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(In »Intensities and phenomena in a relationalist universe«)

The foundation for philosophical relationalism is laid by the American pragmatists at the end of the 19th century, clearly exemplified by Peirce’s familiar quotation “law is par excellence the thing that wants a reason.”. He argues that the laws of nature ought reasonably to be subject to evolution in the same degree as everything else in existence and that therefore they can never be predetermined. It is simply a matter of the cause of the effect preceding the effect, and this does not in itself require an eternal law. Peirce actually goes so far as to say that if we presume that time is an actual constant, the behavioural patterns of nature by necessity must sooner or later change over time. After Peirce’s revolutionary contributions, philosophical relationalism is clearly placed within pragmatist metaphysics. And it is also within pragmatism that it is developed in full when the British-American philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, in parallel with the Bohrian revolution in physics, publishes his manifesto Process and Reality in 1929.