Its, Bits, and Actual Occasions

Born a little over 50 years after Alfred North Whitehead, American theoretical physicist Dr. John Archibald Wheeler was the first American involved in the theoretical development of the atomic bomb, the first physicist to popularize the term “black hole,” and the hypothesizer of the “one electron universe.”[1]? Wheeler was educated at Baltimore City College, earned his doctorate at Johns Hopkins University, and studied with Niels Bohr at the University of Copenhagen.[2]? He taught physics at the University of North Carolina, Princeton, and the University of Texas.[3]? His books include Gravitation Theory and Gravitational Collapse, Einstein’s Vision, Frontiers of Time, Gravitation and Inertia, and what’s considered a major textbook on Einstein’s theory of relativity, Gravitation. He was awarded the Niels Bohr International Gold Medal in 1982.[4]

In 1989, Wheeler presented Information, Physics, Quantum: The Search for Links, his “It From Bit” essay, to the Foundations of Quantum Mechanics 3rd International Symposium in Tokyo, Japan.? In it, he discussed how quantum physics and information theory could answer the age-old question: how come existence?[5]?

What does it look like when the contemporary theoretical framework of Wheeler is brought into dialogue with a process-relational or broadly Whiteheadian metaphysics?? The following attempts to find out and we shall start with the end in mind.? In Information, Physics, Quantum: The Search for Links, Wheeler presented the notion that four conclusions are unavoidable:

1. The world cannot be a giant machine, ruled by any preestablished continuum physical law.
2. There is no such thing at the microscopic level as space or time or spacetime continuum.
3. The familiar probability function or functional, and wave equation or functional wave equation, of standard quantum theory provide mere continuum idealizations and by reason of this circumstance conceal the information-theoretic source from which they derive.
4. No element in the description of physics shows itself as closer to primordial than the elementary quantum phenomenon, that is, the elementary device-intermediated act of posing a yes-no physical question and eliciting an answer or, in brief, the elementary act of observer-participancy. Otherwise stated, every physical quantity, every it, derives its ultimate significance from bits, binary yes-or-no indications, a conclusion which we epitomize in the phrase, it from bit.[6]

Let us begin by exploring Wheeler’s first conclusion: that the world cannot be a giant machine or mechanism.? How may this notion speak to Whitehead’s metaphysics, which predates Wheeler’s?? Is there contrast or alignment?? According to Whitehead, “Mechanism can, at most, presuppose a mechanic… The only way of mitigating mechanism is by the discovery that it is not mechanism.”[7]? Whitehead criticized the incoherent metaphysics of scientific materialism against a backdrop of new scientific discoveries like evolutionary, quantum, and relativity theory.? He believed that scientific materialism had an unholy marriage with belief in self-determining organisms because there is an "absolute contradiction" between a mechanistic reality and its original cause.[8]? How might Wheeler respond to this perspective?? Citing his “It From Bit” essay, he would wholeheartedly agree, “We reject here the concept of universe as machine not least because it ‘has to postulate explicitly or implicitly, a supermachine, a scheme, a device, a miracle, which will turn out universes in infinite variety and infinite number."[9]? Wheeler not only rejected the idea of the mechanic (or in his words: the supermachine, scheme, device, or miracle); he rejected the possibility of a multiverse.

How might Whitehead respond to Wheeler’s rejection of the multiverse?? Did Whitehead weigh in on its possibility?? To an extent, yes.? Leveraging the fact that our universe is squirrely and far from symmetrical, along with the behavior of quantum physics; Whitehead deduced that the asymmetrical polarity between what he called potentiae (possibility) and concrescence (actuality) was an indication of a subjective primordial force (God) — who's bias allowed for the actualization of this squirrely universe.? Were there additional universes fulfilling all possibilities (allowing for symmetry), there would be no need to account for the collapsing of the wave function.? Thus, by this inference, Whitehead did not support the idea of a multiverse.[10]

Although Wheeler has plenty more to say on the wave function in his third conclusion, let us stay focused on his first for now.? Wheeler continued, “Directly opposite to the concept of universe as machine built on law is the vision of a world self-synthesized. On this view, the notes struck out on a piano by the observer-participants of all places and all times, bits though they are, in and by themselves constitute the great wide world of space and time and things.”[11]? Let us unpack this statement.? Wheeler’s view is that the world is self-organized and that the experiences of all places, times, and observer-participants are the its and bits that make up the world.? Would Whitehead agree?

