Relativistic Whiteheadian Quantum Field Theory:

Serial Order and Creative Advance

Henry P. Stapp

Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory

University of California

Berkeley California 94720

(August 2008)

**Abstract.** Alfred North Whitehead in his book *Process and Reality*
describes the history of the universe in terms of a process of 'creative
advance into novelty.' This advance is produced by a collection of
happenings called 'actual occasions', or 'actual entities'. Each actual
entity has an associated actual world, and it arises from its own
peculiar actual world. (PR 284). Two occasions are termed 'contemporary'
if neither lies in the actual world of the other. A key issue is whether
the words in *Process and Reality* commit Whitehead to the
relativity-theory idea that, at least in our present epoch, the creative
advance into novelty is not serially ordered, or whether, alternatively,
the logical developments in Part IV entail, at a deep metaphysical
level, that the facts specified by two contemporary occasions become
fixed and settled in some definite order. Irresolution on this basic
question renders Whitehead's theory obscure and plagued with
controversy. I argue, in opposition to another paper in this issue, that
Whitehead endorses the relativistic viewpoint, and consistently adheres
to it. This makes Whitehead's theory compatible with relativistic
quantum theory. Combining Whitehead's relativistic process theory with
relativistic quantum field theory is therefore possible, and it holds
the promise of producing a rationally coherent understanding far richer
than what is provided by either theory alone of the relationships
between the physically described aspects of the universe and human
knowledge and intentions.

**1. Introduction.**

At the beginning of Section III of Chapter III of Part I of *Process and
Reality* Whitehead asserts:

"There is a prevalent misconception that 'becoming' involves the notion
of a unique

seriality for its advance into novelty. This is the classic notion of
'time, 'which philosophy took over from common sense. Mankind made an
unfortunate generalization

from its experience of enduring objects. Recently physics has abandoned
this notion. Accordingly we should now purge cosmology of a point of
view which it ought never to have adopted as an ultimate metaphysical
principle. In these lectures the term 'creative

advance' is not to be construed in the sense of a uniquely serial
advance." (PR 35)

This statement seems to be an unequivocal rejection by Whitehead of the
idea that his 'creative advance into novelty' is a 'uniquely serial
advance'. Nevertheless, the complexity of Whitehead's prose has led some
students of Whiteheadian thought to maintain that Whitehead's theory of
the extensive continuum, as elaborated in Part IV of PR, does in fact
provide, at a deep metaphysical level, a fundamental "serial-inclusive
ordering of all occasions and their regions".

These quoted words come from a paper by Michael Epperson(EPP) entitled
"Logical Causal Order in Whitehead's Theory of Extension: Relating the
fundamental mereological order and the relativistic spatiotemporal order
in modern physics." That paper presents Epperson's view of a rather
lengthy correspondence (ES) between us, in which I was arguing,
specifically, that Whitehead's words in *Process and Reality*, including
in particular the words in Part IV, do *not* entail or suggest that the
"mereological" structure developed in Part IV provides for a unique
serial ordering of the occasions in the creative advance into novelty. I
argued that Part IV elaborates upon the relativistic approach adopted in
the earlier parts, and does not entail or suggest a serial ordering of
the actual occasions that conspire to produce Whitehead's creative
advance into novelty.

The resolution of the conflict between 'the classical-intuitive' and
'the relativistic' conceptions of the 'advance into novelty' is, in a
very deep sense, the core subject matter of Process and Reality. That
resolution depends essentially upon the nature of the emergence of
'actuality' from 'potentiality', and upon the logical and causal
features of the connection between the experiential and physical aspects
of the 'creative advance into novelty', whose structure Whitehead is
attempting to describe. That 1929 relativistic solution ties beautifully
into the precepts of relativistic quantum theory developed in the middle
of the twentieth century by S,Tomonaga (TOM)and J. Schwinger (SCH).

The book *Process and Reality* represents in a deep sense a 500 page
description of one complex idea. As a matter of historical fact this
description has elicited in the minds of its careful readers a diverse
spectrum of interpretations. This diversity has impacted extremely
adversely upon the reception of Whitehead's theory by the academic
community. The differences between Epperson and myself is a particular
manifestation of this general fact. However, I believe that our
particular differences can be resolved by a careful attention to
Whitehead's words in Part IV, and that this resolution, taken together
with the basically similar resolution of essentially the same problem by
relativistic quantum field theory provides the foundation of a
rationally coherent interpretation of the whole of *Process and Reality*
that is in good accord with modern physics, and hence can be combined
with it to give a way of understanding nature and our place within it
that is richer and more coherent than what is provided by either theory
alone.

