Douglas Tooley
Are you familiar with the theory of Morphic Resonance from Rupert Sheldrake?
Sheldrake is not a process thinker per se, but is definitely a close friend – in my opinion!
Penrose and Hammeroff have an intriguing theory of consciousness as it relates to quantum theory.
It’s an easy Google search.
Personally I believe consciousness requires a connection to the primordial quantum, also what Whitehead would call the primordial nature of god.
Subjective experience is data, even though much, but not all, of science rejects this.
Our historical sense of god is based on the same subjective awareness as in the non-theistic aspects of Whitehead.
Note curiously that many religions including Eastern do not have a god per se either.
There is a broad debate on various flavors of panpsychism. The debate itself is illuminating, in my opinion panentheism is the best but the differences are subtle.
It’s my understanding that it was the Process Theologians who saved Whitehead from obscurity.
That spreading influence is still happening, as you note. Let’s hope it continues.
Our souls, connected to the universe, may well be also the source of consciousness.
There is a large body of research on meditation that goes to health and I believe goes to Whitehead in relevant manner.
The Mind and Life Institute has well funded researchers and was founded by the Dalai Lama and the pioneering neuroscientist Francesco Varela.
In a deterministic classical universe the ‘clock’ can be run forward or backward with complete mathematical precision.
Not so with creativity. Curiously creativity shares this fact with entropy. You cannot predict the ordered state from the disordered.
I try to contemplate on Whitehead from an evolving modern physics perspective.
For me interconnectedness is the energy field, interrelation is the way different portions of the field interact with each other to form a particle.
As evidence consider the measurement ‘problem’ in quantum mechanics. As you will recall quantum fields collapse upon measurement. Measurement is only relation and it’s my belief that it’s from the relation between different parts of the field to each other that builds our physical reality.
This is discussed in the physics literature Wheeler and this German guy Carlos Rovelli worked with. My apologies I’m forgetting the name and Google is not providing an easy answer. He does very little in English.
Also, have you read Kimmerer’s ‘Braiding Sweetgrass’?
I too like the presentation of a hurricane as a self organizing ‘thing’ in the context of the global climate.
If you haven’t read her I’d suggest Robin Wall Kimmerer’s 2013 book ‘Braiding Sweetgrass’, a successful book hopefully becoming a classic.
Kimmerer, a biology professor and an active member in her indigenous community, brings together science and indigenous wisdom in a manner that was enlightening to me.
I have been thinking of this question but from a slightly different frame.
For myself I am contemplating Joe process thought relates to other disciplines that are sympathetic with Whitehead’s speculative approach but may not have any awareness of Whitehead at all.
Towards this fact we should be humble and also not expect those practices to join us in any fashion.
But still we can draw from them, and even promote them as we consider them in relation to other epistemologies and even evolve process thought in a manner that respects individual differences and the sovereignty of the individual, humble, mind.
I’m at the final chapter of Rupert Sheldrake’s ‘Science Set Free’, which relies heavily on Whitehead, especially Chapter 4 – Is Matter Unconscious. I would highly recommend this accessible chapter as well as the whole book.
I do believe Sheldrake also shows us a bit of where our reading is going in the future ;-).
Next up is his son Merlin’s mushroom/mycellium book, Entangled Life.
FWIW, I like Cosmo’s music too.