What is real is not substance, but coherence that endures across the unfolding of becoming. - R.E. Slater
to articulate an ontology adequate to these scientific developments.
Essay II has established a clear trajectory:
- Section I → relational description
- Section II → relational construction (theoretical frameworks)
- Section III → relational conceptual core (information, entropy, coherence)
Taken together, these developments suggest a shift already underway within physics itself. If reality is:
- structured through relations,
- constrained through information and entropy,
- unified through entanglement, and
- stabilized through coherence
... then these are not merely descriptive tools but are increasingly functioning as constitutive features of physical reality.
Further, what we call gravity may be understood not as a fundamental force among others forces and structures, but as:
the large-scale persistence of relational coherence across the unfolding of cosmic structure.
This proposal does not stand apart from physics, but emerges from its internal contemporary developments as shown in essay 2. Concepts once treated as secondary - information, correlation, constraint - have moved toward the center of explanation.
What is increasingly described is not a world composed of independent entities, but one structured through relations that stabilize, persist, and evolve.
Yet the prevailing metaphysical language - whether through yesteryear's materialism or more broadly in current terms of physicalism - continues to remain oriented toward:
- objects
- substances
- independently existing things
In these ontological views a conceptual tension is created and continued...
... between what physics now describes (processually), andhow reality is often interpreted (materialism or physicalism)
The present essay responds to that tension. It proposes a framework we will call:
Embodied Process Realism (processualism)
... an ontology in which reality is understood not as a collection of things, but as the persistence of relational coherence across scale, through which structure, stability, and embodiment arise.
By doing this, we are asking in essay 3, "What is Real?" "How does the Real Persist?" and, "How is the Real Embodied?" Hence the term, "embodied processual realism."
I. The Limits of Substantialist Ontology
There are no things which are not also processes. - Alfred North Whitehead
Materialism and physicalism have each provided powerful and indispensable frameworks for scientific inquiry. Through them, modern science has achieved extraordinary success: predictive precision, technological innovation, and increasingly unified descriptions of physical phenomena. Even as materialism has given way to the broader and more flexible framework of physicalism - a relatively newer framework capable of accommodating fields, energy, and spacetime - the underlying orientation between the two approaches has remained largely consistent.
Reality, within these frameworks, is typically approached as composed of discrete entities - whether particles, fields, or systems - whose identities are specified independently of their interactions. Relations are then treated methodologically as secondary, describing how such entities interact; only at a further level do relational patterns become objects of study in their own right, rather than the primary basis through which entities arise.
This type of quantum mechanical orientation has proven enormously fruitful. Yet it carries with it a tacit assumption: that the fundamental structure of reality is best understood in terms of identifiable units whose existence is logically prior to their interaction.
It is precisely this assumption that contemporary physics has begun to complicate as it moves - often implicitly - towards processual realism without calling it out as such:
- In quantum theory, entangled systems resist decomposition into independently existing parts. The formalism itself requires that such systems be treated as unified wholes, whose properties cannot be reduced to those of their components. What is physically real, in these cases, is not the isolated entity, but the structure of correlation that binds the system together.
- Similarly, in quantum field theory, what are commonly described as “particles” are more accurately understood as localized excitations of underlying fields. The apparent discreteness of objects arises from patterns within a continuous substrate, blurring the distinction between entity and medium.
- More radically still, several approaches to quantum gravity suggest that spacetime itself may not be fundamental, but emergent - arising from deeper, non-geometric structures. If this is so, then even the arena within which entities are said to exist is no longer primary.
Taken together, these developments do not overturn physicalism. But they do suggest that its implicit ordering - entities first, relations second - may require both a scientific and philosophic reconsideration.
Classical View Processual ViewEntities are primary Relations are primaryRelations describe interaction Relations constitute existencePersistence is assumed Persistence is achieved
that relations are not features of things,but the conditions under which things come to exist at all.
On this view, what appears as a stable object is not an independently existing unit that later enters into relation, but a relatively enduring configuration within a broader relational field. Identity is not prior to relation, but formed through relation; persistence is not given, but achieved from relation.
The ontologic shift is subtle but profound. It does not deny the reality of objects, nor the success of physicalist explanation. Rather, it reframes them:
that entities are not foundational substances,but stabilized expressions of underlying relational structures.
It is this shift - from substance to relation - that opens the way for a further step. For if relations are primary, then the question is no longer simply what exists, but what allows anything to persist as something at all.
It is to this question that we now turn.
