Research Group
in Analytic Philosophy

Abstract

One big divide in philosophy is between a static vision and a dynamic vision of reality. On the latter option reality  becomes, in contrast to the former vision, on which it is fully there. Picking as an illustration a concrete growing tree, I will discuss what difference it makes to consider it a static process or a process of becoming. I will argue that a process of becoming requires an element of novelty of a particular variety, to be explained in terms of contingency of its  phases. Tentatively, the growing of a tree is a process of becoming provided that  it has a phase that obtains, but might really fail to obtain.