Process Cosmology --- a worldview for our time

[Gnomon]

The Process-Philosophy-a-metaphysics-for-our-time thread seems to have run its course. But there may be enough residual interest for a spin-off, to discuss the theological implications of Whitehead's evolutionary worldview. Another defunct thread specifically asked about the Ethics of Process Philosophy. Here, let's widen the scope to include the whole Cosmos, and perhaps some conjectured Creative Force (not necessarily a person) that transcends the physical universe, as we know it. But, why do we need a God-concept anyway? Typically it's supposed to provide a basis for Morality, explain the Existence of the universe, and ground the search for Meaning and Purpose in human life.

"Process Theology, a school of thought influenced by Alfred North Whitehead's process philosophy, views God as actively involved in and affected by the world, emphasizing a dynamic and relational understanding of reality rather than a static, unchanging one" *. Baruch Spinoza's 17th century philosophy basically defined the known world as a God*1, hence his theology is PanTheism (all is god)*2. Since he assumed that the Cosmos was eternal and self-existent, he saw no need for a creator deity. On the other hand, A.N. Whitehead's 20th century Process and Reality*3*4*5 was written before the Big Bang theory became the generally accepted scientific model of Cosmology*6. Yet, he concluded that the First Cause of his Process must be both immanent and transcendent*5. Hence Hartshorne, his associate, labeled that god-model as PanEnTheism (all within god)*7. However, In order to avoid confusion with the transcendent-miracle-maker Judeo-Christian-Islamic deity, I prefer to spell it as PanEnDeism.

Ironically, some ancient theologies --- such as the Great Spirit or Manitou of indigeous Americans --- also posited god-models that seem similar to PanEnDeism*8. For the indigens, this spiritual belief was also a practical religion, with prescribed prayers, behaviors, and sacrifices. But for philosophical PanEnDeism the notion of a universal deity is intended to be compatible with modern Science, which has found no evidence that prayer & sacrifices will sway the will of the deity. Instead, as the indigenous shamen intended, their behaviors --- including rain dances --- were supposed to symbolize alignment & harmony with the laws of Nature. That humble attitude might also be appropriate for those who think that technological Science can & should supplant Natural Philosophy. Perhaps Whitehead's thesis was intended to harmonize Science & Philosophy & Religion*9.


*. https://www.google.com/search?client=fi ... s+theology

*1. According to Spinoza, God is the natural world. Spinoza concludes that God is the substance comprising the universe; that God exists in itself, not outside of the universe; and that the universe exists as it does from necessity, not because of a divine theological reason or will.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinoza%27s_Ethics
Note --- Is this God the same as Schopenhauer's Will : "a blind, unconscious, aimless striving devoid of knowledge"?

*2. For Spinoza, God is synonymous with nature, a single, infinite substance that encompasses everything, rather than a separate, transcendent being. This concept is often referred to as pantheism.
https://www.google.com/search?client=fi ... +substance
Note --- Some have identified Spinoza's Single Substance as Matter, but in my thesis the monistic Substance is more like Energy : the power to cause transformation. Hence, I identify it with the post-Shannon notion of Negentropic Information. Negative Entropy is what we know as Energy, which is capable of transforming into Matter (E=MC^2)

*3. While Alfred North Whitehead, a prominent philosopher, didn't directly theorize the Big Bang, his philosophical framework, particularly his concept of "cosmic epochs," has some intriguing parallels and potential interpretations that resonate with modern cosmological ideas, including the Big Bang and the possibility of a multiverse.
https://www.google.com/search?client=fi ... d+big+bang

*4. Historical quantum cosmology (HQC) is based not on matter but on a chain of local history—a chain lengthened by many local steps in each global step that expands a double-cone spacetime. The universe’s forward-lightcone lower bound corresponds to the big bang while its backward-lightcone upper bound corresponds to the present. (All history occurs after the big bang and before the present.)
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.10 ... -48052-2_5

*5. In Alfred North Whitehead's process theology, God is both transcendent and immanent, a unified actual entity that is both primordial (eternal) and consequent (experiencing the world)
https://www.google.com/search?client=fi ... anscendent

*6. The Big Bang Theory stands as the most widely accepted explanation for the origin of the universe.
https://www.space.com/25126-big-bang-theory.html

*7. Panendeism, a relatively new term, is a deistic equivalent of panentheism, suggesting a belief in a God that pervades the universe but is also transcendent of it, meaning God is both in the universe and beyond it.
https://www.google.com/search?client=fi ... Panendeism
Note --- I prefer the PanEnDeism spelling in order to avoid confusion with the Judeo-Christian-Islamic deity, who exists outside the world, but occasionally meddles with the mechanisms of evolution, and the freewill of its sentient creatures.