Of course, he would, with great enthusiasm.? At the heart of his process philosophy, Whitehead believed that the stream of experience that formed our life consists of occasions of experience, each of which is a synthesis of many feelings that have objective content (what is felt) and subjective form (how it is felt).[12]? He labeled actual occasions as the final concrete realities composing the world and that to which all proper explanations could be given.[13]? Actual occasions are not "things" in space-time, but spatiotemporal events.[14]? An explanation would not replace actual occasions of experience with abstract concepts, but rather ground abstractions in the actual occasions of experience out of which they were originally abstracted.[15]

Citing the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Whitehead believed “the actual occasions ontologically constituting our experience are the elementary processes of concrescence of feelings constituting the stream of our experience, and they throw light on the what and the how of all actual occasions, including those that constitute lifeless material things. This amounts to the panexperientialist claim that the intrinsically related elementary constituents of all things in the universe, from stones to human beings, are experiential.”[16]?

What does this mean?? It means that Wheeler and Whitehead are making the same claim using differing language.? Neither believed in objects.? While Wheeler described binary its and bits to describe the observer-participant dynamic, Whitehead described the concrescence of feelings resulting from actual occasions that have objective content and subjective form.? Both described the same intrinsically related elementary constituents of experience.? Wheeler, with 50 years on his side, believed this was further supported by what was found at the quantum level.? He'd write, "'How come the quantum?' we thus answer, 'Because what we call existence is an information-theoretic entity.’ But how come existence? Its as bits, yes; and physics as information, yes; but whose information? How does the vision of one world arise out of the information-gathering activities of many observer-participants?”[17]?

To Wheeler, the answer was straightforward: “To endlessness no alternative is evident but loop, such a loop as this: Physics gives rise to observer-participancy; observer-participancy gives rise to information; and information gives rise to physics.”[18]? He would highlight that the boundary of a boundary is zero and that this central principle of algebraic topology, identity, triviality, tautology, though it is, is also the unifying theme of Maxwell electrodynamics, Einstein geometrodynamics, and almost every version of modern field theory.[19]? “That one can get so much from so little, almost everything from almost nothing, inspires hope that we will someday complete the mathematization of physics and derive everything from nothing, all law from no law.”[20]

Would Whiteheadian metaphysics align?? Perhaps.? Whitehead too highlighted the stark contrast between the potentiae and concrescence of our universe, “Apart from the experiences of subjects there is nothing, nothing, nothing, bare nothingness.”[21]? Imagining Wheeler sharing a coffee with Whitehead, Wheeler might laugh heartily and reply, “Existence thus built on ‘insubstantial nothingness?’ … Leibniz reassures us, ‘Although the whole of this life were said to be nothing but a dream and the physical world nothing but a phantasm, I should call this dream or phantasm real enough if, using reason well, we were never deceived by it.’"[22]? Why does reality feel so small compared to the scale of nothing?? Aside from being an ever-changing process, spatiotemporal events dwarf in comparison to the scale of possibility — the unrealized chaos of potentiae beyond the curtain of the now.? As Dr. Matthew Segall wrote in Physics of the World-Soul: Alfred North Whitehead’s Adventures in Cosmology, “Each occasion becomes what it is by not being what it isn’t. Whitehead is able to avoid a dualism between actuality and ideality by showing how the realization of definite concrete values requires the ingression of “what is not” alongside the prehension of ‘what is'."[23]?

