A universe teeming with living beings

Everything in the world in which we live is in motion. Nothing in this universe is at rest, including the sun, moon, stars, and planets. Even things that appear stationary at the macroscopic level consist of matter that is constantly in motion at the molecular level. Everything moves without ceasing, and all things undergo continual change from moment to moment. Nothing in this world is without motion. It is therefore difficult to dispute that being active is the most concrete and essential characteristic of everything in the universe. The philosopher Alfred North Whitehead begins from the fact that all in the universe are active and explains everything on that basis. Accordingly, unlike classical epistemology, he does not treat the subject and the object as though they were the most concrete realities, presupposing them as fixed and static entities. This is because the most concrete and certain fact observable in the universe, at every scale, is that all things are in motion. Thus, in Whitehead's philosophy, the world is portrayed as a dynamic universe in which all things strive to become their own subjects through their activity. In Whitehead's understanding of the universe, everything, regardless of its scale, is, so to speak, equally a living being, and the universe is densely populated with entities that are constantly active. Cells, trees, mountains, clouds, the earth, galaxies, and even the vast universe itself all exist within a fractal structure in which the whole and its parts resemble one another. Although they differ in appearance and form, all things are understood as organisms that are active and live through their relationships with one another. Accordingly, Whitehead called his philosophy the philosophy of organism.

The universe as understood by "Hegel armed with modern natural science"

The British philosopher A.N. Whitehead (1861-1947) is well known in the field of logic for Principia Mathematica, which he co-authored with Bertrand Russell. His academic specialty, however, was mathematics, and he taught applied mathematics at both the University of Cambridge and the University of London. It was only after he had passed the age of sixty, when he was invited to Harvard University, that he underwent a remarkable transformation into a metaphysician of the highest order. For Whitehead, philosophy was by no means a casual pastime taken up in old age. He delved into philosophy using what were then the most advanced intellectual tools of the early twentieth century: mathematics, symbolic logic, the theory of relativity, and an early form of quantum mechanics. To borrow the words of my own teacher, Whitehead was "Hegel armed with 20^th-century natural science."^[1] This enabled him to depict the structure of the universe in extraordinary detail and resolution.

Whitehead's universe does not presuppose the existence of any fixed subjects. Rather, everything is understood as an actual entity; in other words, as something that comes into being and passes away while striving to establish itself as a subject. The things that appear to exist are nothing more than unique but momentary realities that arise through a one-time process of becoming. Consequently, in Whitehead's philosophy, the process of becoming is more important and fundamental than reality.

Let us now focus on the process by which one particular actual entity (which we shall call "M") strives to become a subject. During this process, every other actual entity is likewise active independently of M. This is because, as noted above, everything in the universe is active in its own present moment. For example, assume that I am M and that I am perceiving a chair. While I am looking at the chair in my own present, the atoms and molecules that constitute the chair are likewise active in the chair's own present. The present of each actual entity is therefore relative, and each entity acts within a present unique to itself. In other words, while my experience of seeing the chair is coming into being, the chair itself is active in its own present. Furthermore, our perception requires time. In the case of perceiving the chair, reflected light from the chair must first reach my retina, and my brain must then process the resulting visual stimulus. Likewise, when we hear another person's voice, there is a delay in auditory perception while vibrations travel through the air to our eardrums and the brain processes those auditory signals. Put simply, the resolution of human perception is low. We possess only slow bodies and even slower brains. Consequently, no matter how close an object may be, we are, in principle, always perceiving the object as it already existed in the past. By the same token, a sensory stimulus or any other influence that gives rise to a present perception in the actual entity M already belongs to the past, both for M and for the perceived object. This is because, while M is generating its perceptual experience, the perceived object is already active in its own present. Thus, while M is active in its own present, every other actual entity is likewise active in its own present, and M can engage only with the past state of those other entities. Accordingly, M and every other actual entity are causally independent within their respective relative presents. Whitehead describes the actual entities that are causally independent of M in this way as being contemporary.

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[1] Nakamura, N. The Philosophy of Whitehead, Kodansha, 2007, p. 13.

The nature of human experience

How can our human experiences be explained in a universe where neither subject nor object is presupposed, and where the actual entity M and all other entities exist in the contemporary mode of being, in which they are causally independent of one another? My research seeks to clarify how, within Whitehead's philosophy of the universe, the subject comes into being. In particular, I seek to elucidate how human experience, especially conscious experience, is constituted. To be sure, Whitehead's own writings, together with previous scholarship, have already clarified to some extent the formal mechanism by which conscious experience arises according to his theory. The real question is how Whitehead's explanation should be interpreted in concrete terms. For example, his account of the emergence of conscious experience is founded on the unusual concept of the proposition. I myself have devoted considerable time to elucidating this concept. Furthermore, according to Whitehead, our perceptual experience is fundamentally grounded in the operation of the symbol. My current research focuses on clarifying the nature of perceptual experience based on this symbolic reference. I am also working to open a dialogue with philosophers such as Ernst Cassirer and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, who may broadly be grouped under what is known as the philosophy of symbols.

The appeal of Whitehead's philosophy

Perhaps Whitehead's philosophy still seems inaccessible and difficult to comprehend. However, in reality, it is not Whitehead's philosophy that is difficult, but rather the extraordinarily complex existence of the universe itself, including human beings. Whitehead's philosophy is appealing for how it takes the entire universe as its subject in the truest sense of the word, from elementary particles to black holes. His principal work, Process and Reality, is an ambitious attempt to construct a coherent and logical system capable of interpreting every empirical phenomenon, while offering a comprehensive explanation of both the universe and human experience. Yet this system is far from abstract speculation. While striving for consistency with the natural sciences, Whitehead's metaphysical system also possesses the breadth to take seriously the depth of concrete experience suggested by poetry, literature, and religion. Whenever I think about Whitehead's philosophy, the grandeur of the entire universe unfolds in my mind. Although I consistently failed mathematics and physics exams in high school, I could never abandon my fascination with inquiry into natural science. At the same time, I longed to discover the truth about the world and about human beings through philosophy. As someone who is incurably captivated by these questions, I find Whitehead to be a philosopher worthy of a lifetime study.

Yosuke Sato／Associate Professor, Faculty of Letters, Chuo University
Areas of Specialization: Contemporary Philosophy (Centered on A.N. Whitehead) and Philosophy of Consciousness and Mind

Yosuke Sato was born in Akita Prefecture in 1982. He completed the Doctoral Program in Philosophy in the Graduate School of Letters, Chuo University. He holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy.
His current research and field of interest are a comparative study of symbolic functioning in Whitehead’s philosophy and theories of the symbol developed by Ernst Cassirer and Maurice Merleau-Ponty.
Major written works:

• Everyday Adventures: Whitehead and the Universe of Experience, Shumpusha Publishing, 2021.
• My Scholarly Book: On Publishing Doctoral Dissertations as Books, co-authored, edited by the Editorial Department of Shumpusha Publishing, Shumpusha Publishing, 2022.
• The Philosophy of Reality, co-authored, edited by Tsuyoshi Teramoto, Chuo University Press, 2023.
• Philosophy for Understanding the World and Humanity, supervising editor, Natsumesha Publishing, 2026.

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