**2. The Extensive Continuum and Serial Order.**

Chapter II of Part II of PR is entitled *The Extensive Continuum.* In
section II Whitehead says:

"Curiously enough, even at this early stage of metaphysical discussion,
the influence of the 'relativity theory' of modern physics is important.
According to the 'uniquely serial' view of time, two contemporary actual
entities define the same actual world. According to the modern view no
two actual entities define the same actual world. ... I shall always
adopt the relativity view" (PR 65-6)

The issue in contention pertains to the relationship between the ideas
presented in the earlier chapters, and the content of Part IV, which is
also entitled *The Extensive Continuum*. I believe the latter to be an
elaboration of the former that in no way overrides or contradicts the
former, particularly on the issue of the non-serial character of the
creative advance into novelty. I believe that Whitehead adheres
throughout PR to the 'relativity theory' viewpoint adopted by modern
physics, and that the mereological serial order discussed in part IV
pertains to something else, and in no way entails or suggests a unique
absolute serial order of the occurrence of the occasions that mark the
creative advance into novelty. This advance consists of the 'becoming',
or 'the coming into actual beinginess', of the physical and experiential
facts that define, at each stage of the advance, the aspects of the
unfolding history of the world that have become 'fixed and settled'.

The quote in Epperson's paper from Jorge Nobo makes clear the issue that
I was raising. Nobo said "I doubt you can find a passage in Whitehead in
which he explicitly and unequivocally endorses the idea of an absolute
order for the becoming and being of occasions ." It is certainly true
that Whitehead develops in Part IV certain notions involving serial
ordering. But these serial orderings do not entail, or suggest, or
support the notion of unique, or absolute, or objective, ordering for
the becoming and being of the occasions. The seriality considered in
Part IV pertains, rather, to the deduction of certain *continuum-like
properties* of Whitehead's 'extensive continuum' from certain logical
premises and assumptions.

Prompted by figures drawn on a piece of paper we are able to conceive
"regions" in a two-dimensional space exemplified by the *interiors* of
such figures. (cf. PR 295-6). Nobody has ever directly experienced a
drawing with lines of infinitely thin width. Nevertheless, it is a fact
of human experience that many of us can 'imagine' such lines, along with
the other elements of Euclidian geometry. And we can imagine these
just-mentioned two-dimensional extensions without their infinitely thin
boundaries. We can also contemplate infinite "nested" sequences of such
two-dimensional "open" regions, with each region of the sequence
completely contained within its predecessor in the way suggested by
Figure (i) of Diagram I on page 295 of PR. 'Points' and 'lines' are not
contained in this complex of two-dimensional boundary-free regions. But
they can be defined essentially in terms of limits of certain nested
sequences of these two-dimensional 'open' regions. We can then consider
the boundaries of these regions, as collections of 'points'

In our imagination we can conceive of generalization of such structures
to spaces of dimension greater than two. Whitehead specifies (PR
Definition 24, page 300)

"When a complete locus consists of all points situated in a region, it
is called the 'volume' of that region; when a complete locus consists of
all points in the surface of a region, the locus itself is called the
'surface' of that region; when a complete locus consists of all the
points incident in a segment between two end-points it is called a
'linear stretch' between those end-points."

Thus Whitehead's extensive continuum is given a certain pre-geometric
continuum-like structure, which can include dimensionality. Whiteheads
says:

"In the application of this theory of extention to the existing physical
world of our epoch, volumes are four-dimensional and surfaces are
three-dimensional. But linear stretches are one-dimensional" (PR 301)

Whitehead asserts that "Actual entities atomize the extensive continuum.
This continuum is itself merely the potentiality of division: an actual
entity effects this division. ... For each process of concrescence a
regional standpoint has been adopted. In the mere extensive continuum
there is no principle to determine what regional quanta shall be
atomized, so as to form the basic phase in the concrescence \[coming
into being\] of an actual entity." (PR 67: Square brackets enclose my
insertion)

In order to understand our capacity to perceive the physical aspects of
world about us in an orderly geometry-based way Whitehead is
particularly concerned in Part IV to define "straight lines" and "flat
loci". To this end, he introduces:

"Assumption 1. In the extensive continuum of the present epoch there is
at least one ovate class...." (PR 305).

