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 correlation of the various momentary spaces of one time-system is
achieved by the relation of cogredience. Evidently motion in an
instantaneous space is unmeaning. Motion expresses a comparison between
position in one instantaneous space with positions in other
instantaneous spaces of the same time-system. Cogredience yields the
simplest outcome of such comparison, namely, rest.
Motion and rest are immediately observed facts. They are relative in the
sense that they depend on the time-system which is fundamental for the
observation. A string of event-particles whose successive occupation
means rest in the given time-system forms a timeless point in the
timeless space of that time-system. In this way each time-system
possesses its own permanent timeless space peculiar to it alone, and
each such space is composed of timeless points which belong to that
time-system and to no other. The paradoxes of relativity arise from
neglecting the fact that different assumptions as to rest involve the
expression of the facts of physical science in terms of radically
different spaces and times, in which points and moments have different
meanings.
The source of order has already been indicated and that of congruence is
now found. It depends on motion. From cogredience, perpendicularity
arises; and from perpendicularity in conjunction with the reciprocal
symmetry between the relations of any two time-systems congruence both
in time and space is completely defined (cf. _loc. cit._).
The resulting formulae are those for the electromagnetic theory of
relativity, or, as it is now termed, the restricted theory. But there is
this vital difference: the critical velocity c which occurs in these
formulae has now no connexion whatever with light or with any other fact
of the physical field (in distinction from the extensional structure of
events). It simply marks the fact that our congruence determination
embraces both times and spaces in one universal system, and therefore if
two arbitrary units are chosen, one for all spaces and one for all
times, their ratio will be a velocity which is a fundamental property of
nature expressing the fact that times and spaces are really comparable.
The physical properties of nature are expressed in terms of material
objects (electrons, etc.). The physical character of an event arises
from the fact that it belongs to the field of the whole complex of such
objects. From another point of view we can say that these objects are
nothing else than our way of expressing the mutual correlation of the
physical characters of events.
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