Quantum Field Theory And Hegel’s Mistakes: How Process Philosophy Helps Solve the Paradoxes of Modern Physics

Heraclitus once said that a man never steps into the same river twice, because by the time they first step out of the river, it is no longer the same river and he is no longer the same man. Heraclitus can be understood as one of the pioneers of process philosophy.

At its heart, process philosophy is a way of understanding reality as dynamic and ever-changing rather than static. In traditional metaphysics, reality is often pictured as being made up of discrete “things” or objects, each with its own stable existence and properties. However, process philosophy challenges this view by proposing that nothing truly ‘is’ in a permanent sense; instead, everything is continuously becoming, changing, and evolving.

To understand process philosophy, imagine a river. At a glance, it might seem like a single thing — a river. But when you look closer, you see that a river is a continuous flow of water, always moving, always changing. The river only appears to be a “thing” because its overall shape and position remain relatively stable over time. In reality, it’s a process of flowing water. This is how process philosophy sees all of reality: there are no absolute, unchanging “things,” only processes that seem solid because they change slowly or predictably.

When we look at everyday objects like chairs, trees, or rocks, they seem like stable, unchanging “things.” But process philosophy argues that these are simply processes that unfold so slowly that we can treat them, for practical purposes, as objects. A tree grows and changes over decades, and a rock might erode over centuries. Because these changes are so gradual, it’s useful for us to treat these entities as stable “things.” But in reality, even the most seemingly solid objects are undergoing continuous change, just on timescales that aren’t obvious to us.

In this view, calling something a “thing” is a convenience, a way of summarizing a process that changes slowly enough to be perceived as stable. Reality, then, is not actually composed of nouns (things) but verbs (processes). A tree isn’t a “thing” that exists in a fixed way but a complex process that happens, a process of growth, transformation, and decay.

In a reality defined by change, we need a way to distinguish between different types of happenings. Here we can define a distinction between events and processes.

1. Processes are occurrences that unfold over time. For example, “raining” or “building a house” are processes; they take time and have various steps or phases.
2. Events, on the other hand, are instantaneous happenings. They don’t take time to unfold; they occur at a single moment, like flipping a switch or taking a picture. Events are the building blocks of processes in the same way that atoms were once thought to be the building blocks of matter.

To put it simply, if a process is like a movie, an event is like a single frame. Processes are made up of a series of events, with each event marking a tiny change or happening within the broader process.

This is why Deleuze says in The Logic of Sense that events never happen in the present but only in the past or future, when he makes a distinction between Chronos and Aion. It does not make sense to say that events happen in the present since the present is infinitely small for Aion. Aion is the time where only the past and the future exist, and the present is an infinitesimally small point or an infinitely divisible particle. The present, for Aion, tends towards zero, like a mathematical limit. An event never happens in the present when the present it infinitely short: to say “I turned on my flashlight in the past” makes sense, and so does “I will turn on my flashlight in the future”, but it does not make much sense to say “I am turning on my flashlight right now” since the act would imply duration but the turning on and off of a flashlight is subjectively perceived as instant.

One can easily observe how process philosophy privileges time over space in our view of reality, which is the opposite of what most metaphysicians have been doing over millennia. By localizing events in time, instead of in space, process philosophy can help solve the paradoxes of modern physics that do not appeal to our common sense. For example, one of the classic mysteries of quantum mechanics is the wave-particle duality: how can a particle like an electron sometimes behave like a particle and other times like a wave? In traditional metaphysics, this seems contradictory. By trying to localize particles as a ‘thing’ in space, traditional thing-based metaphysics fails to explain how a particle can be in two places at once before observation. When we instead view wave-function collapse not as a thing that exists but as an event that happens, reality is no longer made up of contradictions.

