An enquiry concerning the principles of natural knowledgeWhitehead, Alfred North
Philosophy
An enquiry concerning the principles of natural knowledge
Whitehead, Alfred North
Knowledge, Theory of; Science -- Philosophy; Space and time
3.6 The relatedness which is the subject of natural knowledge
cannot be understood without reference to the general characteristics of
perception. Our perception of natural events and natural objects is a
perception from within nature, and is not an awareness contemplating all
nature impartially from without. When Dr Johnson 'surveyed mankind from
China to Peru,' he did it from Pump Court in London at a certain date.
Even Pump Court was too wide for his peculiar locus standi; he
was really merely conscious of the relations of his bodily events to the
simultaneous events throughout the rest of the universe. Thus perception
involves a percipient object, a percipient event, the complete event
which is all nature simultaneous with the percipient event, and the
particular events which are perceived as parts of the complete
event. This general analysis of perception will be elaborated in
Part II. The point here to be emphasised is that
natural knowledge is a knowledge from within nature, a knowledge 'here
within nature' and 'now within nature,' and is an awareness of the
natural relations of one element in nature (namely, the percipient
event) to the rest of nature. Also what is known is not barely the
things but the relations of things, and not the relations in the
abstract but specifically those things as related.
Thus Alciphron's vision of the planet is his perception of his
relatedness (i.e. the relatedness of his percipient event) to some other
elements of nature which as thus related he calls the planet. He admits
in the dialogue that certain other specified relations of those elements
are possible for other percipient events. In this he may be right or
wrong. What he directly knows is his relation to some other elements of
the universe namely, I, Alciphron, am located in my percipient event
'here and now' and the immediately perceived appearance of the
planet is for me a characteristic of another event 'there and now.'
In fact perceptual knowledge is always a knowledge of the relationship
of the percipient event to something else in nature. This doctrine is in
entire agreement with Dr Johnson's stamp of the foot by which he
realised the otherness of the paving-stone.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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