It from bit symbolizes the idea that every item of the physical world has at bottom… an immaterial source and explanation. - John Archibald Wheeler
For not all relations persist. Many arise only momentarily - fluctuating, dissolving, or failing to stabilize into anything recognizable as structure. If reality were nothing more than an undifferentiated flux of relations, it would not exhibit the continuity, pattern, or persistence that characterize the world we observe.
What requires explanation, therefore, is not simply relation, but the persistence of relation.
This is the point at which the concept of coherence becomes indispensable.
Coherence names the condition under which relational configurations do not merely occur, but hold together. It refers to the alignment and mutual reinforcement of relational patterns such that they maintain structure across time, resisting dissipation and fragmentation.
Where relations are coherent, they exhibit continuity;
where coherence fails, relational patterns lose their capacity for persistence
and dissolve into disorder and indeterminacy.
In contemporary physics, coherence appears in multiple, interconnected ways:
- In quantum systems, coherence refers to the maintenance of phase relations that allow for interference and superposition.
- In thermodynamic contexts, it is closely tied to the maintenance of low-entropy structure against the tendency toward dispersion.
- In complex systems, coherence manifests as the sustained organization of interacting components into stable, identifiable patterns.
It is here that the conceptual shift begun in the previous section deepens -if relations are primary, and coherence is what allows relations to persist,then coherence occupies a foundational role:
not as a feature of reality,
but as a condition of its intelligibility.
What we recognize as structure - whether physical, biological, or cosmological - may rather be understood as the outcome of relational coherence sustained across time and scale. Patterns endure not because they are fixed, but because the relations that constitute them remain sufficiently aligned to resist dissolution.
This reframing also clarifies the distinction between mere interaction and stabilized existence. Interaction alone does not produce persistence...
... Systems interact constantly without forming enduring structures. What distinguishes those configurations that persist is not the fact of relation, but the degree and stability of coherence within those relations.
In this sense, coherence introduces a principle of selection within relational reality. Of the innumerable possible configurations, only some achieve the alignment necessary to endure. Reality, as experienced, is therefore not the totality of all relations, but the subset that successfully stabilizes through coherence.
This insight begins to bridge the conceptual developments traced in contemporary physics with a broader ontological claim. If information, entropy, and entanglement describe the conditions under which relations form and transform, coherence describes the condition under which those relations persist as structured reality.
Thus, coherence may be understood as operating across scale:
- at local levels, as intensity, constraint, and the maintenance of form
- at global levels, as structure, continuity, and the organization of systems
In both cases, it is coherence that allows becoming not to dissolve into flux, but to hold together as an evolving order.
We may therefore state the emerging insight with greater precision:
reality is not merely relational,but coherently relational -structured through relations that persist across the unfolding of becoming.
This does not yet complete the ontology. It establishes its central condition.
For if coherence explains how relations endure, a further question remains:
how does coherence take on form?how does it become embodied?
It is to this question that we now turn.
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"The Transition of Becoming: From Concrescence to Field Manifestations," Illustration by R.E. Slater and ChatGPT |
An organism is not a thing, but a process. - Henri Bergson
how does coherence take on form?
For persistence alone does not yet yield the world as we encounter it. What we experience are not abstract relations, but structured realities - objects, organisms, systems - each exhibiting a degree of stability, identity, and presence.
The concept of embodiment names the transition through which coherence becomes manifest.
Embodiment is not the addition of substance to relation. It is the stabilization of relational coherence into forms that can be located, interacted with, and recognized across time. What appears as an object is not something that exists independently and then enters into relation, but something that arises where relations have achieved sufficient coherence to sustain a structured presence.
In this sense, embodiment marks a threshold...
*This description parallels Alfred North Whitehead’s concept of concrescence, wherein a multiplicity of relational data (prehensions) are integrated into a unified actual occasion. What is here described as embodied processual realism is the stabilization of relational coherence into processual forms which correspond broadly to the prehensive movement of the past towards the integration of momentary actualized unities.
This present ontological formulation reframes and extends Whitehead’s terminology in several ways:
First, where Whitehead speaks of prehension as a fundamental mode of “feeling,” this account emphasizes relational coherence as the primary ontological condition - less as discrete acts of feeling, and more as the structured intelligibility through which relations persist and organize.
Second, Whitehead’s concrescence describes the becoming of an actual occasion as a self-integrating process culminating in satisfaction. Here, that same movement is interpreted through the lens of embodiment: not merely the unification of data, but the emergence of locally stabilized form within a continuous relational field - forms which can be recognized, interacted with, and sustained across temporal intervals.
