Reality unfolds through an open process of relational responsiveness...
Reality is eternally unfinished - not because it lacks order,
but because creativity itself remains inexhaustible.
- R.E. Slater
This conclusion naturally leads to a deeper question.
If reality is fundamentally relational, what is relation doing?
The answer proposed in this essay is that relation is never static. Relation is inherently dynamic, continually giving rise to new configurations, new possibilities, and new forms of coherence. Reality is therefore not best understood as a completed collection of finished entities, but as an open history of relational becoming.
This shift from being to becoming has appeared repeatedly throughout the history of philosophy. From Heraclitus' vision of perpetual change (No man ever steps in the same river twice; for it's not the same river, and he's not the same man), to Bergson's creative evolution, to Whitehead's philosophy of organism, thinkers have recognized that permanence alone cannot account for the creativity, novelty, and development evident throughout the universe. Enduring realities persist not because they escape becoming, but because becoming repeatedly achieves sufficiently stable forms of coherence.
ORPMOB extends this insight by proposing that becoming is neither chaotic nor predetermined. Reality unfolds through an open process of relational responsiveness in which new possibilities continually emerge while previously achieved patterns provide the conditions for further development. Persistence and novelty are therefore not opposites but complementary achievements within the ongoing creativity of reality itself.
The pages that follow explore this vision of open relational becoming. They do not abandon being in favor of process, nor replace stability with perpetual flux. Rather, they propose that enduring realities are themselves the continuing achievements of becoming. Reality is unfinished - not because it lacks order, but because creativity remains inexhaustible.
Substance explains what endures.Becoming explains how enduring realities continually arise.
Is reality primarily composed of things that occasionally change, or is change itself more fundamental than the things that temporarily endure?
For much of Western philosophy, the first answer prevailed. Reality was understood to consist of enduring substances possessing stable identities. Change was acknowledged, but permanence remained the deeper principle. Becoming was often treated as secondary - a modification of what already existed.
Yet the world continually presents a different picture.
Stars are born and die. Galaxies evolve. Continents drift. Species emerge and disappear. Ecosystems continually reorganize themselves. Civilizations rise and fall. Human beings mature physically, emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually throughout their lives. Even the atoms composing our bodies are gradually replaced while personal identity persists across time.
Everywhere we look, reality exhibits movement, transformation, adaptation, emergence, and continual renewal.
The remarkable question, therefore, is not why things change.
The remarkable question is why anything remains sufficiently coherent to persist amid continual change.
This inversion marks one of the decisive shifts of relational metaphysics.
Rather than beginning with permanence and attempting to explain change, ORPMOB begins with becoming and asks how enduring realities emerge from it. Stability is no longer assumed as reality's primitive condition but understood as one of becoming's greatest achievements. Enduring realities are not exceptions to process; they are the continuing accomplishments of process itself.
This perspective does not reject being. Rather, it reinterprets being through the ongoing activity of becoming. Being describes the relatively enduring forms that becoming achieves. Becoming describes the continual creativity through which reality generates, sustains, transforms, and occasionally relinquishes those forms.
Relation and becoming therefore belong together.
If relation constitutes reality's most fundamental grammar, then becoming is its living expression. Every relation opens possibilities unavailable to isolated existence. Every new relation reshapes the field of future possibilities. Reality continually unfolds through an open history of relational responsiveness, where each achieved moment becomes the inherited context for further becoming.
Consequently, the universe should not be imagined as a completed structure gradually wearing down with time. Nor should it be understood as random flux lacking continuity or direction. It is better envisioned as an unfinished cosmos in which novelty and persistence continually coexist, each making the other possible. In a word,
Reality is never complete.
It is always becoming.
Every philosophical age has wrestled with the tension
between permanence and change.
The further question is this:
What is more fundamental - being or becoming?
Mountains endured for generations. The stars seemed fixed in their courses. Civilizations sought lasting institutions, religions proclaimed eternal truths, and philosophy naturally searched for what remained unchanged beneath the shifting appearances of everyday life. Stability inspired confidence, while change often appeared accidental, temporary, or even threatening.
It is therefore understandable that many early metaphysical systems regarded permanence as more fundamental than becoming. To know something was to identify what remained constant despite the continual alterations of experience.
Yet experience itself continually resisted this conclusion.
Nothing encountered within the natural world remained entirely fixed.
Rivers altered their courses. Forests regenerated through cycles of growth and decay. Species adapted across generations. Human beings matured from infancy through adulthood into old age. Every living system existed only by continually exchanging matter, energy, and information with its surrounding environment. Even the heavens, once thought immutable, gradually revealed histories of birth, transformation, and dissolution.
