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
The relation of a 'dissentient' body to the space of a consentient set
is that of motion through it. The dissentient body will itself belong to
another consentient set. Every body of this second set will have a
motion in the space of the first set which has the same general spatial
characteristics as every other body of the second consentient set;
namely (in technical language) it will at any instant be a screw motion
with the same axis, the same pitch and the same intensity—in short
the same screw-motion for all bodies of the second set. Thus we will
speak of the motion of one consentient set in the space of another
consentient set. For example such a motion may be translation without
rotation, and the translation may be uniform or accelerated.
7.3 Now observers in both consentient sets agree as to what is
happening. From different standpoints in nature they both live through
the same events, which in their entirety are all that there is in
nature. The traveller and the stationmaster both agree as to the
existence of a certain event—for the traveller it is the passage
of the station past the train, and for the stationmaster it is the
passage of the train past the station. The two sets of observers merely
diverge in setting the same events in different frameworks of space and
(according to the modern doctrine) also of time.
This spatio-temporal framework is not an arbitrary convention.
Classification is merely an indication of characteristics which are
already there. For example, botanical classification by stamens and
pistils and petals applies to flowers, but not to men. Thus the space of
the consentient set is a fact of nature; the traveller with the set only
discovers it.
8. Kinematic Relations. 8.1 The
theory of relative motion is the comparison of the motion of a
consentient set in the space of a consentient set
with the motion of in the space of . This
involves a preliminary comparison of the space of with the space
of . Such a comparison can only be made by reference to events
which are facts common to all observers, thus showing the fundamental
character of events in the formation of space and time. The ideally
simple event is one indefinitely restricted both in spatial and in
temporal extension, namely the instantaneous point. We will use the term
'event-particle' in the sense of 'instantaneous point-event.' The exact
meaning of the ideal restriction in extension of an event-particle will
be investigated in Part III; here we will assume
that the concept has a determinate signification.
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