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 abstractive elements form the fundamental elements of space and
time, and we now turn to the consideration of the properties involved in
the formation of special classes of such elements. In my last lecture I
have already investigated one class of abstractive elements, namely
moments. Each moment is a group of abstractive sets, and the events
which are members of these sets are all members of one family of
durations. The moments of one family form a temporal series; and,
allowing the existence of different families of moments, there will be
alternative temporal series in nature. Thus the method of extensive
abstraction explains the origin of temporal series in terms of the
immediate facts of experience and at the same time allows for the
existence of the alternative temporal series which are demanded by the
modern theory of electromagnetic relativity.
We now turn to space. The first thing to do is to get hold of the class
of abstractive elements which are in some sense the points of space.
Such an abstractive element must in some sense exhibit a convergence to
an absolute minimum of intrinsic character. Euclid has expressed for all
time the general idea of a point, as being without parts and without
magnitude. It is this character of being an absolute minimum which we
want to get at and to express in terms of the extrinsic characters of
the abstractive sets which make up a point. Furthermore, points which
are thus arrived at represent the ideal of events without any extension,
though there are in fact no such entities as these ideal events. These
points will not be the points of an external timeless space but of
instantaneous spaces. We ultimately want to arrive at the timeless space
of physical science, and also of common thought which is now tinged with
the concepts of science. It will be convenient to reserve the term
'point' for these spaces when we get to them. I will therefore use the
name 'event-particles' for the ideal minimum limits to events. Thus an
event-particle is an abstractive element and as such is a group of
abstractive sets; and a point--namely a point of timeless space--will be
a class of event-particles.
Furthermore there is a separate timeless space corresponding to each
separate temporal series, that is to each separate family of durations.
We will come back to points in timeless spaces later. I merely mention
them now that we may understand the stages of our investigation. The
totality of event-particles will form a four-dimensional manifold, the
extra dimension arising from time--in other words--arising from the
points of a timeless space being each a class of event-particles.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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