Book: Process and Reality

Overview
Alfred North Whitehead's Process and Reality (1929) sets out a sweeping metaphysical system that reimagines the fundamental furniture of the world. Reality is cast not as a collection of inert substances but as a web of interrelated happenings or events. Whitehead calls his approach a "philosophy of organism," where the basic units of existence are dynamic occasions of experience whose relations and internal becoming constitute what the universe is.
The book replaces substance-centered metaphysics with processual categories that aim to account for both the physical and the mental, the creative novelty of the world, and the relational character of existence. Language is technical and dense, built from a revised philosophical vocabulary, but the central impulse is to provide a coherent account of change, temporality, and value without reducing these features to secondary or illusory properties.

Philosophy of Organism
At the heart of Whitehead's vision is the idea that actual entities, or actual occasions, are momentary events of experience that arise, integrate influences from the past, and perish while contributing to the future. These entities are not merely passive points but active processes of "becoming" that incorporate what Whitehead calls prehensions: non-sensory relations that grasp and respond to aspects of other occasions. Existence is thus fundamentally relational and creative, with each occasion synthesizing many inputs into a unity.
Societies of occasions form enduring patterns, giving rise to the appearance of stable objects while preserving a metaphysics grounded in flux. Continuity is explained by the continuity of these processes rather than by enduring substrata; change is ontologically primary, and identity is a matter of pattern and continuity among events.

Core Concepts
Concrescence denotes the process by which an occasion integrates various prehensions into a determinate unity, culminating in an actual entity. Eternal objects function as abstractions or forms, possibilities that color the determinations of occasions without existing independently as substances. The notion of "creativity" is central: it is the ultimate principle that accounts for novelty and the emergence of new forms.
Whitehead also articulates a distinctive treatment of God as a dipolar entity with a primordial nature that offers objective possibilities and a consequent nature that experiences and synthesizes the world. God, on this view, lures creation toward richer forms of value without coercively determining outcomes, thereby integrating both metaphysical order and genuine freedom for novelty.

Method and Structure
Speculative philosophy guides Whitehead's method: he reconstructs first principles and categorical schemes to render an intelligible account of reality that is consistent with scientific discoveries and metaphysical intuition. The prose moves between metaphysical argument, technical definitions, and occasional appeals to scientific analogy, producing a work that is rigorous but challenging to read. The structure of the book is systematic rather than historical, presenting a network of interdependent doctrines that require sustained engagement to appreciate.
Whitehead invents a specialized vocabulary and refashions classical categories to serve a processual framework; the result is a metaphysical architecture intended to be applicable across domains, from physics to ethics.

Legacy and Influence
Process and Reality has had a lasting influence on metaphysics, philosophy of religion, theology, and fields interested in relational and ecological thinking. Process theology adapts Whitehead's depiction of a persuasive, non-coercive God; philosophers and theologians have employed his ideas to rethink time, value, and agency. In science and environmental thought, the emphasis on interconnection and becoming resonates with systems perspectives and emergentist accounts.
Though its technical language and ambitious scope limit its immediate accessibility, the book remains a foundational text for those drawn to a dynamic, relational ontology that centers creativity, interdependence, and the ongoing generation of novelty.