Science and the modern worldWhitehead, Alfred North
Religion
Science and the modern world
Whitehead, Alfred North
Science
Also in the previous lecture I construed _perception_ (as used by Bacon)
as meaning _taking account_ of the essential character of the thing
perceived, and I construed _sense_ as meaning _cognition_. We certainly
do take account of things of which at the time we have no explicit
cognition. We can even have a cognitive memory of the taking account,
without having had a contemporaneous cognition. Also, as Bacon points
out by his statement, “... for else all bodies would be alike one to
another,” it is evidently some element of the essential character which
we take account of, namely something on which diversity is founded and
not mere bare logical diversity.
The word ‘_perceive_’ is, in our common usage, shot through and through
with the notion of cognitive apprehension. So is the word
‘_apprehension_’, even with the adjective _cognitive_ omitted. I will
use the word ‘_prehension_’ for _uncognitive apprehension_: by this I
mean _apprehension_ which may or or may not be cognitive. Now take
Euphranor’s last remark:
“Is it not plain, therefore, that neither the castle, the planet, nor
the cloud, _which you see here_, are those real ones which you suppose
exist at distance?” Accordingly, there is a prehension, _here_ in this
place, of things which have a reference to _other_ places.
Now go back to Berkeley’s sentences, quoted from his _Principles of
Human Knowledge_. He contends that what constitutes the realisation of
natural entities is the being perceived within the unity of mind.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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