Whitehead, James, and the Ontology of Quantum Theory

I shall describe the beautiful fit of the ideas of Alfred North Whitehead and William James with the concepts of relativistic quantum field theory developed by Tomonaga and Schwinger. The central concept is a set of happenings each of which is assigned a space-time region. This growing set of non-overlapping regions fill out a growing space-time region that advances into the stilluncreated and yet-to-be-fixed future. Each happening has both experiential aspects and physical aspects, which are jointly needed to generate the advance into the future. This conception is useful in passing from the pragmatic interpretation of science to a putative understanding of the reality beyond phenomena, and of our role within it. James’ ideas about attention and volition are naturally implementable within this framework, and make us into agents that can act efficaciously upon the physical world on the basis of felt values, rational reasons, and conscious understandings.