Reality appeared less like a finished structure and more like a never-ending story.
Among the earliest philosophers to recognize this was Heraclitus, who argued that reality is characterized not by static permanence but by continual becoming. Although often remembered for the saying that one cannot step into the same river twice, his deeper insight was that apparent stability conceals an ongoing process of transformation. The river remains recognizable only because its continual flow sustains its identity. Change is not the enemy of persistence but one of its conditions.
Centuries later, Henri Bergson similarly challenged static conceptions of existence. He argued that reality unfolds through creative duration rather than as a succession of frozen moments. Life continually generates novelty. Time is not merely a sequence of measurable instants but the living medium through which genuine creativity becomes possible.
These insights reached perhaps their fullest philosophical expression in Alfred North Whitehead's philosophy of organism. Whitehead proposed that the fundamental constituents of reality are not enduring substances but actual occasions of experience continually arising, inheriting, integrating, and contributing themselves to the ongoing creative advance of the universe. Reality is therefore not assembled from independently existing things but from dynamic processes of becoming, each moment emerging from its relations with the past while contributing itself to the future.
Whitehead's achievement was profound. He demonstrated that reality is fundamentally processual and irreducibly relational, replacing a metaphysics centered upon enduring substances with one centered upon the continual creativity of experience. In doing so, he transformed becoming from a secondary characteristic of reality into one of its defining principles.
ORPMOB stands firmly within this broad process tradition. At the same time, it asks whether the relational character already implicit throughout Whitehead's philosophy may itself be metaphysically more fundamental than the actual occasions through which he described reality. This question does not depart from Whitehead's project; rather, it seeks to extend it. The following section explores that possibility.
Reality begins not when "something exists."Reality begins when relations persist.
This achievement cannot be overstated. Whitehead transformed metaphysics by showing that process is not secondary to reality but intrinsic to it. Change is not what happens to reality. Change is what reality is continually doing.
Yet his remarkable account invites one further question.
Not simply,
What are actual occasions?
But rather,
What makes actual occasions possible?
This question does not reject Whitehead's philosophy. Rather, it asks whether the relational character already present throughout his account may itself be more fundamental than the actual occasions through which he described reality.
Every actual occasion already inherits a past. It prehends other occasions. It integrates multiple influences through concrescence into a unified experience. It reaches satisfaction before contributing itself objectively to future occasions. Every stage of its becoming is already constituted through relation.
Inheritance is relational.
Prehension is relational.
Concrescence is relational.
Satisfaction gathers relational possibilities into momentary coherence.
Objective immortality extends those relations into the future.
The actual occasion therefore never appears in isolation. It exists only through an ongoing web of relational activity.
This observation suggests a further possibility.
Perhaps relation is not merely something that actual occasions perform.
Perhaps relation is the very condition that makes actual occasions possible.
ORPMOB therefore proposes that relation itself constitutes the more fundamental metaphysical primitive. Actual occasions remain indispensable, but they are no longer understood as metaphysics' starting point. Rather, they are the earliest coherent embodiments of relation in becoming.
Whitehead asked,
What are the ultimate units of reality?
ORPMOB asks a different question.
What is the ultimate condition that makes any units of reality possible?
Its answer is relation.
For an actual occasion never exists independently of inheritance, prehension, concrescence, satisfaction, or objective immortality. Every one of these activities presupposes relation. Remove relation and there is nothing to inherit, nothing to prehend, nothing to integrate, nothing to unify, nothing to satisfy, and nothing to contribute to the future. The actual occasion is therefore not merely relational in its behavior; it is relational in its very possibility.
Suppose, then, that relation is primitive.
Relation responds.
Responsive relation becomes.
Becoming gives rise to actual occasions.
Actual occasions achieve coherence.
Coherence persists.
Persistence gives rise to enduring realities.
Enduring realities participate in ever richer forms of organization, consciousness, value, meaning, and creative advance.
Reality then unfolds as an open history of relational becoming.
The distinction between Whitehead and ORPMOB is therefore subtle but significant. Whitehead's philosophy explains how reality continually becomes through actual occasions. ORPMOB seeks to identify the deeper ontological condition that makes such becoming possible in the first place. It therefore does not replace Whitehead's philosophy but asks a prior ontological question - one that moves beneath actual occasions to the relational condition already presupposed. Actual occasions remain indispensable. ORPMOB simply proposes that they are not metaphysically primitive. They are the earliest coherent embodiments of relation in becoming.
