Science and the modern worldWhitehead, Alfred North
Religion
Science and the modern world
Whitehead, Alfred North
Science
There has been a tendency to give an extreme subjectivist interpretation
to this new doctrine. I mean that the relativity of space and time has
been construed as though it were dependent on the choice of the
observer. It is perfectly legitimate to bring in the observer, if he
facilitates explanations. But it is the observer’s body that we want,
and not his mind. Even this body is only useful as an example of a very
familiar form of apparatus. On the whole, it is better to concentrate
attention on Michelson’s interferometer, and to leave Michelson’s body
and Michelson’s mind out of the picture. The question is, why did the
interferometer have black bands on its screen, and why did not these
bands slightly shift as the instrument turned. The new relativity
associates space and time with an intimacy not hitherto contemplated;
and presupposes that their separation in concrete fact can be achieved
by alternative modes of abstraction, yielding alternative meanings. But
each mode of abstraction is directing attention to something which is in
nature; and thereby is isolating it for the purpose of contemplation.
The fact relevant to experiment, is the relevance of the interferometer
to just one among the many alternative systems of these spatio-temporal
relations which hold between natural entities.
What we must now ask of philosophy is to give us an interpretation of
the status in nature of space and time, so that the possibility of
alternative meanings is preserved. These lectures are not suited for the
elaboration of details; but there is no difficulty in pointing out where
to look for the origin of the discrimination between space and time. I
am presupposing the organic theory of nature, which I have outlined as a
basis for a thoroughgoing objectivism.
An event is the grasping into unity of a pattern of aspects. The
effectiveness of an event beyond itself arises from the aspects of
itself which go to form the prehended unities of other events. Except
for the systematic aspects of geometrical shape, this effectiveness is
trivial, if the mirrored pattern attaches merely to the event as one
whole. If the pattern endures throughout the successive parts of the
event, and also exhibits itself in the whole, so that the event is the
life history of the pattern, then in virtue of that enduring pattern the
event gains in external effectiveness. For its own effectiveness is
reënforced by the analogous aspects of all its successive parts. The
event constitutes a patterned value with a permanence inherent
throughout its own parts; and by reason of this inherent endurance the
event is important for the modification of its environment.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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