4.2 The Vacuum Is Not Empty

The quantum vacuum, the ground state, what you have when you remove everything removable, is not empty. It seethes with virtual particles flickering in and out of existence.

This is Whitehead's 1 made concrete: the space of pure possibilities that each event selects from and realizes. The 2 is not a stage on which events occur. The field is the medium through which events reach out and feel each other, the medium of 34.

Where the quantum field provides the medium of possibility, thermodynamics provides the mechanism of order. Ilya Prigogine showed that systems far from equilibrium can spontaneously generate and maintain complex patterns, sustained by a continuous flow of energy through them: dissipative structures[prigogine]. A candle flame, a hurricane, a living cell (see The Cell That Makes Itself) are all dissipative structures: events the field sustains by feeding them order from elsewhere.