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
serial time-systems derived from different families of durations. These
are a peculiarity of the character of passage as it is found in nature.
This character has the reality of nature, but we must not necessarily
transfer natural time to extra-natural entities. (ii) For two minds, the
discerned components of the general facts exhibited in their respective
acts of sense-awareness must be different. For each mind, in its
awareness of nature is aware of a certain complex of related natural
entities in their relations to the living body as a focus. But the
associated durations may be identical. Here we are touching on that
character of the passage nature which issues in the spatial relations of
simultaneous bodies. This possible identity of the durations in the case
of the sense-awareness of distinct minds is what binds into one nature
the private experiences of sentient beings. We are here considering the
spatial side of the passage of nature. Passage in this aspect of it also
seems to extend beyond nature to mind.
It is important to distinguish simultaneity from instantaneousness. I
lay no stress on the mere current usage of the two terms. There are two
concepts which I want to distinguish, and one I call simultaneity and
the other instantaneousness. I hope that the words are judiciously
chosen; but it really does not matter so long as I succeed in explaining
my meaning. Simultaneity is the property of a group of natural elements
which in some sense are components of a duration. A duration can be all
nature present as the immediate fact posited by sense-awareness. A
duration retains within itself the passage of nature. There are within
it antecedents and consequents which are also durations which may be the
complete specious presents of quicker consciousnesses. In other words a
duration retains temporal thickness. Any concept of all nature as
immediately known is always a concept of some duration though it may be
enlarged in its temporal thickness beyond the possible specious present
of any being known to us as existing within nature. Thus simultaneity is
an ultimate factor in nature, immediate for sense-awareness.
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