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
Events there and events here are facts of nature, and the qualities of
being 'there' and 'here' are not merely qualities of awareness as a
relation between nature and mind. The quality of determinate station in
the duration which belongs to an event which is 'here' in one
determinate sense of 'here' is the same kind of quality of station which
belongs to an event which is 'there' in one determinate sense of
'there.' Thus cogredience has nothing to do with any biological
character of the event which is related by it to the associated
duration. This biological character is apparently a further condition
for the peculiar connexion of a percipient event with the percipience of
mind; but it has nothing to do with the relation of the percipient event
to the duration which is the present whole of nature posited as the
disclosure of the percipience.
Given the requisite biological character, the event in its character of
a percipient event selects that duration with which the operative past
of the event is practically cogredient within the limits of the
exactitude of observation. Namely, amid the alternative time-systems
which nature offers there will be one with a duration giving the best
average of cogredience for all the subordinate parts of the percipient
event. This duration will be the whole of nature which is the terminus
posited by sense-awareness. Thus the character of the percipient event
determines the time-system immediately evident in nature. As the
character of the percipient event changes with the passage of
nature--or, in other words, as the percipient mind in its passage
correlates itself with the passage of the percipient event into another
percipient event--the time-system correlated with the percipience of
that mind may change. When the bulk of the events perceived are
cogredient in a duration other than that of the percipient event, the
percipience may include a double consciousness of cogredience, namely
the consciousness of the whole within which the observer in the train is
'here,' and the consciousness of the whole within which the trees and
bridges and telegraph posts are definitely 'there.' Thus in perceptions
under certain circumstances the events discriminated assert their own
relations of cogredience. This assertion of cogredience is peculiarly
evident when the duration to which the perceived event is cogredient is
the same as the duration which is the present whole of nature--in other
words, when the event and the percipient event are both cogredient to
the same duration.
We are now prepared to consider the meaning of stations in a duration,
where stations are a peculiar kind of routes, which define absolute
position in the associated timeless space.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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