10.1 Freedom Is What Nature Does Everywhere
Free will is not the exception to physics but its most fundamental feature: the irreducible self-determination at the heart of each event, present not only in minds but at every scale where possibility resolves into actuality.
Free will is not the exception to physics. It is physics, at its most complex and self-aware.
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In a universe of inert matter governed by deterministic laws, free will is an embarrassment. In Whitehead’s universe, every occasion involves a moment of genuine self-determination, the resolution of potential into actual that cannot be fully predicted from outside and is not random because it is shaped by the event’s own nature. This is not a special property of minds. It is the basic character of reality at every scale. The creative advance into novelty is Whitehead’s term for this irreducible creativity at the heart of each event[whitehead].