Third, while Whitehead’s framework privileges the momentary nature of actual occasions, the present account places greater emphasis on continuity across scales, wherein embodiment is not only episodic but also iterative and sustained, giving rise to enduring patterns (objects, organisms, systems) as stabilizing trajectories of coherence.
In this way, Embodied Process Realism remains deeply aligned with Whitehead’s process metaphysics while rearticulating its key insights in terms of relational coherence, embodiment, and persistence, thereby extending the framework toward a more explicitly field-oriented and structurally continuous ontology.
II
This reframing allows us to reinterpret what is commonly called a “thing.”
An object is not a self-contained unit. It is a localized stabilization of coherence - a region within the broader relational field where patterns have become sufficiently aligned to persist. Its boundaries are not absolute, but functional; they mark the limits within which coherence is maintained.
Seen in this way, embodiment is not restricted to any single scale. It operates across the full range of physical reality.
At the smallest quantum scales, what we call particles may be understood as stable excitations - patterns within fields that maintain coherence long enough to be observed and measured. At biological scales, organisms are not static structures, but ongoing processes - metabolic, informational, and relational - continually sustaining themselves through dynamic equilibrium. At cosmological scales, galaxies and large-scale structures arise through gravitational stabilization, where coherence is maintained across vast distances and times.
In each case, what appears as a discrete entity is better understood as:
coherent processes which hold together collectively.
Embodiment, therefore, is neither accidental nor superficial. It is the mode through which coherence becomes perceptible.
Without embodiment, coherence would remain abstract;Without coherence, embodiment would not be possible.
This mutual dependence clarifies an important point:
Stability is not the opposite of change. It is a pattern within change - a continuity achieved through ongoing relational activity. What endures does so not by resisting becoming, but by maintaining coherence within becoming.
III
In this light, identity itself must be reconsidered. What we take to be the identity of an object is not a fixed essence, but the persistence of a pattern. To remain the same is not to remain unchanged, but to maintain coherence across transformation.
Thus, embodiment can be understood as the manner in which coherence:
- becomes spatially and temporally structured
- acquires boundary and form
- persists as identifiable pattern across change
Through embodiment, relational coherence becomes the world.
This brings us to a further clarification. If embodiment names the local stabilization of coherence, then what appears at larger scales - structure, continuity, and order - may be understood as the extension of that same principle across scale.
In this way, embodiment is not separate from the broader dynamics of reality. It is their localized expression.
We are now in a position to restate the central insight more concretely:
what we call “things” are not the building blocks of reality -but the visible forms taken by coherence when it stabilizeswithin the unfolding of becoming.
From this vantage point, the distinction between object and process begins to dissolve. There are no static entities underlying change; there are only patterns that maintain themselves through it.
The question that now arises is not how things exist, but how such patterns can persist across different scales of reality - how coherence extends, organizes, and stabilizes beyond the local into the global.
It is to this question that we now turn.
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"Embodied Process Realism: The Bridge Between Philosophy and Physics," Illustration by R.E. Slater and ChatGPT |
The universe is not made of things, but of processes that extend across scales.- in the spirit of Alfred North Whitehead
how does such coherence extend beyond local sclaes to global scales?
For the world we encounter is not composed merely of isolated, stabilized patterns, but of structures that persist across vastly different scales - linking the microscopic with the macroscopic, the transient with the enduring, the micro with the macro. What appears as continuity in the universe is not given in advance; it must itself be accounted for.
The concept of scale, in this context, does not refer simply to size, but to levels of organization.
A pattern that persists at one level must be capable of integrating with patterns at other levels, maintaining coherence not only internally, but across relational domains.
What requires explanation, therefore, is not only the stability of local structures, but the coordination of coherence across scale.
It is here that the central claim of this project can be stated in its most comprehensive form:
Reality is the persistence of relational coherence across scale, through which becoming holds together across its unfolding.
Further, this persistence is not uniform. It operates differently at different levels of organization.
At local scales, coherence appears as:
- intensity
- constraint
- embodiment
Here, coherence is experienced as the capacity of a system to maintain its form against disruption - to hold together as a structured pattern within a dynamic environment.
At larger scales, coherence appears as:
- structure
- continuity
- systemic organization
Here, coherence is expressed in the coordination of many localized patterns into larger, enduring configurations - networks, systems, and cosmological structures that persist across time.