*8.Panendeism, a concept similar to Native American beliefs in the "Great Spirit," suggests a divine or universal spirit that is both present in and transcends all things, encompassing the universe while remaining distinct from it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panentheism

*9. Panendeism is more coherent than monotheism because it avoids contradictions like divine intervention conflicting with free will or natural laws.
https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion ... onotheism/

*10. The Point of Process Philosophy
On the other hand, Whitehead seemed to envision, in the light of quantum physics, a new direction for Natural Philosophy. Instead of continuing the ancient quest of Atomism, for the ultimate particle of matter, philosophers should now turn their attention to Wholes instead of Parts. From this new/old perspective, the Cosmos is not just a swirling mass of matter/energy, but an evolving process metaphysically moving on toward some future state. Exactly what that Omega Point might be is of course unknown, but its direction, like the arrow of time, can be inferred from the trajectory of its history.
https://bothandblog8.enformationism.info/page44.html

[Gnomon]

Its much better to do philosophy then do philosophy about process.

Apparently, what Whitehead was doing in his Process Philosophy is what philosophers have been doing since Plato*1 : discover universal principles in the world and build a worldview upon that foundation. But if the world seems to be nothing but agitated atoms, then whatever happens "has no innate meaning or morality behind it". Although you might ask, whence the agitation? Plato found a First Cause to be logically necessary. For example, to explain any process evolving from simplicity toward complexity.

Moreover, the quantum physics (entanglement) and Systems Science (complexity) of Whitehead's era portrayed an evolving world more like an organism than a mechanism*2. Besides, Darwinian evolution is a progressive process, not just a random meandering*3. Hence, his postulation --- not an observation --- of a God as the "Soul" of the Cosmos. Since his eternal deity is an inference, instead of a space-time empirical fact, you are free to agree or disagree; depending on your personal inclination.

As a professional mathematician, Whitehead may be more percipient than most of us about the rational order of the universe. Even modern Chaos Theory*4 is based on the inherent order within apparent disorder. Some philosophers may focus mainly on the irrational aspects of Nature, but as a mathematician, Whitehead built his thesis upon the logical patterns, interconnectedness, and self-organization of natural processes. From such evidence, he concluded that some kind of rational intelligence must be "behind" it. But AFAIK he did not infer that abstract Reason (Logos) would require ego-propping worship.


*1a. Reformed Platonism :
In this sense, Whitehead’s reformed Platonism is similar to Schelling’s, who built on the description of the World-Soul and its role in the realization of Ideas given by Plato in the Timeaus (I unpack these ideas in this essay on Schelling). . . . .
One of Whitehead’s colleagues at Harvard, Ernest Hocking, reports that (Alfred North Whitehead: Essays on his Philosophy, 1963, p. 16), in regards to the concept of God, Whitehead once told him: “I should never have included it, if it had not been strictly required for descriptive completeness. You must set all your essentials into the foundation. It is no use putting up a set of terms, and then remarking, ‘Oh, by the way, I believe there’s a God.”
https://footnotes2plato.com/2011/07/16/1263/
*1b. In the Timaeus Plato presents an elaborately wrought account of the formation of the universe and an explanation of its impressive order and beauty. The universe, he proposes, is the product of rational, purposive, and beneficent agency. It is the handiwork of a divine Craftsman (“Demiurge,” dêmiourgos, 28a6) who, imitating an unchanging and eternal model, imposes mathematical order on a preexistent chaos to generate the ordered universe (kosmos). The governing explanatory principle of the account is teleological: the universe as a whole as well as its various parts are so arranged as to produce a vast array of good effects. For Plato this arrangement is not fortuitous, but the outcome of the deliberate intent of Intellect (nous), anthropomorphically represented by the figure of the Craftsman who plans and constructs a world that is as excellent as its nature permits it to be.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato-timaeus/