Consequently, becoming cannot be understood independently of relation. It is neither perpetual change nor movement for its own sake. Rather, becoming is the continual realization of relational possibilities through relational responsiveness, whereby reality generates genuine novelty while preserving sufficient coherence for enduring worlds, living systems, stable identities, and conscious participation to emerge.
Relation and becoming therefore belong inseparably together.
Relation provides reality's ontological grammar.
Becoming expresses that grammar as the continual creativity of existence.
Reality is not composed of independently existing things that occasionally relate.
Reality is an open history of relational becoming from which enduring realities continually emerge.
Becoming is neither perpetual preservation nor perpetual novelty.It is the continual negotiation between inheritance and possibility.
Having established that relation constitutes the ontological condition from which becoming arises, a further question naturally follows.
What is becoming?
The answer is not as simple as continual change.
Many things change without genuinely becoming. Mountains erode. Machines wear out. Stars exhaust their fuel. Even biological organisms eventually decay. Such transformations undoubtedly occur, yet change by itself does not adequately describe the creative character of reality.
Neither does becoming simply mean movement.
Movement may relocate an object without fundamentally altering its character. Repetition may preserve an existing pattern indefinitely without generating anything genuinely new. Mere succession likewise tells us little about creativity, novelty, or emergence.
Becoming therefore cannot be reduced to motion, alteration, or the simple passage of time.
Instead, ORPMOB understands becoming as the continual realization of relational possibilities through relational responsiveness.
Reality does not merely change.
Reality continually responds.
Each achieved relation inherits a history while simultaneously opening possibilities unavailable before that relation existed. Becoming therefore unfolds as an ongoing dialogue between what has already been realized and what remains possible.
Every moment inherits.
Every moment responds.
Every moment contributes.
Becoming is therefore neither perpetual preservation nor perpetual novelty.
It is the continual negotiation between inheritance and possibility.
Persistence is achieved.It is never simply given.
Questions naturally follow in the wake of becoming -
If reality is fundamentally becoming, why does it not dissolve into perpetual instability?
Conversely, if enduring realities genuinely exist, why is the future not already completely determined?
ORPMOB proposes that both conclusions misunderstand the nature of becoming. Becoming is neither unrestricted novelty nor rigid preservation. It is the continual organization of relational possibilities through relational responsiveness.
Reality therefore persists because several complementary dimensions continually cooperate rather than compete. This may be an overlooked ontological feature of reality.
This observation suggests what may be another overlooked feature of relational reality. If relation constitutes the ontological primitive, then relations cannot be understood merely as isolated connections linking otherwise independent entities. Relations themselves continually enable, constrain, enrich, and sustain one another. Reality therefore persists not through a single governing principle, but through the dynamic cooperation of complementary relational functions.
ORPMOB proposes that this relational complementarity is not accidental. It is one of the characteristic ways relation expresses itself. Inheritance, openness, responsiveness, and coherence do not compete for metaphysical priority. Each contributes something the others alone cannot provide. Together they constitute a cooperative architecture through which enduring realities continually emerge.
Without inheritance, there would be no continuity.
Without openness, there would be no novelty.
Without responsiveness, there would be no adaptation.
Without coherence, there would be no enduring realities.
In summary, none of these dimensions alone is sufficient. Each depends upon the others. They are mutually enabling relational functions. They participate in one another without collapsing into one another. Each contributes something the others alone cannot provide. Therefore, reality persists because relations continually generate new patterns of mutual enablement with one another through which richer coherence becomes functionally possible.
Inheritance preserves what has already been achieved.
Openness allows genuinely new possibilities to emerge.
Responsiveness continually evaluates changing relational conditions.
Coherence stabilizes successful achievements sufficiently for further participation.
Reality therefore remains neither static nor chaotic. It continually negotiates between continuity and creativity. Every achieved coherence becomes the inheritance for future becoming. Every inheritance presents both opportunities and constraints. Every response interprets that inheritance within present circumstances. Every interpretation opens new relational possibilities.
Some possibilities deepen coherence. Others weaken it. Still others disappear altogether. Reality therefore continually explores relational possibilities without guaranteeing that every possibility will endure. Persistence is achieved. It is never simply given.
Consequently, ORPMOB proposes a third metaphysical possibility. Reality does not persist primarily through competition alone, nor merely through static equilibrium. Rather, enduring realities emerge through dynamic cooperation. Relations continually discover new ways of enabling one another, generating richer forms of coherence while remaining open to further creativity. Cooperation is therefore understood not primarily as a moral ideal but as an ontological characteristic of relational becoming itself.
This understanding helps explain why reality exhibits both remarkable stability and extraordinary creativity.
Galaxies preserve recognizable structures across billions of years while continually evolving.
