Science and the modern worldWhitehead, Alfred North
Religion
Science and the modern world
Whitehead, Alfred North
Science
influenced philosophers. I am thinking mainly of the effective contacts
between science and philosophy.
This division of territory between science and philosophy was not a
simple business; and in fact it illustrated the weakness of the whole
cut-and-dried presupposition upon which it rested. We are aware of
nature as an interplay of bodies, colours, sounds, scents, tastes,
touches and other various bodily feelings, displayed as in space, in
patterns of mutual separation by intervening volumes, and of individual
shape. Also the whole is a flux, changing with the lapse of time. This
systematic totality is disclosed to us as one complex of things. But the
seventeenth century dualism cuts straight across it. The objective world
of science was confined to mere spatial material with simple location in
space and time, and subjected to definite rules as to its locomotion.
The subjective world of philosophy annexed the colours, sounds, scents,
tastes, touches, bodily feelings, as forming the subjective content of
the cogitations of the individual minds. Both worlds shared in the
general flux; but time, as measured, is assigned by Descartes to the
cogitations of the observer’s mind. There is obviously one fatal
weakness to this scheme. The cogitations of mind exhibit themselves as
holding up entities, such as colours for instance, before the mind as
the termini of contemplation. But in this theory these colours are,
after all, merely the furniture of the mind. Accordingly, the mind seems
to be confined to its own private world of cogitations. The
subject-object conformation of experience in its entirety lies within
the mind as one of its private passions. This conclusion from the
Cartesian data is the starting point from which Berkeley, Hume, and Kant
developed their respective systems. And, antecedently to them, it was
the point upon which Locke concentrated as being the vital question.
Thus the question as to how any knowledge is obtained of the truly
objective world of science becomes a problem of the first magnitude.
Descartes states that the objective body is perceived by the intellect.
He says (_Meditation II_): “I must, therefore, admit that I cannot even
comprehend by imagination what the piece of wax is, and that it is the
mind alone which perceives it. I speak of one piece in particular; for,
as to wax in general, this is still more evident. But what is the piece
of wax that can be perceived only by the mind?... The perception of it
is neither an act of sight, of touch, nor of imagination, and never was
either of these, though it might formerly seem so, but is simply an
_intuition_ (_inspectio_) of the mind,....” It must be noted that the
Latin word ‘inspectio’ is associated in its classical use with the
notion of theory as opposed to practice.
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