Wheeler pointed to how this is demonstrated locally within the observer-participant dynamic of experimentation.? “To neither field nor particle can we attribute a coordinate or momentum until a device operates to measure the one or the other. Moreover any apparatus that accurately measures the one quantity inescapably rules out then and there the operation of equipment to measure the other.? In brief, the choice of question asked, and choice of when it's asked, play a part — not the whole part, but a part — in deciding what we have the right to say.[24]? The importance of this cannot be understated.? Wheeler goes on,

The contribution of the environment becomes overwhelmingly evident when we turn from length of bar or flux of field to the motion of alpha particle through cloud chamber, dust particle through 3°K-background radiation or Moon through space. This we know from the analyses of Bohr and Mott, Zeh, Joos and Zeh, Zurek and Unruh and Zurek. It from bit, yes; but the rest of the world also makes a contribution, a contribution that suitable experimental design can minimize but not eliminate. Unimportant nuisance? No. Evidence the whole show is wired up together? Yes. Objection to the concept of every it from bits? No.[25]

Wheeler persists, "So far as we can see today, the laws of physics cannot have existed from everlasting to everlasting. They must have come into being at the big bang... Only a principle of organization which is no organization at all would seem to offer itself... This circumstance would seem to give us some reassurance that we are talking sense when we think of... physics being as foundation-free as a logic loop, the closed circuit of ideas in a self-referential deductive axiomatic system.”[26]? What is a self-referential deductive axiomatic system?? An organism roughly the size of our universe — or in Whitehead’s words, one very large society (God).

In Science and the Modern World, Whitehead states, “Science is taking on a new aspect which is neither purely physical, nor purely biological.? It is becoming the study of organisms.? Biology is the study of the larger organisms; whereas physics is the study of the smaller organisms.”[27]? Per Segall, “Organisms at every level are generated by purposeful self-organizing processes that are irreducible to their supposedly blind and inert components because there are no components that are not also self-organizing processes in their own right: it is organisms all the way down.”[28]?

Such a premise segues into Wheeler’s second conclusion: “that there is no such thing at the microscopic level as space or time or spacetime continuum.”[29]? He makes this case by highlighting how there is:

…no continuum in mathematics and therefore no continuum in physics. A half-century of development in the sphere of mathematical logic has made it clear that there is no evidence supporting the belief in the existential character of the number continuum…? This lesson out of mathematics applies with equal strength to physics. “Just as the introduction of the irrational numbers... is a convenient myth [which] simplifies the laws of arithmetic... so physical objects,” Willard Van Orman Quine tells us “are postulated entities which round out and simplify our account of the flux of existence... The conceptual scheme of physical objects is a convenient myth, simpler than the literal truth and yet containing that literal truth as a scattered part."[30]?

The truth of physical objects is that they are a sensory representative of spatiotemporal events.??

Whitehead presented a similar idea when arguing against the bifurcation of nature.? He believed that finding “coherence” between consciousness and science was the only way to keep the sanity of our society.[31]? He also sought to clarify the arena within which natural scientists ought to be operating — by redefining science as the systematic study of what we are aware of in perception.[32]? Wheeler endorsed this perspective, writing,

Parmenides of Elea may tell us that ‘What is... is identical with the thought that recognizes it.’ We, however, steer clear of the issues connected with ‘consciousness.’ The line between the unconscious and the conscious begins to fade in our day as computers evolve and develop — as mathematics has — level upon level upon level of logical structure. We may someday have to enlarge the scope of what we mean by a ‘who.’ This granted, we continue to accept — as essential part of the concept of it from bit, ‘Meaning is the joint product of all the evidence that is available to those who communicate.’ What shall we say of a view of existence that appears, if not anthropomorphic in its use of the word ‘who,’ still overly centered on life and consciousness? It would seem more reasonable to dismiss for the present the semantic overtones of ‘who’ and explore and exploit the insights to be won from the phrases, ‘communication’ and "communication employed to establish meaning."[33]

Whitehead would certainly endorse Wheeler’s connection of meaning to those available to communicate.? He believed the science of his time preferred to distill nature down to its smallest particles, devoid of meaning, defined only by mechanical behavior.[34]? He felt the beauty of a sunset, enjoyed by the human eyes of nature, was just as important as the scientific study of light’s spectrum.[35]? It did not make sense to remove one from the other, subject from object.?

