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
An event-particle has position by reason of its association with a
punct, and conversely the punct gains its derived character as a route
of approximation from its association with the event-particle. These two
characters of a point are always recurring in any treatment of the
derivation of a point from the observed facts of nature, but in general
there is no clear recognition of their distinction.
The peculiar simplicity of an instantaneous point has a twofold origin,
one connected with position, that is to say with its character as a
punct, and the other connected with its character as an event-particle.
The simplicity of the punct arises from its indivisibility by a moment.
The simplicity of an event-particle arises from the indivisibility of
its intrinsic character. The intrinsic character of an event-particle is
indivisible in the sense that every abstractive set covered by it
exhibits the same intrinsic character. It follows that, though there are
diverse abstractive elements covered by event-particles, there is no
advantage to be gained by considering them since we gain no additional
simplicity in the expression of natural properties.
These two characters of simplicity enjoyed respectively by
event-particles and puncts define a meaning for Euclid's phrase,
'without parts and without magnitude.'
It is obviously convenient to sweep away out of our thoughts all these
stray abstractive sets which are covered by event-particles without
themselves being members of them. They give us nothing new in the way of
intrinsic character. Accordingly we can think of rects and levels as
merely loci of event-particles. In so doing we are also cutting out
those abstractive elements which cover sets of event-particles, without
these elements being event-particles themselves. There are classes of
these abstractive elements which are of great importance. I will
consider them later on in this and in other lectures. Meanwhile we will
ignore them. Also I will always speak of 'event-particles' in preference
to 'puncts,' the latter being an artificial word for which I have no
great affection.
Parallelism among rects and levels is now explicable.
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