The Concept of Nature: The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919Whitehead, Alfred North
Philosophy
The Concept of Nature: The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919
Whitehead, Alfred North
Knowledge, Theory of; Nature; Science -- Philosophy
These three types form an ascending hierarchy, of which each member
presupposes the type below. The base of the hierarchy is formed by the
sense-objects. These objects do not presuppose any other type of
objects. A sense-object is a factor of nature posited by sense-awareness
which (i), in that it is an object, does not share in the passage of
nature and (ii) is not a relation between other factors of nature. It
will of course be a relatum in relations which also implicate other
factors of nature. But it is always a relatum and never the relation
itself. Examples of sense-objects are a particular sort of colour, say
Cambridge blue, or a particular sort of sound, or a particular sort of
smell, or a particular sort of feeling. I am not talking of a particular
patch of blue as seen during a particular second of time at a definite
date. Such a patch is an event where Cambridge blue is situated.
Similarly I am not talking of any particular concert-room as filled with
the note. I mean the note itself and not the patch of volume filled by
the sound for a tenth of a second. It is natural for us to think of the
note in itself, but in the case of colour we are apt to think of it
merely as a property of the patch. No one thinks of the note as a
property of the concert-room. We see the blue and we hear the note. Both
the blue and the note are immediately posited by the discrimination of
sense-awareness which relates the mind to nature. The blue is posited as
in nature related to other factors in nature. In particular it is
posited as in the relation of being situated in the event which is its
situation.
The difficulties which cluster around the relation of situation arise
from the obstinate refusal of philosophers to take seriously the
ultimate fact of multiple relations. By a multiple relation I mean a
relation which in any concrete instance of its occurrence necessarily
involves more than two relata. For example, when John likes Thomas there
are only two relata, John and Thomas. But when John gives that book to
Thomas there are three relata, John, that book, and Thomas.
Some schools of philosophy, under the influence of the Aristotelian
logic and the Aristotelian philosophy, endeavour to get on without
admitting any relations at all except that of substance and attribute.
Namely all apparent relations are to be resolvable into the concurrent
existence of substances with contrasted attributes. It is fairly obvious
that the Leibnizian monadology is the necessary outcome of any such
philosophy. If you dislike pluralism, there will be only one monad.
Other schools of philosophy admit relations but obstinately refuse to
contemplate relations with more than two relata. I do not think that
this limitation is based on any set purpose or theory. It merely arises
from the fact that more complicated relations are a bother to people
without adequate mathematical training, when they are admitted into the
reasoning.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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