Whitehead would also appreciate Wheeler’s dismissing of the notion of who.? The previously mentioned Whiteheadian term “society” was used to group actual occasions that ingress some shared defining characteristic or set of characteristics into his cosmology, because who we are is not fully representative of the process of our becoming.? Societal groupings were spatial and temporal, but not limited by scale.[36]? Universes, galaxies, stars, planets, organisms, and souls were all examples of societies of actual occasions.[37]? Both Whitehead and Wheeler sought to combat the enfeebled thought of scientific materialism.

Said Wheeler, "No space, no time. Heaven did not hand down the word 'time.' Man invented it, perhaps positing hopefully as he did that 'Time is Nature's way to keep everything from happening all at once.' If there are problems with the concept of time, they are of our own creation! As Leibniz tells us, '... time and space are not things, but orders of things...;' or as Einstein put it, 'Time and space are modes by which we think, and not conditions in which we live'."[38]? Curiously, Wheeler and Whitehead may have disagreed upon how to leverage Einstein's statement.? Wheeler cites Einstein from the perspective that the spacetime continuum is not a continuum at all, because physical laws are limited to the self-referential deductive axiomatic system.? Again citing Physics of the World Soul, Whitehead agrees, "Whitehead terms the general character of spacetime 'the uniformity of the texture of experience.'? 'The physical world [i.e., the extensive continuum of spacetime],' he goes on, is 'in some general sense of the term, a deduced concept.? Our problem is, in fact, to fit the world to our perceptions, and not our perceptions to the world.'"[39]

Whitehead took issue with Einstein’s seeming bifurcation of the world from how we live and think.? “Whitehead directly contradicts Einstein's famous statement that our immediate experience of temporality, while perhaps necessary for civilized life, is in reality nothing but a persistent illusion no longer to be believed in by professional physicists… Whitehead's philosophy of organism aims not to belittle or deny the abstractions of the scientific intellect, but rather to articulate an ‘ecology of abstraction….that creates the possibility of a mutual aesthetic appreciation between specialists of precision and adventurers of generalization.’"[40]? Whitehead was more romantic than Wheeler in his approach.? He did not want beauty and adventure to be overlooked in the big picture.

Thus far, I believe Whitehead’s process-relational metaphysics would have a very agreeable dialogue with Wheeler’s first two “It From Bit” conclusions.? Wheeler’s third conclusion is that “the familiar probability function or functional, and wave equation or functional wave equation, of standard quantum theory provide mere continuum idealizations and by reason of this circumstance conceal the information-theoretic source from which they derive.”[41]? In layman's terms, given there is no space-time continuum, the familiar probability function and wave equation are glorifications — or regional approximations — that are but a piece of an asymmetrical society whose subjective physics can be altered.? Quoting Wheeler further, "Probabilities exist 'out there' no more than do space or time or the position of the atomic electron. Probability, like time, is a concept invented by humans, and humans have to bear the responsibility for the obscurities that attend it. Obscurities there are whether we consider probability defined as frequency or defined a la Bayes."[42]

How would Whitehead respond to these ideas?? Positively.? Whitehead considered the “laws” of physics to at best be the historical accumulation of cosmic habits — habits of an evolving organism that is never static.[43]? Incorporating more of the Whiteheadian vocabulary, he defined eternal objects as the "pure potentials" that characterize the experience of actual occasions.[44]? Eternal objects are the quantitative/mathematical (numerical) or qualitative (e.g., colors, sounds, tastes, etc.) descriptions of actual occasions that characterize the "how" of experience.[45]? Prehensions are feelings that come in two pure forms: physical prehensions of already actualized occasions in our causal past, and conceptual prehensions of as yet unactualized potentials (or eternal objects).[46]? Again, we see Whitehead highlighting an experience-centric cosmology’s results that divide events by the now of every subject-object communication.? What marries his cosmology with Wheeler’s is the fact that his eternal objects are possibilities, not actualities, leaving the door open for physics to evolve.