"Definition 1. One such ovate class will be denoted by α: all
definitions will be made relatively to this selected ovate class." (PR
305)

"The physical extensive continuum with which we are concerned in this
cosmic epoch

is four dimensional." (PR 305)

The members of any ovate class have whole-part relationships that
resemble, by definition, those of ovals in a positive-metric space. In
particular, they have whole-part relationships analogous to those that
follow from the fact that the boundary surfaces of ovals are everywhere
non-concave. This leads to the possibility of defining*, relative to
that particular ovate class,* flat loci and straight lines by the
intersections of the surfaces of regions that are 'externally
connected', in the sense illustrated by figures (v) and (vi) of Diagram
I (PR 295). This passage from regions to points, lines, surfaces, and
volumes rests on the seriality of the infinite nested sets of
non-tangentially internally connected regions.

"It will be noticed that each abstractive set is to be conceived with
its members in serial order, determined by the relationship of
inclusion. The region starts with a region of any finite size, and
converges indefinitely towards smaller and smaller regions, without any
limiting region." (PR 298)

It is *this* seriality that is the focus of Part IV, and that is used to
construct the "continuum" properties of the extensive continuum. These
continuum properties underlie in a deep sense, the description of the
process of creative advance. But this seriality of the nested sets that
is used to deduce the continuum properties of the extensive continuum
does not entail a serial ordering of the 'becoming' of the occasions in
the creative advance into novelty. These two applications of the notion
of seriality are, logically, profoundly different. One pertains to an
infinite succession of ever smaller inclusively arranged regions that is
used to construct the pre-geometric continuum aspects of the extensive
continuum, while the other pertains to the ordering in which the
experiential and physical facts specified by the occasions that are
associated with non-overlapping finite regions, that are called their
standpoints, become fixed and settled. No retreat from, or negation of,
the commitment to 'relativity theory' made so forcefully in Parts I and
II is entailed or suggested by the seriality of nested sets considered
in Part IV.

The difference between these two applications of the notion of
'seriality' is connected to the difference between external and internal
connection.

In part IV Chapter III Section IV Whitehead begins with the words

"The importance of 'external connection' requires further discussion."
(PR 307)

He then emphasizes the importance of 'external connection' to the
defining of straight lines. This refers to his use of the "convexity"
(non concavity) properties of externally connected 'ovals' to define
flat loci of various kinds.

He then notes that:

"the concept of 'actual occasions, adopted in the philosophy of organism
allows the following explanation of physical transmission.

"Let two occasions be termed 'contiguous' when their 'standpoints' are
externally connected. Then by reason of the absence of intermediate
actual occasions, the objectification of the antecedent occasion in the
later occasion is particularly complete. ... Thus the notion of
continuous transmission in science must be replaced by the notion of
immediate transmission through a route of successive quanta of
extensiveness. These quanta of extensiveness are the basic regions of
successive contiguous occasions." (PR 307)

This discussion of causal relationships between occasions and the
placement of their standpoints in the extensive continuum refers to
'external connection', which is illustrated by figures (v) and (vi) of
Diagrams I (PR 295). On the other hand, the unique serial properties
that Whitehead refers to in Part IV pertained to *non-tangential
internal connections* of the kind illustrated by figure (i) of Diagram
I. It is those latter properties that were used by Whitehead to allow
the concept of 'points' and 'surfaces' and 'volumes' of the extensive
continuum to be deduced from logical assumptions.

