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
We are accustomed to analyse these events into three factors, time,
space, and material. In fact, we at once apply to them the concepts of
the materialistic theory of nature. I do not deny the utility of this
analysis for the purpose of expressing important laws of nature. What I
am denying is that anyone of these factors is posited for us in
sense-awareness in concrete independence. We perceive one unit factor in
nature; and this factor is that something is going on then--there. For
example, we perceive the going-on of the Great Pyramid in its relations
to the goings-on of the surrounding Egyptian events. We are so trained,
both by language and by formal teaching and by the resulting
convenience, to express our thoughts in terms of this materialistic
analysis that intellectually we tend to ignore the true unity of the
factor really exhibited in sense-awareness. It is this unit factor,
retaining in itself the passage of nature, which is the primary concrete
element discriminated in nature. These primary factors are what I mean
by events.
Events are the field of a two-termed relation, namely the relation of
extension which was considered in the last lecture. Events are the
things related by the relation of extension. If an event A extends
over an event B, then B is 'part of' A, and A is a 'whole' of
which B is a part. Whole and part are invariably used in these
lectures in this definite sense. It follows that in reference to this
relation any two events A and B may have any one of four relations
to each other, namely (i) A may extend over B, or (ii) B may
extend over A, or (iii) A and B may both extend over some third
event C, but neither over the other, or (iv) A and B may be
entirely separate. These alternatives can obviously be illustrated by
Euler's diagrams as they appear in logical textbooks.
The continuity of nature is the continuity of events. This continuity is
merely the name for the aggregate of a variety of properties of events
in connexion with the relation of extension.
In the first place, this relation is transitive; secondly, every event
contains other events as parts of itself; thirdly every event is a part
of other events; fourthly given any two finite events there are events
each of which contains both of them as parts; and fifthly there is a
special relation between events which I term 'junction.'
Two events have junction when there is a third event of which both
events are parts, and which is such that no part of it is separated from
both of the two given events. Thus two events with junction make up
exactly one event which is in a sense their sum.
Only certain pairs of events have this property. In general any event
containing two events also contains parts which are separated from both
events.
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