Wheeler dives deep into this notion by comparing the outlooks of decoherence and it-from-bit within the context of our reality:

From start to finish accept continuity as right and natural: Continuity in the manifold, continuity in the wave equation, continuity in its solution, continuity in the features that it predicts. Among conceivable solutions of this wave equation select as reasonable one which "maximally decoheres," one which exhibits "maximal classicity" — maximal classicity by reason, not of "something external to the framework of wave function and Schrodinger equation," but something in "the initial conditions of the universe specified within quantum theory itself." How compare the opposite outlooks of decoherence and it-from-bit? Remove the casing that surrounds the workings of a giant computer. Examine the bundles of wires that run here and there. What is the status of an individual wire? Mathematical limit of bundle? Or building block of bundle? The one outlook regards the wave equation and wave function to be primordial and precise and built on continuity, and the bit to be idealization. The other outlook regards the bit to be the primordial entity, and wave equation and wave function to be secondary and approximate — and derived from bits via information theory.[47]

Stylistically, we see yet another convergence between Wheeler and Whitehead.? Whitehead’s “three books—Science and The Modern World, Process and Reality, Adventures of Ideas—are an endeavor to express a way of understanding the nature of things, and to point out how that way of understanding is illustrated by … human experience.”[48]? Just as Wheeler sought to ground his theories in a human exchange with a giant computer, so did Whitehead ground his ideas in our human perspective.? Both agreed that there is no space-time continuum.? Both agreed that the familiar probability function and wave equation are but local “laws” because our reality contained a malleable physics that could be evolved at higher level.

Pivoting to Wheeler’s fourth conclusion, I cannot help but feel it is redundant and belabors the positions outlined above: “No element in the description of physics shows itself as closer to primordial than the elementary quantum phenomenon, that is, the elementary device-intermediated act of posing a yes-no physical question and eliciting an answer or, in brief, the elementary act of observer-participancy. Otherwise stated, every physical quantity, every it, derives its ultimate significance from bits, binary yes-or-no indications, a conclusion which we epitomize in the phrase, it from bit.”[49]? At this point, it should be clear that I believe Whitehead’s metaphysics is a reiteration of Wheeler’s premise (or perhaps vice versa given their chronology).? So, where do Wheeler and Whitehead believe we should go from here?

Whitehead completes his metaphysics by describing a self-determining force (God) that avoids chaos and repetition; promotes order and novelty; seeks beauty and intensity of feeling; and attains value and satisfaction within the world.[50]? “Apart from the intervention of God, there could be nothing new in the world, and no order in the world. The course of creation would be a dead level of ineffectiveness, with all balance and intensity progressively excluded by the cross currents of incompatibility.”[51]

Wheeler’s “It From Bit” essay calls to arms the vetting of his conclusions at a scientific level.? “Intimidating though the problem of existence continues to be, the theme of it from bit breaks it down into six issues that invite exploration.”[52]? What stands out is the fourth: “Survey one by one with an imaginative eye the powerful tools that mathematics — including mathematical logic — has won and now offers to deal with theorems on a wholesale rather than a retail level, and for each such technique work out the transcription into the world of bits. Give special attention to one and another deductive axiomatic system which is able to refer to itself, one, and another self-referential deductive system.”[53]? Could this suggestion be tied to Whitehead’s theory of feelings that highlighted how the stream of experience is the growing together of many feelings into one — how “the many become one, and are increased with one?”[54]? Perhaps that’s a bit of a stretch, but it is an interesting coincidence.? More importantly, Wheeler suggests an enthusiastic level of introspective creativity:

