Between Continuity and Atomism

Maria Regina Brioschi contrasts Whitehead’s cosmology with Peirce’s cosmology to show how atomism and continuity are intermixed in their visions of the world. In particular, in Whitehead’s mature philosophy continuity and extension arise from a fundamentally non-continuous aggregation of actual entities, while in his earlier work extension still had “a unique preeminence” – a progression clearly related to Whitehead’s interest in the foundations of physics. As process in itself seems to be an intricate combination of the elements of atomicity and continuity, this article reaches to the very core of the metaphysics of process.