if Cahill's terminology is non-standard, we have no reason to adopt it in the article. Gdickeson 05:21, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks Zuiram for pointing that out - it was my ignorance of the term bootstrapping. However my main point remains valid, as summarized by Gdickeson, as another example "semantic information system" is not a common term and should be explained a bit further... Quantim 01:08, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] George Jaroskiewicz

George Jaroskiewicz at Nottingham has been quietly working on similar lines for some while, together with (now ex-) PhD students Norton and Jon Eakins. Eakins's paper sets out to show how time and space can emerge from basic processes.

From Jaroskiewicz home page there is access to a list of papers, some parts of which are comprehensible without having two degrees in maths and quantum physics. [|George Jaroskiewicz home page]

(His 'Writing Up Guidelines' for his students, from the same page, is also quite good.) Davy p 19:47, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] A.N. Whitehead

I wonder that something like this might provide an appropriate introduction (Henry Stapp's papers can be found on [http://www-physics.lbl.gov/~stapp/stappfiles.html]:

A.N. Whitehead advanced ideas which can be seen as precursors of contemporary process physics. Henry Stapp, for example, reckons to have found a way to resolve the problem of Cartesian dualism - mind vs matter - through quantum mechanics. His 'Mindful Universe' (mu.pdf) sets out to explain to this lay reader.

Whitehead seems to have worked the other way round, asking: Where does the actual difference between Mind and Matter arise? If other primates can think, and it does appear that they can, then so can other animals. If other animals can then ... As it's effectively impossible to draw anything other than an arbitrary dividing line where mind starts, why shouldn't there be a little bit of it in everything, including what we call inorganic matter? Perhaps there isn't any dividing line between mind and matter. The two are part of the same, but as there's only a little bit of mind in what we call inorganic material, we don't notice.

Abner Shimony gives an account in Roger Penrose's book, The Large, The Small and the Human Mind, (p 148,149), mentioning that Whitehead in turn had drawn on ideas from Leibnitz. The quotations that he uses below are from Adventures of Ideas; which Whitehead wrote about a century ago.

"[The] ultimate entities [than make up everything] are 'actual occasions', which are not enduring entities but spatio-temporal quanta, each endowed - usually on a very low level - with mentalistic characteristics like 'experience', 'subjective immediacy', and 'appetition'. The meanings of these concepts are derived from the high-level mentality that we know introspectively, but immensely extrapolated from this familiar base. A physical elementary particle, which Whitehead conceives as a temporal chain of occasions, can be characterised with very little loss by the concepts of ordinary physics, because its experience is dim, monotonous and repetitious; but nevertheless there is some loss: "The notion of physical energy, which is at the basis of physics, must then be conceived as an abstraction from the complex energy, emotional and purposeful, inherent in the subjective form of the final synthesis in which each occasion completes itself." Only the evolution of highly organised societies of occasions permits primitive mentality to become intense, coherent and fully conscious: "the functionings of inorganic matter remain intact amid the functionings of living matter. It seems that, in bodies that are obviously living, a coordination has been achieved that raises into prominence some functions inherent in the ultimate occasion." "

Davy p 00:32, 19 November 2006 (UTC)