Process Philosophy and the Call for a New Paradigm of Thought
----Reflections on the 18th Process Summer Academy
By Jirong Chen
Introduction
At some point, it is difficult to say exactly when, modern ways of understanding the world began to feel increasingly fragmented and opaque. While the rapid development of science and technology has vastly expanded human knowledge of the universe and of ourselves, it has also solidified our thinking within rigid models and formal systems. Under the mechanistic paradigm of modern thought, humanity faces an unprecedented sense of loneliness—one that manifests in the silencing of life’s most fundamental questions by cold numbers and formulas, in the alienation between human beings and nature, between individuals and society, and ultimately in a pervasive anxiety and restlessness that has become an inescapable spiritual crisis of modern life.
I experienced this sense of fragmentation particularly acutely during my recent university application process. When I sincerely shared my sixteen years of interdisciplinary learning with mentors, I was told that my interests were “too broad,” lacking sufficient specialization to form a clear application profile. This assessment left me deeply unsettled. I understand that universities, as institutions for cultivating talent, must select candidates based on specialization, social value, and distinctive traits. Yet I could not help but ask: can such narrowly selected talents truly adapt to a world that is complex, dynamic, and deeply interconnected?
From physics to geology, from history to art, and from there to environmental science, what has consistently driven my exploration has been a single, persistent question about life itself: Where am I going? Where is humanity going? Where is the universe going? Yet within the modern educational system, this holistic mode of inquiry encounters resistance at every turn. Why must understanding the world require slicing knowledge into isolated, unrelated fragments?
In my confusion, I turned to philosophy, hoping this ancient discipline might offer a systematic reflection on the meaning of life. Yet the dominant tradition of Western analytic philosophy did not provide the answers I sought. From Plato’s dualism between the world of Forms and the world of appearances, to Descartes’ cogito ergo sum, which radically separates subject and object, mind and matter, and onward to existentialism and nihilism as responses to skepticism, Western philosophy seems repeatedly to solve one problem only by generating several new ones. With the rise of modern science, philosophy became separated from science, reason opposed to faith, and human existence fragmented into disjointed parts. In the process of modernization, humanity “killed God” with its own hands—and gradually lost confidence in reason itself.
It was not until I encountered the process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead and participated in the 18th Process Summer Academy held from July 2-8, 2025 in Jinhua that clarity finally emerged. Whitehead’s fundamental insight that being is becoming, together with his profound vision of the organic interconnectedness of the universe, resonated deeply with my prior engagement with Confucian, Buddhist, and Daoist thought, as well as with my interdisciplinary studies. More importantly, it opened for me an entirely new way of thinking—one capable of responding to the complex challenges of the twenty-first century.
Shifts in Understanding under Postmodern Thought
My intellectual journey began with a perplexity about life itself.
As a child, I exhibited an unusually early curiosity about life and death. I repeatedly asked my mother where people go after they die. Unable to answer, she resorted to the Christian narrative of heaven and hell. Christianity offers not only moral standards for life but also a clearly charted path before and after death. For many, this is where existential anxiety comes to rest, entrusted to God. Yet after studying Whitehead’s process philosophy, this account began to feel unsatisfying. How, after all, can the existence of God be proven? Aquinas’s Five Ways failed to persuade me. The motion of the universe does not seem to require a personalized deity as its prime mover. The emergence of order from chaos, the evolution from unity to multiplicity, may simply follow the universe’s own intrinsic tendencies. In this sense, the Daoist notion of the ineffable Dao—“darkness within darkness”—seems more consistent with my imagination of a final cause. Descartes’ proof of God rests entirely on the premise of the cogito. Yet a thinker cannot have the same thought twice; the self that thinks in this moment is already different from the self that thought a moment ago. If thinking alone cannot secure the existence of the self, it can hardly establish the existence of an omniscient and omnipotent God.
During middle school, classical physics proudly presented humanity’s success in legislating nature, with Newtonian mechanics as its crowning achievement. Yet the world depicted by classical physics is static and lifeless, standing in stark contrast to the vibrant reality we observe. At the microscopic level, the behavior of particles diverges radically from macroscopic physical laws; time, treated as reversible and calculable, flows irreversibly and nonlinearly within living beings. Sitting by the sea and watching the tides, I noticed that each wave pushes sand into a new configuration, and each wave consists of entirely different droplets of water. I began to realize that real nature may be the opposite of what our models suggest: random, plural, and irreversible. At first, this realization was unsettling, as if it stripped humanity of its sense of control over nature. Yet it also allowed for a more egalitarian and long-term perspective on the relationship between humans and the natural world, prompting a rethinking of humanity’s place in the universe.
