Science and the modern worldWhitehead, Alfred North
Religion
Science and the modern world
Whitehead, Alfred North
Science
There is also in α what, in the previous chapter, I have termed the
‘abrupt’ realisation of finite eternal objects. This abrupt realisation
requires _either_ a reference of the basic objects of the finite
hierarchy to determinate occasions other than α (as their situations),
in past, present, future; _or_ requires a realisation of these eternal
objects in determinate relationships, but under the aspect of exemption
from inclusion in the spatio-temporal scheme of relatedness between
actual occasions. This abrupt synthesis of eternal objects in each
occasion is the inclusion in actuality of the analytical character of
the realm of eternality. This inclusion has those limited gradations of
actuality which characterise every occasion by reason of its essential
limitation. It is this realised extension of eternal relatedness beyond
the mutual relatedness of the actual occasions, which prehends into each
occasion the full sweep of eternal relatedness. I term this abrupt
realisation the ‘graded envisagement’ which each occasion prehends into
its synthesis. This graded envisagement is how the actual includes what
(in one sense) is not-being as a positive factor in its own achievement.
It is the source of error, of truth, of art, of ethics, and of religion.
By it, fact is confronted with alternatives.
This general concept, of an event as a process whose outcome is a unit
of experience, points to the analysis of an event into (i) substantial
activity, (ii) conditioned potentialities which are there for synthesis,
and (iii) the achieved outcome of the synthesis. The unity of all actual
occasions forbids the analysis of substantial activities into
independent entities. Each individual activity is nothing but the mode
in which the general activity is individualised by the imposed
conditions. The envisagement which enters into the synthesis is also a
character which conditions the synthesising activity. The general
activity is not an entity in the sense in which occasions or eternal
objects are entities. It is a general metaphysical character which
underlies all occasions, in a particular mode for each occasion. There
is nothing with which to compare it: it is Spinoza’s one infinite
substance. Its attributes are its character of individualisation into a
multiplicity of modes, and the realm of eternal objects which are
variously synthesised in these modes. Thus eternal possibility and modal
differentiation into individual multiplicity are the attributes of the
one substance. In fact each general element of the metaphysical
situation is an attribute of the substantial activity.
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