Resolving contradictions is one of my goals in creating this process-based metaphysical system. According to Hegel, or to contemporary Hegelians like Zizek, contradictions are an essential part of reality. Hegel starts off his preface to The Phenomenology of Spirit by explaining his concept of “Aufhebung” (sublation) through the example of a plant. Hegel says that a seed grows into a flower which then grows into a bud, and with each stage, the previous stage is both preserved and cancelled. “Sublation” is the term in English usually used to encompass this paradoxical action of both preserving and cancelling something out simultaneously: we can say that a tree sublates the idea of a sapling which sublates the idea of a seed, or that an elder sublates the idea of a young adult which sublates the idea of a child.

However, there is no contradiction here. The only reason Hegel sees contradictions everywhere is that he sees change from the perspective of stability. Hegel is the process philosopher who couldn’t accept himself as a process philosopher. Hegel is the philosopher of difference through identity. On one hand, Hegel sees change everywhere, but on the other hand, he expected, at an unconscious level perhaps, that things should be stable, or that the change should be analyzed from the perspective of stable identities. When you expect or assume that the world is static and fixed, and you also notice change, you will obviously call it “contradiction” because it contradicts your a priori assumption that the world should not change. To be clear: I am not implying that Hegel explicitly stated that the world does not change, quite the contrary, he was so close to being a proper process philosopher because he saw change everywhere. What I am suggesting is that Hegel’s books can be seen as books in which identity itself observes and talks about difference. It is almost as if the object of his study was difference, but the subject which was studying was identity.

“Sublation” is only a thing when you observe a process in constant change that the subject intentionally divides up into clear stages. In reality, there is no sublation: the seed which grows into a sapling and which grows into a tree is one unified process, evolving over time. It is not something that “is”, it does not exist in any way, it is simply something that happens or something that becomes. Only through the subject’s desire to affirm the idea of things existing do we divide this process up into “stages”: the stage at which it is a seed, then the stage at which it is a sapling, and then the stage at which it is a tree. Then Hegel comes and says that each stage ‘sublates’ the previous one, and that in fact there were three things that existed here, each contradicting the previous one. But there is no necessity to do this, since the act of dividing a process into discrete stages is first off a choice, and second off an imaginary construct, a division of boundaries that exists in what Lacan would’ve called “the imaginary order”, or what Deleuze would’ve called a “striation”. By his desire to divide up processes into multiple stages, each stage resulting from the dialectical unfolding of the previous one (and this applies to his philosophy of history as well), Hegel was demonstrating his bias in favor of identity and against difference.

To exemplify my point more clearly, let us now move to the beginning of another one of his major works: The Science of Logic. In it, Hegel starts with pure indeterminate being, not the existence of something in particular, but just the fact that there is something instead of nothing, being-in-itself. Hegel reasons that pure being sublates into nothing, because if the only thing that exists is not something in particular, but just something in general, then that is the same thing as saying that there is nothing. However, the unity-in-difference of the previous two concepts (being and nothing) are sublated themselves into the concept of becoming.

It is clear that the concept of becoming is central to Hegel’s philosophy. However, it is also clear that he nevertheless privileged identity over difference in his analysis. Our question for him should thus be: why did becoming evolve out of being? Why did you start from being in the first place? Why is being, or the fact that there “is” something instead of nothing, the only thing that is so obvious to you that it does not need a proof? Why is it that for Hegel, becoming evolves out of being, and not the other way around? It should’ve been being that evolved out of becoming. His analysis would have been much more adequate were he to start from becoming instead of being, because it is not obvious a priori why there is something instead of nothing. In fact, nothing “is” in the strict sense, reality is not made up of things that “are” but of events that happen. Why did Hegel start from “something is” and not from “something happened”? Or, to put it in Deleuze’s words:

“Only action and affirmation return: becoming has being and only becoming has being. That which is opposed to becoming, the same or the identical, strictly speaking, is not.”¹

My critique of Hegel applies to Slavoj Zizek as well. According to Zizek, contradictions happen at the subatomic level because God did not write the code for that part of the simulation we live in². For Zizek, reality is like a video game, and in video games, there are certain parts of the world which are inaccessible for which the code was not even written. In a video game, you may see a scene in the distance that looks like a forest, but the code for what happens inside that forest was not even written because the developers did not want the player to enter that part of the map. In case the game glitches out and the player is able to enter that part of the world, things will go wrong and they will notice the game glitching out and not rendering properly. Zizek argues that in a similar way, God underestimated us and never thought that we would be able to ‘enter’ the subatomic level and thus he did not write the code for what happens there.

