WHAT IS THE INTERNATIONAL PROCESS NETWORK (IPN)?

IPN is a network of organizations and individuals dedicated to supporting, generating and disseminating an international discourse on the meaning and implications of process thought, and to fulfill this purpose:

• Promotes member programs, conferences, publications, activities
• Encourages development of process-related organizations;
• Sponsors international conferences and film festivals;
• Disseminates declarations, resolutions, and awards;
• Facilitates publication, translation, distribution of process-oriented works;
• Provides process-related educational programs and resources; and
• Maintains a website that provides information on process thought and member activities.

WHAT IS PROCESS THOUGHT?

‘Process thought’ most commonly refers to the speculative metaphysics developed by the British mathematician and philosopher, Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947), and the American philosopher, Charles Hartshorne (1897-2000).  It in fact has a long history taking influences from Heraclitus, Plato, Leibniz, Charles Peirce, William James and Henri Bergson.  Process philosophy sees the world primarily in terms of dynamic and interrelated events and processes, and only secondarily in terms of independent substances and structures. It therefore stresses an organic model or metaphor for understanding of the world, rather than a traditional mechanistic one.

“The philosophy of organism is mainly devoted to the task of making clear the notion of ‘being present in another entity.’”(Whitehead: Process and Reality)