Living organisms inherit genetic and ecological histories while continually adapting to changing environments.
Human consciousness inherits memory, language, embodiment, and culture while continually generating new understanding.
Communities preserve traditions while revising them through changing historical circumstances.
Scientific knowledge advances by preserving earlier discoveries while remaining open to continual correction.
Everywhere reality exhibits the same relational architecture through relational functions that are mutually enabling from one to the other. This recurring rhythm suggests what may be called the Cycle of Relational Becoming - a pattern that reappears across every scale of reality, from cosmological evolution to conscious participation. Later essays will examine this rhythm in greater detail.
Relational Function Primary Orientation Without This Function... Inheritance Remembers the past. Carries history forward. Without inheritance → repetition has no continuity, identity has no memory, and nothing truly persists → Amnesia Openness Discloses unrealized possibilities. Invites the future. Without openness → no genuine novelty; reality becomes closed, deterministic, and exhausted → Determinism Responsiveness Engages present conditions. Discerns changing relations. Without responsiveness → no adaptation; relations become inert and incapable of learning → Rigidity Interpretation Integrates inheritance with possibility. Discerns meaning and direction. Without interpretation → no discernment; relations become blind reactions rather than creative responses → Blindness Novelty Realizes new relational possibilities. Without novelty → reality merely recycles what already exists → Repetition Coherence Stabilizes successful achievements. Makes endurance possible. Without coherence → fragmentation; novelty dissolves into chaos and nothing endures → Chaos Participation Extends achievements into wider relations and future becoming. Without participation → isolation; relations become mechanically self-contained rather than generative → Isolation
These are not separate processes. They are complementary dimensions of one ongoing relational becoming:
Without Inheritance → reality forgets. Without Openness → reality cannot surprise itself. Without Responsiveness → reality cannot adapt. Without Interpretation → reality cannot make sense of itself. Without Novelty → reality cannot create. Without Coherence → reality cannot endure. Without Participation → reality cannot extend itself beyond the isolated moment.
i) sufficiently coherent to preserve enduring worlds,ii) sufficiently open to generate genuine novelty, andiii) sufficiently responsive to remain forever unfinished.
Every enduring reality is a history of relational coherence.Reality does not endure by resisting becoming.Reality endures by continually becoming.
The preceding discussion has argued that becoming is neither chaotic nor arbitrary. That it unfolds through the continual cooperation of complementary relational functions - inheritance, openness, responsiveness, interpretation, novelty, coherence, and participation. Together these constitute the relational architecture through which enduring realities continually emerge.
Yet one important question remains.
What does becoming actually produce?
The answer is both simple and profound... it produces enduring worlds.
One misunderstanding has accompanied philosophies of becoming from their earliest beginnings. If reality is always becoming, many assume that nothing can genuinely endure. If everything continually changes, then permanence appears impossible, identity becomes illusory, and the world dissolves into an endless succession of fleeting events.
ORPMOB rejects these conclusions.
Becoming does not eliminate persistence.
It explains it.
Persistence is not the absence of becoming.
Persistence is becoming sufficiently coherent through complementary relational functions to endure.
Every enduring reality exists because countless cooperative relational achievements have stabilized across time. Every moment inherits an immeasurable relational history, responds to present conditions, interprets inherited possibilities, and contributes its own achievement to those that follow. Endurance therefore is not the preservation of absolute sameness but the continual renewal of cooperative relational coherence.
Identity emerges in precisely the same manner.
Identity is neither absolute permanence nor perpetual difference.
Rather, identity is recognizable continuity maintained through the continual cooperation of relational becoming.
A river remains the same river not because the same water forever occupies its channel, but because a coherent relational pattern continually renews itself through changing waters.
A living organism remains itself not because every molecule remains unchanged, but because complementary biological relations continually preserve the organism's integrity amid continual metabolic exchange.
Human persons likewise remain themselves through the ongoing integration of memory, embodiment, experience, relationships, interpretation, and conscious responsiveness. Every day introduces change, yet identity persists because relational coherence continually reorganizes itself without dissolving into fragmentation.
Being, therefore, is not the opposite of becoming.
Being is becoming sufficiently coherent through complementary relational functions to endure.
This insight reaches far beyond biology or human experience.
Across every scale of reality, enduring worlds emerge because complementary relational functions continually cooperate in ways appropriate to their own level of organization.
Stars preserve recognizable structures while continually transforming their internal composition.
Galaxies maintain their identities while interacting with neighboring systems.
Ecosystems persist while countless organisms are born, mature, die, and are replaced.
Cultures inherit traditions while continually adapting them to changing historical circumstances.
Languages evolve while preserving their capacity to communicate across generations.
