What is an Event?

1600 words, 7 minute read

“Everything has a cause!” - You can’t make it through an evening of network TV without hearing some ‘corner cop’ wax philosophical. Even the great Thomas Aquinas was taken in by the scam: causality forms the basis of at least one of his 5 proofs of the existence of God.

Everything has a cause…if we say so - i.e. if we allow ourselves to separate an act from its immediate consequence. You say ‘event’, I say ‘a cause and its effects’ – same phenomenon, different analysis; I’m breaking up a naturally occurring ‘quantum of being’ into virtual proto-events; you’re not.

In fact, an event is not ‘an event’ until you factor in its immediate consequence. Alfred North Whitehead, probably the 20th century’s greatest systematic philosopher, termed the immediate consequence of an event its ‘satisfaction’, ‘objective immortality’, or ‘superject’, depending on the point of view of the speaker. It is what the event is, to itself and for the world.

To be clear, when I say, ‘consequence’, I don’t mean the Chicago thunderstorm that was triggered by butterfly activity in Borneo; I just mean the displacement of air occasioned by a single flap of a single pair of wings.

The opera is not over until one who is ‘circumferentially challenged’ sings. A butterfly’s wing motion is not a flap until air is displaced. Separating an aria from an opera or a flap from the flow is artificial. It is a by-product of our modern Indo-European languages. (The Devil made us think it!)

We break the holistic Universe (U) into ‘atoms’ of matter/energy which we call ‘words’ and we link those words together as Subjects → Verbs → Objects: rite words in rote (SVO) order (Joyce).  Note: SVO is what happens when you let your over-eager grad student vivisect an event: it’s not pretty! PETA please! 

An event is a quantum of Being, a part reflecting the whole, fun house Hot , fractal, or monad-like (Leibniz ). Therefore, the Universe consists entirely of events, reflecting/reflected. 

Whatever is not an event per se must play a supporting role as a constituent of an event, and conversely, the Universe itself must be an event, event i eventi in fact, i.e. the event of events. (Sorry, Bertrand Russell. )To paraphrase Stephen Hawking, “It’s events, all the way up…and down.”

An event disrupts the status quo. In fact, the definition of ‘event’ includes the injection of novelty (aka creativity) into the Heraclitean flow. On the other hand, the Universe is economical; each event changes its environment only as necessary to support its Subjective Aim (below), i.e. the realization of Good.

That said, all events do have certain structural features in common. To qualify as an ‘event’, four things need to be present (again, I am indebted to Alfred North Whitehead for the terminology):

1. Actual World, i.e. the status quo ante as a nexus.

2. Subjective Aim, i.e. a potential realization of Good (e.g. Beauty, Truth, Justice) in the context of a specific Actual World.

3. Act, i.e. the process by which an event pursues its Subjective Aim. 

4. Objective Immortality (aka Satisfaction, Superject), i.e. the event as it is to itself and for others.

Unfortunately, in our fetish to reduce things to a lowest common denominator and to deconstruct everything with molecular precision, we treat Stage 3, the naked Act, as the Event entirely…which it is not! This categorial error is responsible for much of the confusion that is contemporary philosophy.

No article on ontology would be complete without a trip to the local pool hall. Who knew? My youth was not misspent after all! I address the ball, “Hello, ball,” (Jackie Gleason) and I strike it with my cue. That’s an act but it’s not yet an event. By itself, it lacks context, purpose and consequence. 

An event begins with its circumstances, its Actual World: the position of balls on the felt, the rules of the game being played, the identity of the players, the significance of the match, etc. In fact, those ‘circumstances’ (collectively, M) include everything in the event’s rear light cone. 

Now the shooter must determine the Subjective Aim, i.e. the ‘best’ way to maximize the realization of Good in the context of this Actual World. “Sink the 8 ball in the side pocket and win the game,” seems automatic, but it’s not! Perhaps our shooter is wooing his opponent and feels his purposes would be better served by losing. Unlikely for an alpha male, but not impossible. 

Now the act: the cue ball is struck. But the act cannot be divorced from its outcome. The 8 ball may or may not be sunk. The event is not complete until the fate of the 8 ball is determined. There is no ‘event’ without a settled outcome. Schoedinger’s cat is either alive…or dead.

