I. Events, not things
Alfred North Whitehead’s process metaphysics proposes that the fundamental items of reality are occasions of experience—drops of becoming rather than inert lumps of matter. For a volume devoted to world models, the shift is radical: the modeler is not placing static objects on a grid but tracking patterns of becoming whose identities are habits of repetition rather than substances hidden behind appearances.
II. The lure of eternal objects
Whitehead’s vocabulary of “eternal objects” and “prehensions” can be read epistemically: possibilities ingress into actuality; each occasion selects among potentials. Scientific laws, on such a reading, describe stable lures in the pattern of selection—not iron rails laid over dead stuff. The scientist’s diagram is therefore always a freeze-frame of a river.
III. Relation to map and territory
Classical “map and territory” talk presumes a static territory. Process philosophy complicates the metaphor: the territory is itself a family of overlapping processes. Maps remain indispensable; they simply must be understood as interventions that slow becoming enough for prediction and control.
IV. Design and pedagogy
Teaching with Whitehead in view means foregrounding revision: models as provisional stabilizations rather than final pictures. That stance pairs naturally with simulation-first curricula where students watch models fail under new parameters.
V. Conclusion
Process as world is an invitation to humility about representation—and to creativity about how models can honor flux without surrendering rigor.