Scientific knowledge advances by conserving earlier achievements even as new discoveries revise previous understanding.
Reality everywhere exhibits the same relational architecture.
Inheritance.
Openness.
Responsiveness.
Interpretation.
Novelty.
Coherence.
Participation.
These are not competing metaphysical principles. They are complementary relational functions whose continual mutual enablement allows enduring realities to emerge. Consequently, enduring realities should not be understood as exceptions to process but as its highest achievements.
A mountain is not static because it never changes; it endures because geological relations continually renew its recognizable form across immense spans of time.
A forest persists not because individual trees are permanent but because innumerable cycles of growth, decay, death, renewal, and ecological participation continually recreate the living ecosystem.
Even civilizations endure only through continual reinterpretation, adaptation, cooperation, and participation across generations.
Every enduring reality is therefore less like a finished object than an ongoing history. It is a cooperative relational achievement continually renewed through participation in further becoming.
This understanding also dissolves the traditional opposition between being and becoming. Being is not abandoned in favor of process. Nor is process understood as the denial of enduring realities. Rather, being and becoming describe two inseparable dimensions of one relational universe.
Being names what becoming has achieved.
Becoming names how being continually comes to be.
Neither can be understood apart from the other.
Reality therefore is not composed of static objects moving through an external flow of time. It is composed of enduring histories of relational coherence continually realizing new possibilities through complementary relational functions.
Every persistence becomes the inheritance for future becoming.
Every becoming seeks richer coherence.
Every coherence opens further possibilities for participation.
Reality does not move toward completion.
Reality moves toward ever richer participation.
Every achievement then becomes the beginning of another history.
Alfred North Whitehead. Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology. Corrected Edition. Edited by David Ray Griffin and Donald W. Sherburne. New York: Free Press, 1978.
———. Adventures of Ideas. New York: Free Press, 1967.
———. Modes of Thought. New York: Free Press, 1968.
———. Science and the Modern World. New York: Free Press, 1967.
Henri Bergson. Creative Evolution. Translated by Arthur Mitchell. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1998.
Heraclitus. Fragments. Various editions.
Process Philosophy and Metaphysics
John B. Cobb Jr.. A Christian Natural Theology. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1965.
———. Process Theology as Political Theology. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1982.
Charles Hartshorne. Reality as Social Process. Boston: Beacon Press, 1953.
David Ray Griffin. Reenchantment Without Supernaturalism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001.
———. Unsnarling the World-Knot. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.
Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki. God, Christ, Church. New York: Crossroad Publishing, 1982.
Catherine Keller. Face of the Deep: A Theology of Becoming. London: Routledge, 2003.
Thomas Jay Oord. The Death of Omnipotence and Birth of Amipotence. Grasmere, ID: SacraSage Press, 2023.
Science, Complexity, and Emergence
Fritjof Capra. The Web of Life. New York: Anchor Books, 1997.
Fritjof Capra and Pier Luigi Luisi. The Systems View of Life. Cambridge University Press, 2014.
Ilya Prigogine. Order Out of Chaos. New York: Bantam Books, 1984.
John H. Holland. Hidden Order: How Adaptation Builds Complexity. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1995.
Stuart Kauffman. At Home in the Universe. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.
Terrence Deacon. Incomplete Nature. New York: W. W. Norton, 2012.
Sean Carroll. The Big Picture. New York: Dutton, 2016.
Cosmology, Evolution, and Systems
Lynn Margulis. Symbiotic Planet. New York: Basic Books, 1998.
Gregory Bateson. Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity. New York: Dutton, 1979.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. The Phenomenon of Man. New York: Harper Perennial, 2008.
Ervin László. Science and the Akashic Field. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 2004.
Brian Swimme. The Universe Is a Green Dragon. Santa Fe, NM: Bear & Company, 1984.
Related Philosophical Perspectives
Michael Polanyi. The Tacit Dimension. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966.
Charles Sanders Peirce. The Essential Peirce. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
William James. Essays in Radical Empiricism. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996.
John Dewey. Experience and Nature. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1958.
ORPMOB Series
Slater, R. E.
———. Reality & Cosmology Series.
———. Reality & Metaphysics Series.
———. Open and Relational Process Metaphysics of Becoming (ORPMOB). Ongoing philosophical essays.
Why Were These Authors Chosen?
ORPMOB stands within this broader conversation while advancing a distinct proposal: that relation itself constitutes the ontological primitive from which becoming, coherence, persistence, identity, participation, and enduring realities emerge.
In that respect, this essay seeks not merely to summarize the process tradition but to extend it through a more explicitly relational metaphysics.
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