These are not separate processes. They are different expressions of the same underlying principle: the capacity of relational configurations to stabilize and extend across levels of organization.
In this light, the distinction between local and global begins to dissolve. What occurs at one scale is not isolated from what occurs at another. Rather, coherence propagates - linking levels of organization into a unified, though dynamic, whole.
II
It is within this framework that gravity can be reconsidered.
Traditionally understood as a force acting between masses or as the curvature of spacetime, gravity appears as a large-scale organizing principle. It governs the formation of stars, galaxies, and cosmic structure, coordinating matter across immense distances.
But if reality is fundamentally relational, and if coherence is what allows relational structures to persist, then gravity may be understood differently:
not as a force imposed upon matter,but as the expression of coherence extended across scale.
In this view, what is described as curvature reflects the manner in which relational constraints are organized globally. What appears as attraction is not merely a force drawing objects together, but the stabilization of relational configurations into coherent structures. Mass itself may be interpreted as a concentration of coherence—regions in which relational patterns achieve a degree of persistence sufficient to influence surrounding structures.
This reframing does not replace the mathematical descriptions of physics. It interprets them. The equations of general relativity remain valid, but their meaning is deepened: curvature is not merely geometry, but the manifestation of relational coherence at scale.
Thus, gravity becomes intelligible not as an isolated phenomenon, but as a specific expression of a more general ontological principle.
Across scales, coherence:
- stabilizes local patterns into embodied forms
- coordinates those forms into larger structures
- sustains continuity across the unfolding of the universe
What we call reality is the result of this ongoing process.
This perspective also clarifies why the universe exhibits both stability and change. Stability is not the absence of change, but the persistence of coherence within it. Structures endure not because they are fixed, but because the relations that constitute them remain sufficiently aligned to maintain continuity.
In this sense, becoming is not opposed to being. It is its condition. What exists does so as the sustained achievement of coherence across the flux of relational activity.
We may therefore restate the central insight in its final form:
The real is not that which simply exists, but that which coheres—enduring across the unfolding of becoming, and extending across scale as structured reality.
From this vantage point, the universe is not a collection of things situated within a pre-given space. It is a dynamic, relational field in which coherence stabilizes into form, propagates across scale, and gives rise to the structures we observe.
Gravity, in this context, is not an anomaly to be explained separately. It is one of the most visible expressions of this deeper principle: the manner in which relational coherence holds the universe together.
V. Reconstructing Realism
The aim of philosophy is to challenge the self-evidence of the present. - Gilles Deleuze
Classical realism, in its various forms, has generally affirmed that the world consists of objects existing independently of perception or interpretation. Whether conceived in terms of substance, matter, or physical entities, realism has been committed to the idea that what is real is that which exists “out there,” prior to and apart from relational engagement.
This commitment has been both philosophically influential and scientifically productive. It has grounded inquiry in the assumption that the world is not reducible to subjective experience, and that its structure can be discovered through investigation.
Yet, as the preceding analysis has shown, the language through which contemporary physics describes reality increasingly complicates this picture.
If systems cannot be fully understood as independently existing units, if their identity is inseparable from the relations in which they participate, and if even spacetime may be emergent rather than fundamental, then realism cannot simply be the affirmation of isolated entities.
It must instead account for a world in which:
- relations are constitutive
- structure is emergent
- persistence is achieved rather than given
The task, therefore, is not to abandon realism, but to reconstruct it.
What is required is a shift in emphasis:
from the reality of thingsto the reality of relations that endure
This does not entail a move toward anti-realism. On the contrary, it affirms that there is a reality independent of any single observer or perspective. But what is affirmed as real is not a collection of self-subsisting objects, but the structured patterns of coherence through which those objects arise and persist.
Realism, in this reframed sense, becomes:
the affirmation of enduring relational structures that maintain coherence across interaction and scale.
Objects remain real—but their reality is reinterpreted. They are not foundational units from which relations are derived, but stabilized configurations within a broader relational field. Their persistence does not depend on isolation, but on the continued coherence of the relations that constitute them.
This shift also clarifies the status of objectivity. Objectivity is not the view from nowhere, nor the apprehension of things as they exist apart from all relation. Rather, it is the capacity to recognize patterns of coherence that remain stable across multiple perspectives, measurements, and interactions.
What is objective, therefore, is not what is independent of relation, but what is robust across relations.
In this way, realism is neither reduced nor rejected. It is deepened.
