Events are neither impenetrable nor indestructible. Space-time is
constructed by means of co-punctuality, which is the same thing as
spatio-temporal interpenetration. Perhaps it is not unnecessary to
explain that spatio-temporal interpenetration is quite a different
thing from logical interpenetration, though it may be suspected that
some philosophers have been led to favour the latter as a result of the
arguments for the former. We are accustomed to imagining that numerical
diversity involves spatio-temporal separation; hence we tend to think
that, if two diverse entities are in one place, they[Pg 387] cannot be wholly
diverse, but must be also in some sense one. It is this combination
that is supposed to constitute logical interpenetration. For my part,
I do not think that logical interpenetration can be defined without
obvious self-contradiction; Bergson, who advocates it, does not
define it. The only author I know of who has dealt seriously with its
difficulties is Bradley, in whom, quite consistently, it led to a
thorough-going monism, combined with the avowal that, in the end, all
truth is self-contradictory. I should myself regard this latter result
as a refutation of the logic from which it follows. Therefore, while
I respect Bradley more than any other advocate of interpenetration,
he seems to me, in virtue of his ability, to have done more than any
other philosopher to disprove the kind of system which he advocated.
However that may be, the spatio-temporal interpenetration which is
used in constructing space-time order is quite different from logical
interpenetration. Philosophers have been slaves of space and time in
the imaginative application of their logic. This is partly due to
Euler's diagrams and the notion that the traditional , ,
, were elementary forms of propositions and the confounding
of " is a " with "all 's are 's."
All this led to a confusion between classes and individuals, and to
the inference that individuals can interpenetrate because classes can
overlap. I do not suggest explicit confusions of this sort, but only
that traditional elementary logic, taught in youth, is an almost fatal
barrier to clear thinking in later years, unless much time is spent in
acquiring a new technique.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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