Being vs. Becoming

Is existence defined by substance or process?

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Introduction

Is the universe a set of things — or a single ongoing verb? Philosophers have long struggled to decide whether reality is best understood as being — defined as a substratum of stable substances — or as becoming — defined as a flux of transformations without final rest. This isn't just a thought experiment; it's the root logic behind science, religion, and law. Are we building atop atoms, or adapting within flows? Are we separate entities, or movements inside a larger dance? In a universe determined through probability, the question becomes more important: if everything is always changing, what grounds existence at all? Or is change itself the ground? This article explores the deepest divide in Western metaphysics — substance versus process — and reveals how a third way, centred in the conference of difference, a constant expression that defines the totality of existence.

Classical positions

At the foundation of Western metaphysics lies a divide between those who see being as substance and those who see it as process. The distinction shapes not only philosophical speculation, but scientific method, legal thought, and theological doctrine. Is the world composed of discrete, enduring things — or of relations that only appear stable while always transforming?

Summary timeline

Substance Ontology

Substance theory begins with Parmenides, who argued that 'what is, is' — and that change, multiplicity and void are illusions.^[1] For Parmenides, being is whole, eternal, and unchanging. This static vision was challenged by Heraclitus, but developed more fully by Plato, who held that the world of appearances was in flux, while true reality — the Forms — remained timeless and perfect.^[2]

Aristotle codified substance metaphysics in Metaphysics (Book Z), defining substance (ousia) as '...not that which is predicated of a subject, but that of which the other things are predicated'.^[3] For him, individual substances (a tree, a human) are primary, with accidents (qualities, states) secondary. Substance endures beneath change and serves as the bearer of properties. This model dominated Scholastic metaphysics, especially in Aquinas, where God was pure act (actus purus) — a substance beyond material becoming.^[4]

The Cartesian tradition, with Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz, maintained substance as central, though in different forms: mind and body (Descartes), God-or-Nature as the single substance (Spinoza), and monads (Leibniz).^{[5] [6] [7]}

Process Ontology

In contrast, Heraclitus famously declared, 'everything flows,' insisting that becoming, not being, was fundamental. This view remained marginalized until the 19th and 20th centuries, when Hegel reintroduced dynamic becoming as the logic of reality through dialectical synthesis.^[8]

In the 20th century, Alfred North Whitehead advanced a full process metaphysics. In Process and Reality, he described reality as a network of actual occasions — events, not things. Entities are not substances, but patterns of activity. Being is not what underlies change — it is change, stabilized in momentary pattern.^[9]

Similarly, Bergson (Creative Evolution), James (Essays in Radical Empiricism), and Dewey embraced continuity, change, and experience over static essence.^{[10] [11] [12]} In Eastern traditions, process is also central: Nāgārjuna’s Madhyamaka school denies intrinsic substance (svabhāva), and Daoist and Buddhist metaphysics speak of becoming without fixed essence.

This classical divide between that which is and that which becomes shapes not just metaphysics, but ethics, politics, and even physics. The next sections explore how these classical poles break down — and how the conference of difference described in the Gospel of Being offers a deeper synthesis.

Current Flashpoints

The classical divide between substance and process no longer holds cleanly. In contemporary metaphysics, physics, and cognitive science, the question has shifted from 'What is most real?' to 'What does relation make possible?' This shift foregrounds relational ontology, where being is defined not by what it is, but by how it connects. As philosopher Karen Barad puts it: 'Relata do not preexist relations'.^[13] Instead of substances with accidental relations, we now find relations generating the terms themselves.

In quantum physics, this turn is evident. Quantum entanglement suggests that particles have no individual identity apart from their correlation. As Carlo Rovelli (2018) and other advocates of relational quantum mechanics argue, physical reality is not composed of independently existing particles, but of interactions. Objects are 'nodes' in a web of relations, not standalone entities.

