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
The second chapter of this book lays down the first principle to be
guarded in framing our physical concept. We must avoid vicious
bifurcation. Nature is nothing else than the deliverance of
sense-awareness. We have no principles whatever to tell us what could
stimulate mind towards sense-awareness. Our sole task is to exhibit in
one system the characters and inter-relations of all that is observed.
Our attitude towards nature is purely 'behaviouristic,' so far as
concerns the formulation of physical concepts.
Our knowledge of nature is an experience of activity (or passage). The
things previously observed are active entities, the 'events.' They are
chunks in the life of nature. These events have to each other relations
which in our knowledge differentiate themselves into space-relations and
time-relations. But this differentiation between space and time, though
inherent in nature, is comparatively superficial; and space and time are
each partial expressions of one fundamental relation between events
which is neither spatial nor temporal. This relation I call 'extension.'
The relation of 'extending over' is the relation of 'including,' either
in a spatial or in a temporal sense, or in both. But the mere
'inclusion' is more fundamental than either alternative and does not
require any spatio-temporal differentiation. In respect to extension two
events are mutually related so that either (i) one includes the other,
or (ii) one overlaps the other without complete inclusion, or (iii)
they are entirely separate. But great care is required in the
definition of spatial and temporal elements from this basis in order to
avoid tacit limitations really depending on undefined relations and
properties.
Such fallacies can be avoided by taking account of two elements in our
experience, namely, (i) our observational 'present,' and (ii) our
'percipient event.'
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