It will be recalled that Descartes created analytic geometry, with its
idea of representing geometric structures by equations that impose
restrictions upon the sets of points constituting a uniform background
continuum. This mathematics became an essential tool for Newton, who in
the Scholium in his Principia sets forth as the basic foundation of his
work the ideas of a three-dimensional uniform continuum, space, and
one-dimensional uniform continuum, time. But Whitehead wants to go
deeper, and root these geometric ideas in logic. In the preface
Whitehead mentions the foundational character of this work when he says,
in reference to the geometric underpinnings of Descartes' and Newton's
work:

"But in Part IV, this question is treated from the point of view of
developing the detailed method in which the philosophy of organism
establishes the theory of this problem." (PR xii)

In contrast to this project of providing a logical foundation for the
continuum properties of the extensive continuum, the issue in contention
here pertains to the 'order' in which the various entire occasions
"become". The causal physical transmission from occasion to occasions
pertains to the *external* connections of standpoints in the extensive
continuum. The process of becoming thus depends in a certain basic way
upon the underlying continuum structure of the extensive continuum,
simply because the standpoints of the actual occasions are located in
this continuum, and physical causation acts through them. But the serial
ordering of the abstractive sets associated with non-tangential
inclusion used to introduce the points of the extensive continuum does
not logically entail or suggest the logically very different property of
a uniquely serial order in which the experiential and physical facts
created by occasions associated with finite non-overlapping regions of
this continuum become fixed and settled. This point is the source of my
difference with Epperson pertaining to Whitehead's stance on the issue
of whether the order in which occasions come into being is uniquely
serially ordered.

**3. Durations and Unison of Becoming.**

Quite apart from the questions stemming from Whitehead's use of a notion
of serial order in Part IV there is another feature of Process and
Reality that might seem to suggest his acceptance of the notion of an
absolute order in which contemporary occasions occur. This is his use of
the phrase 'unison in becoming' in connection with the collection of
occasions that constitute a duration:

"The term 'duration' will be used for a locus of 'unison of becoming'.
(PR 128)

According to Whitehead,

"A 'duration' is a locus of actual occasions, such that (α) any two
members of the locus are contemporaries, and (β) that any actual
occasion, not belonging to the duration is in the causal past or the
causal future of some members of the duration.

"A duration is a complete loci of actual occasions in 'unison of
becoming' or in 'concrescent unison'. It is the old fashioned 'present
state of the world.' " (PR 320)

"By its definition, a duration which contains an occasion M must lie
within the locus of contemporaries of M. According to the classical
pre-relativistic notions of time there would be only one duration
including M, and it would contain all M's contemporaries. According to
the modern relativistic view, we must admit that there are many
durations including M\-\--in fact an infinite number, so that no one of
them contains all M's contemporaries.

"Thus the past of a duration D includes the whole past of any actual
occasion belonging to D, such as M for example, and it also includes
some of M's contemporaries. Also future of duration D includes the whole
future of M, and also includes some of M's contemporaries. .... The
paradox that has been introduced by the modern theory of relativity is
two-fold. First, the actual occasion M does not, as a general character
of all occasions, define a unique duration; and secondly, such a unique
duration, if defined, does not include all contemporaries of M." (PR
320)

These characteristics of 'durations' make the association of 'duration'
with 'unison of becoming' untenable, insofar as 'unison of becoming' has
the normal intuitive meaning of 'coming into actual being together
with', as applied to a stage of the creative advance into novelty. This
is because the conditions on "durations" allow an occasion A to lie in a
duration that includes an occasion B that lies in a duration that
includes an occasion C that lies in the future of A. But the normal
notion of 'coming into actual being together with' is transitive. Yet
Whitehead's theory certainly does not allow one to say that an occasion
C that lies in the future of A is in 'unison of becoming' with A.

I believe that Whitehead means to resolve the paradox by rejecting the
pre-relativity idea that everything in a duration that includes M 'comes
into actual being together with' M

**4. Comparison of Relativistic Process Theory to Relativistic Quantum
Field Theory.**

Quantum mechanics rests upon a mathematical foundation provided by
classical mechanics. The latter rests upon the idea of 'particles' and
'fields'. A particle is supposed to have, at each instant of time, a
position and a velocity in three-dimensional space. A field is supposed
to have, at each instant of time and each location in three-dimensional
space, a 'value', specified by a real number. The field variables are
connected to the particle variables in way that allows one to compute
the forces upon\-\--and hence acceleration of\-\--each particle due to
the presence and the motion of the other particles.

Newton conjectured the existence of repulsive forces that prevent
particles from coming too close to each other. This condition combined
with his other laws appears to entail 'causal closure of the physical':
the description of the *physical* aspects of the state of the universe
at one single time, or perhaps over some short interval of time,
determines the *physical* aspects of the state of the universe for all
times.

