Science and the modern worldWhitehead, Alfred North
Religion
Science and the modern world
Whitehead, Alfred North
Science
things has its significance in the self-retention of that which imposes
itself as a definite attainment for its own sake. That which endures is
limited, obstructive, intolerant, infecting its environment with its own
aspects. But it is not self-sufficient. The aspects of all things enter
into its very nature. It is only itself as drawing together into its own
limitation the larger whole in which it finds itself. Conversely it is
only itself by lending its aspects to this same environment in which it
finds itself. The problem of evolution is the development of enduring
harmonies of enduring shapes of value, which merge into higher
attainments of things beyond themselves. Aesthetic attainment is
interwoven in the texture of realisation. The endurance of an entity
represents the attainment of a limited aesthetic success, though if we
look beyond it to its external effects, it may represent an aesthetic
failure. Even within itself, it may represent the conflict between a
lower success and a higher failure. The conflict is the presage of
disruption.
The further discussion of the nature of enduring objects and of the
conditions they require will be relevant to the consideration of the
doctrine of evolution which dominated the latter half of the nineteenth
century. The point which in this lecture I have endeavoured to make
clear is that the nature-poetry of the romantic revival was a protest on
behalf of the organic view of nature, and also a protest against the
exclusion of value from the essence of matter of fact. In this aspect of
it, the romantic movement may be conceived as a revival of Berkeley’s
protest which had been launched a hundred years earlier. The romantic
reaction was a protest on behalf of value.
CHAPTER VI
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
My previous lecture was occupied with the comparison of the
nature-poetry of the romantic movement in England with the materialistic
scientific philosophy inherited from the eighteenth century. It noted
the entire disagreement of the two movements of thought. The lecture
also continued the endeavour to outline an objectivist philosophy,
capable of bridging the gap between science and that fundamental
intuition of mankind which finds its expression in poetry and its
practical exemplification in the presuppositions of daily life. As the
nineteenth century passed on, the romantic movement died down. It did
not die away, but it lost its clear unity of tidal stream, and dispersed
itself into many estuaries as it coalesced with other human interests.
The faith of the century was derived from three sources: one source was
the romantic movement, showing itself in religious revival, in art, and
in political aspiration: another source was the gathering advance of
science which opened avenues of thought: the third source was the
advance in technology which completely changed the conditions of human
life.
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