Science and the modern worldWhitehead, Alfred North
Religion
Science and the modern world
Whitehead, Alfred North
Science
This simple location of instantaneous material configurations is what
Bergson has protested against, so far as it concerns time and so far as
it is taken to be the fundamental fact of concrete nature. He calls it a
distortion of nature due to the intellectual ‘spatialisation’ of things.
I agree with Bergson in his protest: but I do not agree that such
distortion is a vice necessary to the intellectual apprehension of
nature. I shall in subsequent lectures endeavour to show that this
spatialisation is the expression of more concrete facts under the guise
of very abstract logical constructions. There is an error; but it is
merely the accidental error of mistaking the abstract for the concrete.
It is an example of what I will call the ‘Fallacy of Misplaced
Concreteness.’ This fallacy is the occasion of great confusion in
philosophy. It is not necessary for the intellect to fall into the trap,
though in this example there has been a very general tendency to do so.
It is at once evident that the concept of simple location is going to
make great difficulties for induction. For, if in the location of
configurations of matter throughout a stretch of time there is no
inherent reference to any other times, past or future, it immediately
follows that nature within any period does not refer to nature at any
other period. Accordingly, induction is not based on anything which can
be observed as inherent in nature. Thus we cannot look to nature for the
justification of our belief in any law such as the law of gravitation.
In other words, the order of nature cannot be justified by the mere
observation of nature. For there is nothing in the present fact which
inherently refers either to the past or to the future. It looks,
therefore, as though memory, as well as induction, would fail to find
any justification within nature itself.
I have been anticipating the course of future thought, and have been
repeating Hume’s argument. This train of thought follows so immediately
from the consideration of simple location, that we cannot wait for the
eighteenth century before considering it. The only wonder is that the
world did in fact wait for Hume before noting the difficulty. Also it
illustrates the anti-rationalism of the scientific public that, when
Hume did appear, it was only the religious implications of his
philosophy which attracted attention. This was because the clergy were
in principle rationalists, whereas the men of science were content with
a simple faith in the order of nature. Hume himself remarks, no doubt
scoffingly, ‘Our holy religion is founded on faith.’ This attitude
satisfied the Royal Society but not the Church. It also satisfied Hume
and has satisfied subsequent empiricists.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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