In analytic metaphysics, the rise of grounding theory and ontological dependence has complicated the notion of substance. Schaffer (2009) reintroduces metaphysical grounding as a hierarchical relation of priority, while Bennett (2017) argues that reality may be structured by various 'building relations,' such as grounding, realization, and constitution.^{[14] [15]} Even when discussing 'objects,' philosophers increasingly describe them as networks of dependencies, not ultimate carriers of being. The question now becomes: What grounds what? — a process-like inquiry dressed in structural terms.

In theology, too, process thought has returned. The legacy of Whitehead lives on in Process Theology (e.g., Cobb & Griffin, 1976), where God is not immutable substance but the evolving receptacle and lure of all becoming.^[16] This view challenges classical theism’s actus purus and replaces it with God as fellow sufferer — a divine becoming with the world.

Even popular discourse has absorbed this shift. Phrases like 'the flow,' 'emergence,' and 'systems thinking' betray an underlying intuition: what is real is not the thing but the field.

Yet substance has not vanished. It reappears as inertial form — stable patterns that persist across transformations. The flashpoint today is not substance vs. process but structure as emergent from relation — a conference, not a contradiction.

Being as 'action to be'

But before we ask whether reality is made of substances or processes, we must ask a simpler question: What do we mean by being? Philosophy often begins in abstraction — but it should begin in language. Interestingly, the word be has its etymology in Old English bēon meaning both 'to be' and 'to become'. The Greek word οὐσίᾱ (ousíā), which we define as 'substance' in English, originates in the present participle of εἰμῐ́ (eimĭ́) meaning 'to be'.

The point is that 'to be' is a verb. The word being is literally 'action' to be'. As an action, it is a 'process of acts'. Likewise, becoming means 'coming to be.' Both terms are forms of action, not rest. They are grammatical signals that something is happening. So when classical metaphysics treats being as a fixed substance — something that 'just is' — it misreads the word itself. It confuses a participle with a particle.

A being, then, is not a static object; it is a 'process of acts to be'. To call something a being is not to say what it is but to say that it is actively existing — that it is doing being. Every being is, quite literally, a verb in motion.

This mistake — treating being as a thing — is the foundational flaw of substance ontology. It’s not just a conceptual error, it’s a linguistic one. A being is not a block of what is but an unfolding of what is acting to be. The classical debate between being and becoming becomes confused because it assumes that being means stasis. But it doesn’t. It means ongoing enactment.

What follows from this correction is profound. If every being is a process, then ontology: the 'account of being' must account for that process — not the what of existence but the how of existence.

Substance is not the foundation of reality — it is a practical fiction. A way of speaking about beings that simplifies their ongoing activity into the illusion of self-contained things.

And this is where the Gospel of Being evolves the debate. Instead of arguing the merits of substance vs process, it declares instead that:

All existence is a conference of difference, a 'condition of bearing together' transforming the 'condition of bearing apart'.^[17]

As a 'condition of being', existence is thus, by literal extension, a 'process of declaring together of action to be'. In this light, existence, materiality, reality are not nouns at rest or just a process but a process defined through mutual expression — the conference of difference.

Conclusion

Thus we might say that substance and process aren’t rival explanations of existence so much as different viewports into it — each illuminating a different aspect of the whole.

• Substance ontology helps us conceptualize what exists: it gives us identity, stability, and recognizability. It anchors our experience in continuity — things are.
• Process ontology helps us conceptualize how existence unfolds: it reveals change, interaction, and transformation. It accounts for growth, decay, emergence — things happen.

Neither, on its own, offers a complete account. Substance by itself freezes reality; process alone can blur it into formless flux. But seen as complementary lenses, they enrich each other. They’re not competing explanations, but conceptual tools — ways of seeing — each providing a level of understanding the other misses. However, a complete ontology must address not only the what and the how of existence but just as importantly: why?

This is exactly where the Gospel of Being offers synthesis: not only identifying the what and how of existence as a conference of difference but how that constant expression functions to fulfill the why of existence — the accumulation of power: 'ability'.

The Gospel of Being

by John Mackay

A rigorous yet readable exploration of why the universe works—and how you fit inside it.

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