*2. Holistic Systems Thinking :
The idea of the world evolving as a complex, interconnected organism rather than a simple mechanism, while a compelling and increasingly relevant metaphor, is rooted in the concept of systems thinking and the interconnectedness of ecological and social-economic processes.
https://www.google.com/search?client=fi ... +mechanism

*3. Evolution as a Process, Not Just a Mechanism:
Evolution is the change in the genetic makeup of populations over time, driven by various factors, including natural selection, mutation, genetic drift, and gene flow.
While Darwin's theory of natural selection is foundational, the understanding of evolution continues to evolve, with insights from fields like ecology, genetics, and systems science.
https://www.google.com/search?client=fi ... +mechanism
Note --- Directional determining Selection is the opposite of Indeterminate Random Chance

*4. Chaos theory explores the idea that within seemingly random, chaotic systems, there can be underlying patterns, interconnectedness, and self-organization, leading to order emerging from disorder
https://www.google.com/search?client=fi ... n+disorder

[Gnomon]

The notion of 'God' fails right off the bat, for it stems from the idea-template that something Greater is necessary to be for something lesser to be made of it; yet …

I haven't seen any references in Whitehead's cosmology of the old "something greater" scholastic reasoning. His thinking was based on contemporary quantum and systems science, along with mathematical logic. Which necessarily pointed to "something a priori", in the sense of a First Cause.

But if you are referring to space-time "transcendence", the Big Bang theory "fails right off the bat" to explain the Source of the Energy (causation) and Laws (organization) necessary to produce a cosmic explosion that is still expanding after 14B years. All postulated explanations refer to something antecedent or transcendent to the Bang itself. Are Multiverses and Many Worlds "greater" than our uni-world?


"in regards to the concept of God, Whitehead once told him: “I should never have included it, if it had not been strictly required for descriptive completeness."
https://footnotes2plato.com/2011/07/16/1263/

[Gnomon]

Well I logically prove that wrong in the linked post. Feel free to point out if its wrong and if Whitehead would be able to counter it.

Yes, it is logically possible that a God could exist, but we would need evidence of its existence.

I see you made an extensive argument against God, but I wouldn't call it a Proof in the mathematical sense. The conclusion is inherent in the assumptions. Different assumption, different conclusion.

Whitehead's evidence for God was logical, not empirical. Yet the evidence of causation is the empirical world itself, which begs the question of caused by what agent or action?. If you can prove that the universe is self existent, then there will be no need for a transcendent Creator.


An assumption is an unexamined belief: what we think without realizing we think it. Our inferences (also called conclusions) are often based on assumptions that we haven't thought about critically. A critical thinker, however, is attentive to these assumptions because they are sometimes incorrect or misguided.
https://library.louisville.edu/ekstrom/ ... ssumptions

[Gnomon]

Remember, our universe is just among the average ones that work for life. It just couldn’t form all the elements right away.

Perhaps, but your hypothetical "average" universes (multiverses?) --- in alternative space-time bubbles? --- are just as questionable & non-empirical as Whitehead's eternal deity. I simply prefer the parsimonious functional (causal) explanation, without multiplying entities beyond necessity.

[Gnomon]

Our universe is not perfect, nor it is completely mathematically elegant, for there are superfluous entities in it, along with a lot of waste. Protons and neutrons require only up and down quarks, and not the other four quarks.

What "perfect" or "elegant" universe are you comparing our mediocre world to? From a human perspective, with a 100year lifetime, this natural & artificial habitat may not be as perfect as the Garden of Eden. Which, as you know, was spoiled by the introduction of Reason and FreeWill. What if the point of the creation was not to provide a habitat for plants & animals & hominids, but to program a world capable of evolving little gods, empowered by Reason & FreeWill? That would imply a different kind of Creator from the one described in the Bible*1.

Whitehead's deity is not the God of Abraham, Isaac & Jacob*2. His postulated (not revealed) God was not modeled on the tyrannical kings of antiquity, but on philosophical necessity, to explain how & why our still-evolving world came to be as it appears to our modern Science. His necessary Being is what Blaise Pascal disparagingly called the do-nothing "god of the philosophers", perhaps in reference to Spinoza's Nature God. Pascal's "perfect" & "elegant" God was the triune Catholic savior of a world defiled by human Reason & errant Will. For Whitehead, those attributes may be a feature, not a bug in the system.