The result is the ‘satisfaction’ of the event itself and its ‘superject’ for all subsequent events. (Do I need to put out a saucer of milk tonight…or not?) Only now does our act acquire meaning, only now do we have a complete event (E₁). 

For example, if my shot goes amiss, my opponent gets her turn and a second, independent event (E₂) occurs. That subsequent event inherits an Actual World that includes the Superject (objective legacy) of the first event (E₁). 

But the first event in no way causes, or even directly influences, the second; it just provides essential context. E₁ may influence E₂ only indirectly through the independent intermediation of a higher order event (M) in which E₁ (my turn) & E₂ (her turn) are both elements: i.e. ‘the game itself and the context thereof’. 

Re E₂, perhaps my opponent decides to walk away, leaving the game unfinished. Perhaps she runs the table; perhaps she misses her shot, and I win on my next turn. E₁ and E₂ are clearly related…but they are disjoint.

It turns out (no surprise to ATM-frequent readers) that this Universe is exhibiting a non-Archimedean (non-A) structure Hot Link. Multiple events (E) may be embedded in a Meta-event (M), subject to certain specific, non-intuitive, conditions:

1. Embedded events (E₁ & E₂) can share no common elements.

2. Embedded events (E₁ & E₂) cannot directly impact one another. They do, however, both impact M, and M impacts all events (e.g. E₁ & E₂) embedded in it.

3. M, E₁, and E₂ each has its own independent metric. Therefore, ordinary arithmetical relationships do not apply. For example, E₁ + E₂ can be > M. 

E₁ & E₂ both modify M and they in turn are modified by M. In that way E₁ modifies E₂ and E₂ modifies E₁ but only via their common participation in M. 

M in turn, of course, is an element of M’ and so on up to and including U. So what is an event, i.e. an ‘actual entity’, per se? It is the Universe’s holistic response to itself. Wow!

Every event is a quantum process, recursive process. Every event spans spacetime. Every event is coterminous with the Universe. That said, most events are focused locally in time and space. There is a steep, non-linear gradient that works like a dissipative membrane, effectively distancing an event from its environment without sealing it off from the World. 

Every event begins with the Universe passing judgment on itself. That judgment is guided by the Transcendental Values (Whitehead called them ‘eternal objects’) that constitute ‘God’s Essence’ (Sartre). 

God’s essence is simple: it is ‘Good’ per se. But as white light refracts to reveal its familiar rainbow of colors, so ‘Good’ refracts to reveal specific values we can recognize and relate to. These are sometimes known as the ‘Divine Values’. There’s no ‘official list’ but Beauty, Truth, and Justice certainly make the cut. 

Events are quanta of actuality. They are recursive knots in the Norns’ thread of Fate. Spacetime is a virtual scaffolding on which events can be hung, conferring locus. An event ‘occupies’ a region in spacetime but within that region (the event itself) there is no space or time: the ontogenetic process is ordered logically, not chronologically.  

Properly understanding ‘events’ is a crucial first step in our effort to ‘do’ cosmology. One we understand that every event is essentially introjective and projective, certain persistent riddles ‘obviously’ evaporate:

Freedom vs. Determinism

Causality vs. Correlation

Spacetime vs. Eternity

Ends vs. Means

Ok, don’t  leave us hanging! How so?

(1) Every event is 100% free and 0% determined; every event is causa sui and sui generis. 

(2) There is no such thing as causality; there is creativity (novelty) and continuity (conservation). Together they support the illusion of causality. 

(3) Spacetime is real but epiphenomenal; it is a powerful but arbitrary tool that allows us to order events relative to one another. 

(4) There are neither ends nor means; there are simply events. Every event is the means to its own end and the end of its own means.

Events are the building blocks of Being; understanding them correctly is the key to unlocking the secrets of the Universe. 

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Piet Mondrian’s Pier and Ocean (1915) reduces the meeting of sea and sky into a rhythmic grid of short horizontal and vertical strokes, suggesting waves and light as abstract fragments. The painting marks a pivotal moment in Mondrian’s move toward pure abstraction, where natural light becomes a pattern of balanced, vibrating lines rather than a literal depiction.