This closure feature allows the evolving state of the universe to be
pictured as block physical universe; namely by a collection of
infinitely thin 'wires' running through the space-time, in the direction
of increasing time, and in a way that is uniquely determined for all
times by this physical structure at any single instant of time. (The
'fields' should also be represented, but the pictorial image is slightly
more complicated.) No representation of *experience,* or *knowledge, or
experienced intent* need be added, That is why this imagined property is
called 'causal closure of the *physical*.'

The transition from classical mechanics to quantum mechanics brought
human knowledge and experience into the theoretical framework. The
reason, basically, is this: the way the mathematical/physical
description enters into practical applications is closely analogous to
the way that the mathematical/physical description enters into classical
*statistical* mechanics; and classical *statistical* mechanics is, in
regard to its practical applications, closely tied to human knowledge: A
sudden change in "our knowledge" *causes*, in classical *statistical*
mechanics, a sudden change in the mathematical/physical representation
of our knowledge.

A key feature of quantum mechanics is the 'Heisenberg Uncertainty
Principle." The effect of this principle is, essentially, to convert
each 'wire' of the block universe picture into a smear of possibilities.
More precisely, for a many-particle universe, it is to replace the one
single classical many-particle universe by the collection of all such
(weighted) possibilities compatible with the present state of "our
knowledge". Because of the sensitive dependence of macroscopic degrees
of freedom upon microscopic initial conditions, the diversity of this
population of possibilities tends to increase with the passage of time.
But from time to time we gain, via our (sense) experiences, new
knowledge. Just as in the case of classical statistical mechanics, this
new knowledge will usually exclude some of the possibilities that were
mathematically generated by the equations of motion acting upon the
mathematical representation of our prior knowledge. Thus the sudden gain
in knowledge will be coordinated to a sudden "collapse" of the
mathematical representation of our state of knowledge just before the
gain in knowledge to the 'collapsed' state just after this gain in
knowledge. The physically described 'collapse' is thus a logical
consequence of our increased knowledge.

There is nothing mysterious about such 'collapses' in classical
statistical mechanics, and the 'collapses' that occurs in quantum
mechanics are, at the level of actual scientific practice, analogous to
it: the mathematical representation of 'our knowledge' changes abruptly
when 'our knowledge' changes abruptly.

But there is a conceptual problem: the different 'classically conceived
possibilities' *interfere* with each other in a way that they cannot do
in classical statistical mechanics, but that would be understandable if
the mathematical representation of our knowledge described an
objectively real structure, instead of just an idea about a set of
classically conceivable possibilities.

The resolution of this conceptual problem is to interpret the
mathematically described state of the universe as a representation not
of possibilities but rather of potentialities: i.e., as a representation
of *objective tendencies*, created by past psychophysical events, for
the occurrence of future psychophysical events. This interpretation is
essentially implicit in orthodox quantum mechanics, and it is what
Whitehead sought to express in a rationally coherent way. This
understanding places 'our knowledge' in a much more central, and indeed,
in a much more dynamical, position than what it was in classical
mechanics.

Of course, science has always been about 'our knowledge' in a certain
ultimate way. It is about what we can know, and how we can use what we
know to affect what we will experience in the future. However, the
effect of Newton's monumental work was to push questions about knowledge
and our acquisition of knowledge, out of science. Yet the conversion of
the 'physically represented information' of classical physics to the
causally efficacious 'knowledge' of quantum physics constitutes a
radical break with Newton's model of the relationship between mind and
matter.

The main idea in quantum physics is that each acquisition of knowledge
occurs discretely in conjunction with "a collapses of the quantum state"
to a new form that incorporates the effect of adding the conditions
logically imposed by the increase in knowledge. This tight logical
linkage of 'an experientially recognized change in a state of knowledge'
to the corresponding 'mathematically represented change in the physical
state of the universe' is what Whitehead represents as a concrescence of
an actual occasion. The new psychophysical state represents also a new
set of potentialities for future concrescences.