Deplore? No, celebrate the absence of a clean clear definition of the term "bit" as elementary unit in the establishment of meaning. We reject "that view of science which used to say, 'Define your terms before you proceed.' The truly creative nature of any forward step in human knowledge," we know, "is such that theory, concept, law and method of measurement — forever inseparable — are born into the world in union." If and when we learn how to combine bits in fantastically large numbers to obtain what we call existence, we will know better what we mean both by bit and by existence. A single question animates this report: Can we ever expect to understand existence? Clues we have, and work to do, to make headway on that issue. Surely someday, we can believe, we will grasp the central idea of it all as so simple, so beautiful, so compelling that we will all say to each other, "Oh, how could it have been otherwise! How could we all have been so blind so long!"[55]

Wheeler’s penchant for comedy aside, he is willing to hold his ideas to the fire.? He is in search of the truth — or perhaps the local version of it — given there are no true laws.? Does Whitehead give the truth equal importance?? In a word, no.? Whitehead believes that “truth is the conformation of Appearance to Reality… a generic quality with a variety of degrees and modes… two composite facts [participating] in the same pattern.”[56]? Whitehead goes on to say that “reality is just itself, and it is nonsense to ask whether it be true or false.”[57]

Whitehead is interested in much larger questions — and it is here where I believe Whitehead distinguishes himself from Wheeler’s ideas.? While Wheeler is content analyzing the characteristics of our self-referential deductive axiomatic system, Whitehead goes further and, in no uncertain terms, proposes the motivations of God:

The purpose of God is the attainment of value in the world… and… The teleology of the Universe is directed to the production of Beauty… Each actual occasion does not only feel its antecedent world (its past), but God as well, and it is the feeling of God which constitutes the initial aim for the actual occasion’s becoming…? Each actual occasion is “conditioned, though not determined, by an initial subjective aim supplied by the ground of all order and originality.”[58]

In Whitehead’s mind, God is an evolving organism — the knot tying the future to the past.

It is here that we have reached the conclusion of what it looks like when the contemporary theoretical framework of Wheeler’s Information, Physics, Quantum: The Search for Links (his “It From Bit” essay) is brought into dialogue with a process-relational or broadly Whiteheadian metaphysics.? In summary, I believe the four conclusions Wheeler reached would have been warmly received by Whitehead.? Whitehead would agree that the world cannot be a giant machine, ruled by any preestablished continuum physical law because the suggestion of such is an absolute contradiction between a mechanistic reality and its initial cause.? Whitehead would also agree that there is no such thing at the microscopic level as space or time or spacetime continuum because actual occasions (spatiotemporal events) are the final concrete realities composing the world and that to which all proper explanations should be given.? Whitehead would agree that the familiar probability function or functional, and wave equation or functional wave equation, of standard quantum theory provide mere continuum idealizations and by reason of this circumstance conceal the information-theoretic source from which they derive.? The information-theoretic source Wheeler describes as its and bits is the same concrescence of feelings resulting from actual occasions that have objective content and subjective form.? I believe both described the same intrinsically related elementary constituents of experience.? Whitehead would also agree that every physical quantity, every it, derives its ultimate significance from bits, binary yes-or-no indications, a conclusion which we epitomize in the phrase, it from bit.? Please note: Wheeler himself stated that the bit is undefined and challenged science to sharpen its concept.? Thus, there is alignment with Whitehead’s perspective that “the actual occasions ontologically constituting our experience are the elementary processes of concrescence of feelings constituting the stream of our experience, and they throw light on the what and the how of all actual occasions, including those that constitute lifeless material things.”[59]

Last but certainly not least, Whitehead and Wheeler may have disagreed upon the motivations of God.? Although he may have elsewhere, Wheeler never weighed in on this subject in Information, Physics, Quantum: The Search for Links.? However, he certainly had zest for understanding existence and hoped the eventual answer would be obvious in its simplicity.? I shall close this document with my own perspective.?