Even though he wrote prior to the cosmological evidence for a Big Bang beginning, Whitehead intuited that our space-time world was not self-existent. Hence, some pre-bang Cause was necessary to explain the process of evolution from a mathematical Singularity to the material complexity we see today*3. He doesn't describe that Cause in personal or material terms, but in functional language. Although, his General Functional Cause could be hypothetically materialized as Multiverses, or Many Worlds, or Cyclic Cosmology, if you are into that kind of far-out speculative conjecture.


*1. Alfred North Whitehead's conception of God, central to his process philosophy, rejects divine omnipotence, viewing God as a "poet of the world" who persuasively guides creation rather than coercively controlling it.
https://www.google.com/search?client=fi ... ept+of+god

*2. For Whitehead, God is not necessarily tied to religion. Rather than springing primarily from religious faith, Whitehead saw God as necessary for his metaphysical system. His system required that an order exist among possibilities, an order that allowed for novelty in the world and provided an aim to all entities.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_North_Whitehead

*3. Whitehead's Cosmic Epochs :
Whitehead's philosophy included the notion of "cosmic epochs," which are finite, self-contained universes that process, become, and perish, potentially resembling the Big Bang to Big Crunch cycles in some multiverse models.
Dynamic Universe :
Whitehead's ideas about a dynamic, ever-changing universe align with the Big Bang theory, which posits that the universe began from a hot, dense state and has been expanding ever since.
No Direct Connection :
It's important to note that Whitehead's work predates the development of modern cosmology and the Big Bang theory, so he wasn't directly aware of these scientific concepts.
Multiverse Theories :
Some interpretations of Whitehead's philosophy, particularly his concept of "cosmic epochs," find a rough correspondence with certain multiverse theories, such as the oscillationist model (a series of Big Bang to Big Crunch epochs).
Whitehead's Influence :
Despite the lack of a direct connection, Whitehead's philosophical framework, with its emphasis on process and becoming, has influenced discussions about the nature of reality and the universe, including its relationship to the Big Bang.
https://www.google.com/search?client=fi ... d+big+bang

[Gnomon]

The great slowness of the universe's creation so far here and ever plodding more in the tale, up to taking billions of years for life to come about seems to indicate no Divine involvement, leaving it up to my Great Poet ancestor, I guess.

To those trained in abstract & abstruse mathematics, instantaneous Inflation Theory may sound like a viable alternative to Creation myths. But for those not so trained, to go from an atom of matter to a proto-universe in a fraction of a millisecond sounds like faster-than-light Magic, shrouded in gobbledygook : "let there be stuff". Who wrote the love-story between nuclei, and where did the sexual energy come from? :joke:

For non-mathematical philosophers, IT seems to be a solution to a non-problem*1. Flatness & homogeneity are to be expected in a Whitehead universe, created with intention rather than accident. I agree that the slowness & gradualness of physical evolution seem to weigh against the Genesis account of light-speed Creation. But Whitehead's progressive Process has all the time in the world to reach its functional goal. What is Life, if not matter with time on its hands? Perhaps, his "Great Poet" deity had a sense of humor to allow for hominids who could spin fantastic stories about inflating deuterium balloons, who fall in love and live happily ever after.


*1. Criticism of the inflation theory in cosmology centers on its lack of empirical testability, the vast number of possible models, and the potential for a multiverse, making it difficult to falsify or verify.
Here's a more detailed breakdown of the criticisms:

Lack of Testability and Falsifiability:
One major concern is that the theory relies on a hypothetical "inflaton field" with a potential energy curve that seems to be adjusted to fit available data, making it difficult to test or falsify.

The theory's proponents argue that inflation is a necessary explanation for the universe's flatness and homogeneity, but critics argue that these problems can be addressed by other models.
The concept of a multiverse, where inflation creates countless universes with varying properties, further complicates the issue of testability, as any outcome could be predicted.
https://www.google.com/search?client=fi ... +criticism

[Gnomon]

Whitehead's deity had to wait three billion more years for a third generation metal-rich sun-star to form along with its planets, another great milestone, granting him great relief. His zillions of previous Bang attempts hadn’t worked out, but he had finally put the right amount of energy into the latest Bang.

