Activity

This is just a stub; I will fill this essay in when I have clarified my thoughts on this topic.

A dichotomy is commonly perceived between stasis (existence) and process (activity). I would like to point out that although it is generally held that

it is also true, and equally significant, that

Thus, existence and change are two equal observations on the same system; existence is not more fundamental than change.

Something of particular interest to me is the existence (and reification) of process as an entity: what is a process or activity, and how can you represent it as a thing... not as a series of snapshots of its progress, nor as a formula for how it is to procede, but the ``live'' activity itself?

This is of interest to me in two ways: in Computer Science, to examine, reason about and modify a process (in the sense of a running program) you need to be able to represent the process (my PhD was largely concerned with this); and philosophically, it may be a useful support for arguing about consciousness.

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