I believe Wheeler and Whitehead were both correct.? I believe our universe is the organism of God, a malleable process of God’s becoming.? I believe the self-actualization of this organism does aim towards beauty and intensity of experience.? Nicholas of Cusa once wrote, "...the truth of beings, is unattainable in its purity; though it is sought by all philosophers, it is found by no one as it is."[60]? I believe this is the why of God's self-actualization.? God cannot know God fully, so God's closest approximation to self-understanding is the realization of all potentiae (Being).? I believe this is also the why of all conscious experience.? Because God cannot get beyond God’s self to view God independently, God decided to know God’s self independently from within.? Whitehead stated, "Self-realization is the ultimate fact of facts. An actuality is self-realizing, and whatever is self-realizing is an actuality."[61]? As Sri Aurobindo once said, “all evolution is the progressive self-revelation of the One to Himself.”[62]

I believe Wheeler’s prediction was also correct.? I believe we can understand existence and grasp the central idea of it all in a simple, beautiful, compelling, and obvious answer: Love.? "Oh, how could it have been otherwise! How could we all have been so blind so long!"[63]? The most deeply satisfying, intense, and beautiful actual occasion is the process of loving the world and yourself (the two of which are one).

Originally written December 18th, 2021.

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[1] “John Archibald Wheeler,” Encyclop?dia Britannica (Encyclop?dia Britannica, inc.), accessed December 17, 2021, https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Archibald-Wheeler.

[2] “John Archibald Wheeler,” Encyclop?dia Britannica (Encyclop?dia Britannica, inc.), accessed December 17, 2021, https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Archibald-Wheeler.

[3] “John Archibald Wheeler,” Encyclop?dia Britannica (Encyclop?dia Britannica, inc.), accessed December 17, 2021, https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Archibald-Wheeler.

[4] “John Archibald Wheeler,” Encyclop?dia Britannica (Encyclop?dia Britannica, inc.), accessed December 17, 2021, https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Archibald-Wheeler.

[5] John Archibald Wheeler. “Information, Physics, Quantum: The Search for Links,” accessed December 17, 2021, https://philpapers.org/archive/WHEIPQ.pdf.

[6] John Archibald Wheeler. “Information, Physics, Quantum: The Search for Links,” accessed December 17, 2021, https://philpapers.org/archive/WHEIPQ.pdf.

[7] Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World: Lowell Lectures, 1925 (New York: New American Library, 1964), p.77.

[8] Michael Harry Carlson, “Free Will Enfeeblement,” Intellect & Opinion (Intellect & Opinion, October 6, 2021), https://www.intellectandopinion.com/philosophy/free-will-enfeeblement?rq=absolute+contradiction.

[9] John Archibald Wheeler. “Information, Physics, Quantum: The Search for Links,” accessed December 17, 2021, https://philpapers.org/archive/WHEIPQ.pdf.

[10] Matthew Segall, “Module 10: Review and Prospects of Panpsychist Physics" (discussion board, California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco, CA, December 2021).

[11] John Archibald Wheeler. “Information, Physics, Quantum: The Search for Links,” accessed December 17, 2021, https://philpapers.org/archive/WHEIPQ.pdf.

[12] Matthew Segall, “Module 5: Whitehead's Process-Relational Cosmology" (readings and lecture, California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco, CA, December 2021).

[13] Matthew Segall, "Module 5: Whitehead's Process-Relational Cosmology" (readings and lecture, California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco, CA, December 2021).

[14] Matthew Segall, "Module 5: Whitehead's Process-Relational Cosmology" (readings and lecture, California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco, CA, December 2021).