In non-relativistic quantum mechanics the quantum state of the universe
at time t is represented as an evolving density matrix ρ(t). Each
increment of knowledge occurs at some particular time t=t~n~ . At that
instant t=t~n~ a sudden "collapse" to a new state ρ(t~n~) occurs. This
sudden change consists of sudden changes in potentialities\-\--for
future concrescences\-\--that extend in principle over all of space at
that instant of time. This idea of a sudden change occurring over the
entire universe at an instant of time is not in line with ideas arising
from the theory of relativity. And it is hard to reconcile with common
sense.

This difficulty is resolved by the work of Tomonaga(TOM) and
Schwinger(SCH).They show, within the framework of relativistic quantum
field theory, that the density matrix ρ(t) gets replaced by ρ(σ), where
σ designates a spacelike surface. Such a surface is obtained from a
constant t surface by pushing the points forward or backward in a
continuous way keeping every point space-like separated from every other
one.

In this relativistic quantum field theory the sequence of constant time
surfaces t=t~n~ , with n the set of integers, gets replaced by the
sequence of space-like surfaces σ~n~, where no point of σ~n~ lies in the
open backward light-cone of any point of σ~n-1.~ This sequence of
space-like surfaces define a corresponding sequence of regions R~n~,
where R~n~ is the region between σ~n~ and its predecessor σ~n-1~.

These regions can atomize the space-time continuum: for any bounded
region R of the space-time continuum we can assume that there is some n
such that that the union of closures of the set of possible standpoints
R~m~ with m≤n cover R.

This sequence of possible standpoints R~n~ is ordered by the integer n
that label the two surfaces σ~n-1~ and σ~n~ between which it lies. This
ordering of standpoints can be imagined to define the definite order in
which the occasions corresponding to these standpoints come into being.
However, many different orderings of the same set of surfaces σ~n~ can
define the same set of standpoints, differently ordered. Given some σ~n~
and two space-like separated standpoints that lie adjacent to it, and in
its future, the rules of relativistic quantum field theory are such that
no prediction depends on which of the two collapses occurs first, or
whether the two occur together as one single collapse. Thus even though
one can elect to do the computations with some particular idea in mind
of what is globally and absolutely fixed and settled at each stage n of
the process of creative advance\-\--namely the aspects determined by the
occasions whose standpoints lie in the past of the surface σ~n~
\-\--there seems to be no empirical, or even logical, basis for claiming
that the order in which two occasions associated with space-like
separated standpoints comes into being has any absolute or objective
meaning. This practical irrelevance of the order of occurrence of
contemporary happenings is the property whereby relativistic quantum
field theory justifies its claim to be 'relativistic'.

Although Whitehead does not spell out the mathematics of this field
theoretic resolution of the problem of reconciling with relativity
theory the quantum theoretic idea of the conversion, via collapses, of
potentialities into actualities, he does take great pains to incorporate
into his theory the relativity-theory-based avoidance of the idea of
some essential absolute order for the becoming of the facts fixed and
settled by the concrescences of space-like separated actual occasions.
On the other hand, relativistic quantum field theory does allow us, for
computational purposes, and for ease of human comprehension, to allow
the process of the unfolding of actuality to be viewed as a serially
ordered sequence of abrupt changes occurring along a serially ordered
sequence of space-like surfaces σ~n~ that advance into the future by the
sequentially increasing union of the closures of the disjoint space-time
regions that are the standpoints for an associated serially ordered
sequence of actual occasions.

Whitehead's relativistic process theory seems therefore to be in
satisfactory accord with relativistic quantum field theory. But his
theory goes far beyond field theory in its effort to provide a
rationally coherent understanding the interplay between the
experientially described and the physically described aspects of the
universe. The following section elaborates upon this point.

**5. Relativistic Whiteheadian Quantum Field Theory.**

Combining Whitehead's relativistic process theory with relativistic
quantum field theory holds the promise of producing a rationally
coherent understanding far richer than what is provided by either theory
alone of the relationships between the physically described aspects of
the universe and human knowledge and intentions. A key question is how
the discrete regions that are the standpoints for the actual occasions
are determined. In this connection, Whitehead says:

"The question, as to how the extensive continuum is in fact atomized by
the actual entities, is relevant to the determination of the loci \[of
entities in 'unison of becoming'\].

