From the Inside Flap
"Starting from recent interpretations of paradoxical experiments in quantum physics--such as those on nonlocality and decoherence--Michael Epperson has done a wonderful job of exploring in detail the remarkable parallels in Alfred North Whitehead's philosophical analysis of the transition from potentiality to actuality in elementary events."
IAN G. BARBOUR, author of "Religion and Science" (Gifford Lectures Series)
"Many of us in the 'process' community have felt a general congruity between Whitehead's cosmology and quantum theory, even though the latter may have directly affected Whitehead's conceptuality only tangentially. We have been glad that in the past decade there has been growing interest among quantum theorists in Whitehead's thought. We especially welcome this remarkable volume. It proposes a correlation of Whitehead's quite technical analysis of the phases of the concrescence of momentary occasions and the strange account of quantum events to which the evidence has driven physicists. At the very least, Michael Epperson has put forward ideas that warrant close attention and point fruitful directions for further inquiry. We may have here a still more successful work, which provides a definitive philosophical ground for quantum theory. In either case, this is an important, as well as a brilliant, book."
JOHN B. COBB, JR., Director, Center for Process Studies
"Coming at a time when interest in correlating physics and Whitehead's philosophy has been expanding exponentially, the appearance of Epperson's book is an event of first importance. Employing the decoherence-based interpretation of quantum mechanics, Epperson shows that it can be correlated rather precisely with Whitehead's notion of 'concrescence.' Besides thereby showing how Whitehead's philosophy brings out the ontological significance of quantum mechanics, Epperson also demonstrates that students of Whitehead's philosophy will understand it better by seeing quantum mechanics as a specific exemplification of its general principles."
DAVID RAY GRIFFIN, author of "Religion and Scientific Naturalism: Overcoming the Conflicts"
About the Author
Michael Epperson is a research professor and founding director of the Center for Philosophy and the Natural Sciences at California State University, Sacramento, and the founding director of the university's History and Philosophy of Science Program. Epperson did his doctoral work in philosophy of science and philosophy of religion at The University of Chicago, and earned his Ph.D. there in 2003. His dissertation, Quantum Mechanics and the Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead (Fordham University Press, 2004, 2nd ed. 2012) was written under the direction of philosopher David Tracy and physicist Peter Hodgson, Head of the Nuclear Physics Theoretical Group at the University of Oxford. His follow-on work Foundations of Relational Realism: A Topological Approach to Quantum Mechanics and the Philosophy of Nature (Rowman & Littlefield, 2013), co-authored with quantum theorist and mathematician Elias Zafiris, explores the ontological significance of potentia and contextuality in quantum mechanics, toward a mereotopological, relational interpretation. Epperson's current research with Stuart Kauffman explores the philosophical implications of recent innovations in quantum mechanics and complexity theory. (Latest paper: R. Kastner, S. Kauffman, M. Epperson, "Taking Heisenberg's Potentia Seriously" International Journal of Quantum Foundations, 4:2 (2018): 158-172)
Epperson's philosophical interests also include ethics and just war theory, and his work in these areas includes the 2005 documentary film The 11th Day: Crete 1941 (writer, producer) which chronicles the story of the Cretan civilian resistance against German occupation in World War II. The film received critical acclaim in publications including The Chicago Tribune, Canada's National Post, The Sacramento Bee, and Newsday. Exhibitions have included a special advance screening requested by members of the United States Congress in 2004, held at the Capitol,and at the British Embassy in Athens, Greece in 2009.