But Zizek is wrong. There are no contradictions at the subatomic level. God knew what he was doing. A particle is not in two places at once before observation because a particle never “is” in one place at once either, in fact a particle, or any object, never is in the first place. Nothing is. Reality is not made up of things that are. Reality is made up of events that happen, and of processes made up of events, and of larger processes made up of smaller sub-processes. A process does not exist, it happens, or as Deleuze would put it, it “insists or subsists” in reality, just as sense insists or subsists in the expressed of a proposition. Wave-particle collapse is simply an event that happens, and perhaps just like the atom was once upon a time thought to be the building block of reality (the smallest “thing” that exists out of which every larger thing is made up of), so can we consider the wave-function collapse the shortest event that happens (the building block of reality out of which all longer processes are made up of). We need to replace the atom with the wave-function collapse. Perhaps just like the object of study of mereology is the relation between how bigger objects are made up of smaller objects, so can we create a “process mereology” where longer processes are made up of shorter processes in time.

One approach to modern physics compatible with this view of process philosophy I just described is Quantum Field Theory. Quantum Field Theory (QFT) is one of the most successful frameworks in modern physics, combining quantum mechanics with special relativity to describe how fundamental particles interact. Unlike traditional particle physics, which treats particles as individual entities, QFT views particles as excitations or localized energy “quanta” of continuous fields that pervade all of space. This is not only compatible with the process philosophy of the likes of Whitehead, Deleuze or Heraclitus (the view that reality is made up of events that happen), but is also compatible with Spinoza’s monism, where everything in reality is connected.

In the context of quantum field theory, a field is like an invisible, continuous medium that fills all of space, similar to an ocean that stretches across the entire universe. But instead of water, this ocean is made up of tiny, vibrating energy values at every point in space.

Each type of particle has its own field. For example: there’s an electromagnetic field that corresponds to photons (particles of light), there’s an electron field that corresponds to electrons, etc.

A field itself isn’t something we can “see” directly, but we notice its effects when it “ripples” or “excites.” When a field vibrates or gets excited at a specific spot, it creates a particle — a little packet of energy that appears to us as a photon, electron, or another particle. Think of it like a wave popping up in a calm ocean: that wave is temporary and localized, but it’s still part of the whole ocean. Similarly, particles are temporary ripples within their fields.

In simple terms:

• A field is an invisible sea of energy that exists everywhere.
• Particles are like little waves or ripples in this energy sea, appearing when the field vibrates in specific ways.

This means particles aren’t like solid, standalone objects; they’re more like disturbances or events in the underlying fields.

This understanding of fields is also compatible with a Lacanian understanding of experience as made up of the real, the imaginary and the symbolic orders. For Lacan, what we commonly call “reality” are actually interactions between images or concepts (imaginary) and referents of meaning-creation (symbolic). What actually is there outside of our observations, the real, is fundamentally inaccessible. Lacan defines the real as that which evades all imagination and symbolization. We never have direct access to the real, we can neither imagine it nor talk about it. However, we can feel its effects through the disturbances it provokes in our imaginary and symbolic frameworks. In other words, for Lacan, reality is actually made up of disturbances of effects of the real, the real being the underlying undifferentiated field or, perhaps, ‘substance’ that the world is made up of. We can notice the real not through what we can directly perceive, but through the gaps, cracks, contradictions and imperfections of reality. The real is when reality ‘fails’ in being equal to itself.

This view of the real as that which is inaccessible is compatible with QFT’s treatment of fields as the underlying causes behind reality. When we observe particles, what we’re seeing is not isolated, permanent entities but localized events within a field. Each “particle” arises from field fluctuations and can be thought of as a temporary state — a “happening” rather than a “being.” This aligns well with a metaphysical view where reality consists of dynamic, momentary processes instead of static objects. Particles manifest and interact as transient events, and their existence is always contextual, based on interactions within the field.