Compared to the instant Paradise of Genesis, the gradual evolution of Darwin seems to be fecklessly going nowhere slowly. But my evaluation of Evolutionary Creation is that the point is the Process (becoming), not any predestined Product (paradise). Consequently, I imagine the process more like a computer program that runs as an Application instead of a Solution. Hence, your personal sentient experience is just one thread of many, on the forum of Life.

PS___Time is not a thing, but a process, that is meaningless until a mind emerges to mark its increments.

Birthing a Cosmos :
Whitehead described our enforming⁷ cosmos as a living organism. From our human perspective, the process of pro-creating a universe is what we call Evolution. Based on the notion of gestation, we can imagine the Big Bang Singularity as a seed, egg, or sperm. And the event itself as a quickening (first signs of life). So, our universe is portrayed as an embryonic fetus that must develop in the womb before being born into whatever comes next. Yet the inseminator at the inception of our world should not be portrayed as literally anthro-morphic, and it would be a mistake to attribute human psychological & emotional characteristics to a timeless, dis-embodied Intellect. However, if you think of the evolutionary Process as a computer Program, an appropriate metaphor might represent the system designer as a Programmer.
https://bothandblog8.enformationism.info/page44.html

[Gnomon]

So, good fortune was needed, as always, in this and many more instances, such as the Earth having to have the right conditions in the first place, out there among the huge waste elsewhere which wasn’t really such a waste after all, it providing so many chances for there to be a workable planet for life such as Earth.

Yes. Who's to say that billions of solar cycles without Life (to process matter into viable entities) or Mind (to notice the passage of time) was a waste? Since randomness (chance ; fortune) seems necessary for evolution to work as Darwin observed, perhaps the de-selected options were useful as examples of un-fitness. And Quantum Randomess*1 seems to be intrinsic to the fundamental processes of Nature. Again, a feature (fitness function*2), not a bug.

As far as I know, nothing in Whitehead's Cosmology is contrary to established facts of science. What may be antithetical are some of his metaphysical interpretations, that contradict the philosophical assumptions of Materialism*3. Ancient Atomism/Materialism beliefs were undermined by Quantum Physics, which found not hard little balls of stuff, but bits of Energy and Fields where something happens : statistical processes (fortune).


*1. Quantum Randomness :
Unlike classical randomness, which can often be attributed to a lack of information or complexity, quantum randomness is an intrinsic property of the quantum world
https://www.google.com/search?client=fi ... ss+meaning

*2. Evolutionary Programming :
The fitness function evaluates the quality of the potential solutions, assigning scores that direct the algorithm toward an optimal path. As the algorithm evolves through multiple generations, the fitness function influences which solutions survive, reproduce, and contribute to the next iterations.
https://medium.com/@sowmy3010/fitness-f ... 998f38d6b9
Note --- Natural Selection is a fitness function.

*3. Process vs Objects :
Whitehead argued that reality consists of processes rather than material objects, and that processes are best defined by their relations with other processes, thus rejecting the theory that reality is fundamentally constructed by bits of matter that exist independently of one another.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_North_Whitehead

[Gnomon]

And we thought that Ada Lovelace was the first programmer. (Babbage's machine was never built!)

Babbage (or was it the lovely lady Lovelace?) called his cranky (mechanical) computer a "difference engine" (a differential is a sign of change in a variable). But, long before that long-forgotten nomenclature, the original Programmer created a world that evolves by calculating differentials (where "1" = something, and "0" = nothing). By subconsciously imitating the creator, automobile makers devised a strange kind of gear (the differential) that allows wheels to rotate at different rates as the car goes around a curve. Today, we have Artificial Intelligence that computes evolutionary systems via either floating point differentials (vectors) or genetic algorithms (a search heuristic inspired by natural selection). So, human programmers continue to emulate the First Programmer.


Religion and Science : by Alfred North Whitehead
Religion will not regain its old power until it can face change in the same spirit as does science. . . . .
My second reason for the modern fading of interest involves the ultimate question of what we mean by religion. Religion is the reaction of human nature to its search for God. The presentation of God as an all-powerful arbitrary tyrant behind the unknown forces of nature awakens every modern instinct of critical reaction.
https://www.harvardsquarelibrary.org/th ... whitehead/


DO THE NEW QUANTUM COMPUTERS REMIND YOU OF THE OLD DIFFERENCE ENGINE?