The factor of temporal endurance selected for any one actuality will
depend upon its initial 'subjective aim'. The categoreal conditions
which govern the 'subjective aim' are discussed later in Part III. They
consist generally in satisfying some condition of a maximum, to be
obtained by the transmission of inherited types of order. This is the
foundation of the 'stationary' conditions in terms of which the ultimate
formulations of physical science can be mathematically expressed." (PR
128)

This description emphasizes the point that the choice of temporal
endurance, which is the temporal span of the standpoint of the occasion,
is controlled in part by a subjective aim to propagate a certain type of
order. This conception ties perfectly into recent suggestions (STA) that
the intent-controlled choices of the timings of von Neumann's Process 1
quantum probing actions allows human intent to influence human actions
by holding in place locally, by means of the quantum Zeno effect,
certain types of order.

As regards the spatial extension of the standpoint, this choice also
should be driven by aims associated with the locally defined
potentialities for a transmission of order. These considerations provide
the basis for closing a huge causal gap in orthodox quantum theory,
namely gap caused by the absence in orthodox quantum theory of any rules
for fixing, even in a statistical sense, the choice of the logically
essential Process 1 probing action. It is important in this connection
that the Process 1 probing action leave the trace of ρ unchanged. This
implies that the mere choice of the Process 1 action in one region can
have no effect on any quantum prediction pertaining to any observable
appearances in any region space-like separated from the first region. no
'signal' can be transmitted faster than light. The choice of the Process
1 probing action that must precede any knowledge increasing feedback
from nature can therefore be regarded as a local process controlled by
local realities. But nature's feedback, which answers the Yes-No query
posed by the associated Process 1 probing action, is, under certain
conditions, necessarily connected to feedbacks in faraway regions in
ways that demand faster-than-light transfers away from a region R of the
information about which Process 1 action was chosen in region R. Thus
whereas we localized combinations of occasions can be conceived to act

locally, the feedback process must be conceived to be in some way a
global process, to which we can however contribute in causally
efficacious ways by posing proper questions.

The field theoretic condition entail that the quantum mechanical state,
which represents the potentialities, will propagate through the
standpoint region in accordance with the field theoretic counterpart of
the Schroedinger equation of simpler quantum theories. The Process 1
collapse and the further collapse directly associated with nature's
feedback to that query are both confined to the leading-in-time surface
of that standpoint region R~n~. But correlations created in the past can
entail that the collapse associated with nature's feedback will be
accompanied by correlated changes in σ~n~. This latter change accounts
for the faster-than-light effects mentioned earlier.

As just mentioned, the physical description, represented by the evolving
quantum state of the universe, propagates through the stand point region
R~n~ in accordance with the Schroedinger equation, and hence in a way
that does not show the internal workings of the process of the
concrescence of the actual equation associated with this standpoint.
This agrees with Whitehead's insistence that this internal process not
be mapped into space-time. One can introduce another 'time', called
'process time', to accommodate this internal process of becoming. It is
this internal process that brings into the process of becoming the
experiential aspects of reality.

These consequences of combining of Whitehead's theory with relativistic
quantum field theory bring in only the grossest aspects of Whitehead's
rich and complex writings. But having an overview securely tied to
modern physics paves the way to a useful interpretation of the complex
whole

**References.**

PR: Alfred North Whitehead, *Process and Reality* (1929) (Corrected
Edition, 1978, Eds. D.R. Griffin and D.W. Sherburne, Free Press, New
York)

EPP: Michael Epperson*, Logical Causal Order in Whitehead's Theory of
Extension: Relating the fundamental mereological order and the
relativistic spatiotemporal order in modern physics*. 8/13/08

ES: Michael Epperson and Henry Stapp, http://c-p-n-s.org/discussion
"*Logical Causality in Quantum Mechanics*"

TOM: S. Tomonaga*,* On a relativistically invariant formulation of the
quantum theory of wave fields, *Progress in Theoretical Physics*, Vol.
1, p. 27 (1946)

SCH: J. Schwinger, The theory of quantized fields I, *Physical Review*,
Vol. 82, p. 914-927.

STA: J. Schwartz, H. Stapp, and M. Beauregard, Quantum Theory in
neuroscience and psychology: a neurophysical model of the mind/brain
connection. *Phil. Trans, Royal Society*, B 360(1458) 1309-27 92005);

H. Stapp, www-physics.lbl.gov/\~stapp/stappfiles.html