It becomes a realism of structure, persistence, and coherence—one in which reality is understood not as a static inventory of things, but as an ongoing achievement of relational stability within the unfolding of becoming.
This reconstructed realism may be named more precisely:
Embodied Process Realism
- an ontology in which the real is identified not with substance, but with coherence that endures; not with isolated entities, but with patterns that hold together across time, interaction, and scale.
- such a processual framework does not replace scientific realism. It extends it - providing a conceptual language capable of accommodating the relational, informational, and emergent features increasingly central to contemporary physics.
In doing so, it offers not a departure from realism, but its transformation:
from a realism of thingsto a realism of coherent becoming
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| Illustration by R.E. Slater and ChatGPT depicting layered realities, scale transitions, emergence, relational structure, and human situatedness with the whole. |
VI. Implications
The universe is a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects. - Thomas Berry
In physics, this perspective shifts emphasis from entities to structures, from particles to relations, and from interaction to constraint and coherence. Theories that treat spacetime as emergent, systems as informationally structured, and interactions as relationally defined can be seen not as isolated innovations, but as expressions of a broader movement toward relational understanding. What is being described, increasingly, is not a world built from independent units, but one in which structure arises from the persistence of patterned relations.
In philosophy, the implications are equally significant. The longstanding tension between being and becoming is reframed: stability is no longer opposed to change, but understood as its achievement. Substance is no longer the ground of reality, but an abstraction from more fundamental processes. Ontology, in this light, becomes the study not of what exists in isolation, but of how coherence is established, maintained, and transformed across relational fields.
In cosmology, this framework presents the universe not as a static container populated by objects, but as a dynamic, self-organizing field in which structure emerges through the sustained alignment of relations. Large-scale order is no longer something imposed upon matter, but something that arises through the extension of coherence across scale. Gravity, within this context, is understood as one of the principal expressions of that extension—the manner in which relational stability organizes the cosmos.
Across these domains, a common thread becomes visible. The shift is not away from realism, nor away from scientific explanation, but toward a deeper account of what those explanations presuppose:
that persistence, structure, and intelligibility are grounded in coherence.
This does not resolve all questions. But it reframes them in a way that allows previously disconnected developments to be seen as convergent.
VII. Transition
We are not things that endure, but patterns that persist.- in the spirit of Alfred North Whitehead
to articulate a way of understanding reality consistent with the direction in which contemporary inquiry is already moving.
If the universe is not fundamentally composed, but continuously composed - if what appears as stable is the achievement of coherence within ongoing relational activity - then the task of thought is no longer simply to describe what exists, but to understand how such persistence is possible at all.
This shift marks a transition.
From objects to relations.From relations to coherence.From coherence to embodiment.From embodiment to persistence across scale.
What has been outlined is not a conclusion, but an orientation.
It suggests that reality is not a finished structure to be cataloged, but an unfolding field in which coherence stabilizes into form, extends across scale, and gives rise to the world we inhabit.
The question that now follows is not merely ontological, but interpretive:
what might it mean to think, to live, and to understand within such a universe?
It is toward this broader horizon - where coherence, value, meaning, and participation begin to intersect - that the next stage of this project turns.
Whitehead, Alfred North. Process and Reality. New York: Free Press, 1978.
Whitehead, Alfred North. Science and the Modern World. New York: Free Press, 1997.
Bergson, Henri. Creative Evolution. New York: Dover, 1998.
Rescher, Nicholas. Process Philosophy: A Survey of Basic Issues. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1996.
Philosophy of Physics & Structural Realism
Ladyman, James, and Don Ross. Every Thing Must Go. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.
French, Steven. The Structure of the World. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.
Maudlin, Tim. Philosophy of Physics: Space and Time. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012.
Quantum Theory, Information, and Coherence
Wheeler, John Archibald. “Information, Physics, Quantum.” In Complexity, Entropy, and the Physics of Information, 1990.
Zurek, Wojciech H. “Decoherence and the Transition from Quantum to Classical.” Physics Today (1991).
Preskill, John. “Quantum Information and Physics.” Journal of Modern Optics (2000).
Complexity, Emergence, and Systems
Prigogine, Ilya, and Isabelle Stengers. Order Out of Chaos. New York: Bantam, 1984.
Anderson, Philip. “More Is Different.” Science (1972).
Cosmology, Structure, and Relational Thought
Rovelli, Carlo. Reality Is Not What It Seems. New York: Riverhead, 2017.
Berry, Thomas. The Dream of the Earth. San Francisco: Sierra Club, 1988.
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