Just like the Lacanian real, which cannot be imagined or symbolized, physical fields also cannot be directly perceived through your five senses. Instead, what we can perceive are the effects these fields have on objects and the environment around us. For example:

• In a magnetic field, we can see the attraction or repulsion between magnets, or see iron filings align with the magnetic lines when sprinkled on paper above a magnet. But we don’t see the magnetic field itself; we see its influence on the filings.
• In an electric field, we might observe the motion of charged particles, like how static electricity makes hair stand up. Similarly, we don’t perceive the field directly but rather the effects of electric charges moving due to the field.
• Gravitational fields, too, are perceived only through their effects, like objects falling toward the Earth or the way planets orbit the sun.

Within the framework of quantum field theory, fields are considered the fundamental fabric of reality. According to this view, everything — from particles to forces — is understood as excitations or fluctuations within various fields. Particles like electrons, quarks, and photons are thought to be localized excitations or “quanta” of underlying fields (such as the electron field or the electromagnetic field). Forces like electromagnetism, gravity, and the strong and weak nuclear forces are also field interactions. For instance, the electromagnetic force is mediated by the electromagnetic field, and gravity can be thought of as curvature in the spacetime field (in general relativity). Even spacetime itself is viewed as a dynamic field that can be bent and shaped by mass and energy. This spacetime field forms the stage on which all physical processes unfold, making it integral to the field-based view of reality.

To clarify: reality and the real are opposed for Lacan. In my interpretation, the real is the only thing which exists, which are fields, which are invisible to the naked eye. Reality, however, which we do have direct access to, is made up of events that happen, events that are caused by the underlying fields which we do not have access to. Real = fields, reality = effects of fields. The fields are invisible, and we only assume their existence due to the effects that happen because of them. Reality, thus, is not made up of things that exist, since the only things that exist are fields which we cannot even see or touch: instead reality is made up of events and processes that happen, and these events and processes do not exist. Nothing exists in reality, the only locus of existence is the inaccessible real.

To continue, our modern understanding of Quantum Field Theory is more compatible with Deleuze’s philosophy of perpetual becoming than with Hegel’s philosophy of contradiction. A particle is an effect of an invisible field, it is not a thing that exists but something that happens, and ultimately it distinguishes itself from the field without the field distinguishing itself from it, just like the ripples in a sea of water distinguish themselves from the sea while also being part of it. This is very similar to Deleuze’s conception of difference. According to Deleuze:

“The difference ‘between’ two things is only empirical, and the corresponding determinations are only extrinsic. However, instead of something distinguished from something else, imagine something which distinguishes itself — and yet that from which it distinguishes itself does not distinguish itself from it. Lightning, for example, distinguishes itself from the black sky but must also trail it behind, as though it were distinguishing itself from that which does not distinguish itself from it. It is as if the ground rose to the surface, without ceasing to be ground.”³

An effect is a change or disturbance in reality, something which distinguishes itself from everything else we previously experienced. When we experience something that happens, we, by definition, experience a change in reality, a disturbance, something which affects reality in a certain way, a force or attraction or repulsion. That’s what makes effects a type of difference instead of identity. Difference here shall not be understood as the difference between two or more things, but just difference in itself. Reality is made up of differences that repeat themselves, according to Deleuze. What happens again and again is difference, since difference is not something that exists or ‘is’ in the classical sense of the term (those are identities), but something that happens, it is a change from the previous state of affairs, a becoming, and that becoming can’t help but keep repeating itself over and over. The eternal return of Nietzsche is not the eternal return of the same but the eternal return of difference.

In a world where all is becoming and nothing truly is, perhaps the only constant is change itself — a relentless dance of difference unfolding through the silent rhythm of hidden fields.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — -

REFERENCES:

1: Gilles Deleuze, “Nietzsche and Philosophy”, Preface

2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xv3qRcYII3U&ab_channel=IWOULDPREFERNOTTO

3: Gilles Deleuze, “Difference and Repetition”, pg. 28