Whitehead and Significance - significance within a process relational ontology.

Previous investigations within the Worldhood framework have argued that inhabitable worlds emerge through the organisation of significance. Meaning, relevance, and perspective do not merely arise within a pre-given world but participate in the formation of worldhood itself. More recent work has suggested that significance may occupy a more fundamental position than is commonly assumed and that worldhood depends upon processes through which some possibilities acquire relevance while others do not. The present paper places these questions in dialogue with Alfred North Whitehead's process philosophy. Whitehead proposed that reality is fundamentally composed not of enduring substances but of processes of becoming. Central to his account is the concept of prehension, through which actual occasions selectively incorporate aspects of reality while excluding others. This selective structure raises an important question: Does prehension already exhibit a primitive form of significance? The paper argues that significant parallels exist between Whitehead's account of becoming and the role that significance plays within the emergence of worldhood. Both involve processes of selection, differentiation, and organisation. At the same time, Whitehead's philosophy explains relations and becoming more fully than relevance and significance, leaving unresolved the question of why some possibilities become effective while others do not. Building upon the Worldhood framework, the paper proposes that significance may be understood as a principle involved in the organisation of becoming itself. Worlds are interpreted as relatively stable organisations of significance arising within a continuous process, while significance is explored as one of the ways through which becoming acquires form. The result is not a final theory of significance but a possible bridge between process philosophy and a significance-centred account of worldhood. The investigation concludes that the question of worldhood may ultimately belong to a broader inquiry concerning how differentiation, order, and form emerge within a reality understood as continuous becoming.