Science and the modern worldWhitehead, Alfred North
Religion
Science and the modern world
Whitehead, Alfred North
Science
The point before us is that this scientific field of thought is now, in
the twentieth century, too narrow for the concrete facts which are
before it for analysis. This is true even in physics, and is more
especially urgent in the biological sciences. Thus, in order to
understand the difficulties of modern scientific thought and also its
reactions on the modern world, we should have in our minds some
conception of a wider field of abstraction, a more concrete analysis,
which shall stand nearer to the complete concreteness of our intuitive
experience. Such an analysis should find in itself a niche for the
concepts of matter and spirit, as abstractions in terms of which much of
our physical experience can be interpreted. It is in the search for this
wider basis for scientific thought that Berkeley is so important. He
launched his criticism shortly after the schools of Newton and Locke had
completed their work, and laid his finger exactly on the weak spots
which they had left. I do not propose to consider either the subjective
idealism which has been derived from him, or the schools of development
which trace their descent from Hume and Kant respectively. My point will
be that—whatever the final metaphysics you may adopt—there is another
line of development embedded in Berkeley, pointing to the analysis which
we are in search of. Berkeley overlooked it, partly by reason of the
over-intellectualism of philosophers, and partly by his haste to have
recourse to an idealism with its objectivity grounded in the mind of
God. You will remember that I have already stated that the key of the
problem lies in the notion of simple location. Berkeley, in effect,
criticises this notion. He also raises the question, What do we mean by
things being realised in the world of nature?
In Sections 23 and 24 of his _Principles of Human Knowledge_, Berkeley
gives his answer to this latter question. I will quote some detached
sentences from those Sections:
“23. But, say you, surely there is nothing easier than for me to imagine
trees, for instance, in a park, or books existing in a closet, and
nobody by to perceive them. I answer, you may so, there is no difficulty
in it; but what is all this, I beseech you, more than framing in your
mind certain ideas which you call books and trees, and at the same time
omitting to frame the idea of any one that may perceive them?...”
“When we do our utmost to conceive the existence of external bodies, we
are all the while only contemplating our own ideas. But the mind _taking
no notice of itself_, is deluded to think it can and does conceive
bodies existing unthought of or without the mind, though at the same
time they are apprehended by or exist in itself....”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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