[15] Matthew Segall, "Module 5: Whitehead's Process-Relational Cosmology" (readings and lecture, California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco, CA, December 2021).

[16] Ronald Desmet and Andrew David Irvine, “Alfred North Whitehead,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Stanford University, September 4, 2018), https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/whitehead/#Meta.

[17] John Archibald Wheeler. “Information, Physics, Quantum: The Search for Links,” accessed December 17, 2021, https://philpapers.org/archive/WHEIPQ.pdf.

[18] John Archibald Wheeler. “Information, Physics, Quantum: The Search for Links,” accessed December 17, 2021, https://philpapers.org/archive/WHEIPQ.pdf.

[19] John Archibald Wheeler. “Information, Physics, Quantum: The Search for Links,” accessed December 17, 2021, https://philpapers.org/archive/WHEIPQ.pdf.

[20] John Archibald Wheeler. “Information, Physics, Quantum: The Search for Links,” accessed December 17, 2021, https://philpapers.org/archive/WHEIPQ.pdf.

[21] Ronald Desmet and Andrew David Irvine, “Alfred North Whitehead,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Stanford University, September 4, 2018), https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/whitehead/#Meta.

[22] John Archibald Wheeler. “Information, Physics, Quantum: The Search for Links,” accessed December 17, 2021, https://philpapers.org/archive/WHEIPQ.pdf.

[23] Matthew Segall, Physics of the World-Soul (United States of America: SacraSage Press, 2021) p.45.

[24] John Archibald Wheeler. “Information, Physics, Quantum: The Search for Links,” accessed December 17, 2021, https://philpapers.org/archive/WHEIPQ.pdf.

[25] John Archibald Wheeler. “Information, Physics, Quantum: The Search for Links,” accessed December 17, 2021, https://philpapers.org/archive/WHEIPQ.pdf.

[26] John Archibald Wheeler. “Information, Physics, Quantum: The Search for Links,” accessed December 17, 2021, https://philpapers.org/archive/WHEIPQ.pdf.

[27] Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World: Lowell Lectures, 1925 (New York: Free Press, 1967).

[28] Matt Segall. Physics of the World-Soul: Alfred North Whitehead’s Adventures in Cosmology. (Lulu.com, 2018), p.72

[29] John Archibald Wheeler. “Information, Physics, Quantum: The Search for Links,” accessed December 17, 2021, https://philpapers.org/archive/WHEIPQ.pdf.

[30] John Archibald Wheeler. “Information, Physics, Quantum: The Search for Links,” accessed December 17, 2021, https://philpapers.org/archive/WHEIPQ.pdf.

[31] Matthew Segall, Physics of the World-Soul (United States of America: SacraSage Press, 2021) p.16.

[32] Matthew Segall, Physics of the World-Soul (United States of America: SacraSage Press, 2021) p.16.

[33] John Archibald Wheeler. “Information, Physics, Quantum: The Search for Links,” accessed December 17, 2021, https://philpapers.org/archive/WHEIPQ.pdf.

[34] Matthew Segall, Physics of the World-Soul (United States of America: SacraSage Press, 2021) p.16.

[35] Matthew Segall, Physics of the World-Soul (United States of America: SacraSage Press, 2021) p.16.

[36] Matthew Segall, "Module 5: Whitehead's Process-Relational Cosmology" (readings and lecture, California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco, CA, December 2021).

[37] Matthew Segall, "Module 5: Whitehead's Process-Relational Cosmology" (readings and lecture, California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco, CA, December 2021).

[38] John Archibald Wheeler. “Information, Physics, Quantum: The Search for Links,” accessed December 17, 2021, https://philpapers.org/archive/WHEIPQ.pdf.

[39] Matthew Segall, Physics of the World-Soul (United States of America: SacraSage Press, 2021).

[40] Matthew Segall. Physics of the World-Soul (United States of America: SacraSage Press, 2021), p.110.

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