In high school geology, I encountered a striking paradox: although the law of entropy dictates a general tendency toward disorder, the evolution of life exhibits an opposing, upward creative trajectory. In reading The Function of Reason during the 18th process academy, I found Whitehead’s explanation compelling. Life displays a distinctive form of reason through its ongoing resistance to entropy—a reason that guides organisms to actively transform their environments. This rationality differs fundamentally from the rationality of Western dualism: it does not arise from the pursuit of absolute truth or transcendental certainty, but from life’s own creative impulse. It is a relational force oriented toward the ultimate causes of the universe, enabling life to break out of equilibrium while simultaneously regulating itself amid entropy, thus exhibiting a unique integrative function.
I later devoted myself to art, aesthetics, and religion—fields often dismissed as “useless” within modern industrial education. To me, art is the most vivid manifestation of what Whitehead calls life’s creativity. Artistic creation is not mere imitation of a realm of ideas, but arises from a higher-order desire: through aesthetic experience, humans achieve satisfaction by actively transforming old orders into new ones. This process transcends both mechanical laws and Darwinian survival.
In Ethics of Creativity, beauty is presented as the highest ethical aim within process philosophy. Traditional aesthetics defines beauty as “purposiveness without purpose,” closely tied to rationality within a dualistic framework. In contrast, process philosophy understands beauty as immanent in all actuality—in the mutual adjustment of elements within the becoming of actual occasions. Beauty is the ultimate aim within apparent disorder. Through prehension, concrescence, and satisfaction, changing appearances and inherited realities generate contrasts—not as dualistic separations, but as creative advances between eternal objects and subjective forms. Creativity drives the process toward satisfaction, and the relative harmony achieved is a pursuit of beauty.
This reminds me of the naturally formed hexagonal joints in igneous rock I observed during geological fieldwork. As magma flows, it continuously adjusts to temperature, pressure, and motion, eventually forming the most harmonious, stress-minimizing structure. Might this not be a form of convergence toward beauty, even in nonliving matter?
Process aesthetics restores a confidence we had lost. By positing beauty as an ultimate cause, it affirms the intrinsic value of humans and other organisms alike. This provides a foundation for humanistic values in the post–artificial intelligence era and offers ethical guidance toward actions that enhance beauty for oneself and others. Morality, understood through beauty, becomes a living art rather than social constraint.
Process philosophy also led me to reexamine my religious journey. As a child, I often accompanied my parents to temples, kneeling in reverence. What knelt then was not my reason, but my soul—already crying out before the self inhabiting this body had awakened. In fear and uncertainty, religion functions as a warm hand, soothing humanity’s innate trembling and longing. In retrospect, I see religion as a bridge between the search for transcendence and the silence of the world, providing existential grounding beyond reason. This role persists even after the Enlightenment.
In process thought, religion does not lose relevance but gains renewed interpretation.
Christian love, for instance, affirms the intrinsic value of life and calls for active participation in cosmic creativity. Similarly, Eastern traditions resonate deeply with process thought: Buddhism’s doctrine of dependent origination dissolves the notion of an independent self, while Daoism conceives the universe as a living, dynamic organism, proclaiming that “Heaven and Earth are born with me, and all things are one with me.”
Through these reflections, process philosophy has integrated my prior knowledge into a coherent whole, generating new wisdom. As prehension theory suggests, the many become one—and are increased by one. Past, present, and future are intimately connected; the past does not vanish but becomes seed for new creation. I believe this is what philosophy ought to offer: a mode of thinking engaged with reality, science, and lived experience—not a hyper-specialized discipline isolated within academia.
Process Philosophy and the Call for a New Paradigm
Today’s world faces unprecedented challenges: climate crisis, cultural disintegration, disease, war, and widening inequality. These are not isolated problems but interwoven systemic crises, signaling the urgent need for a new paradigm of thought. This is not a mere update of knowledge but a cognitive revolution—one capable of grasping systems, navigating change, and understanding interconnection.
Consider climate change. The primary obstacle is not a lack of technical solutions but the failure of social and economic systems to transform. Corporations need not only policy incentives but a shift in consumer demand. Utilitarian production models sever economic activity from ecological systems and ignore collective participation. Genuine transformation must begin with a change in thinking, rippling outward through individuals, markets, and policies.
A case from New Zealand illustrates this shift powerfully. After over 160 years of struggle by the Māori people, the Whanganui River was granted legal personhood in 2017. This was not merely a legal innovation but a profound transformation in human–nature relations. The river was recognized not as a resource but as a living entity in symbiosis with humans. Ecological protection became part of cultural identity, generating positive social and environmental effects worldwide.
Such process thinking demands educational transformation. Education must embrace integration, interdisciplinarity, and lived engagement. It must extend beyond classrooms into ecosystems and daily life, guiding students to recognize their place within the cosmic web and participate in the great creative advance. Education, ultimately, is the source of all upward and life-affirming forces.
(The author of this article, Chen Jirong, is a participant in the 18th Process Summer Academy. She is a 11thgrade student at Beijing No. 11 High School)