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
Congruence is a particular example of the fundamental fact of
recognition. In perception we recognise. This recognition does not
merely concern the comparison of a factor of nature posited by memory
with a factor posited by immediate sense-awareness. Recognition takes
place within the present without any intervention of pure memory. For
the present fact is a duration with its antecedent and consequent
durations which are parts of itself. The discrimination in
sense-awareness of a finite event with its quality of passage is also
accompanied by the discrimination of other factors of nature which do
not share in the passage of events. Whatever passes is an event. But we
find entities in nature which do not pass; namely we recognise
samenesses in nature. Recognition is not primarily an intellectual act
of comparison; it is in its essence merely sense-awareness in its
capacity of positing before us factors in nature which do not pass. For
example, green is perceived as situated in a certain finite event within
the present duration. This green preserves its self-identity throughout,
whereas the event passes and thereby obtains the property of breaking
into parts. The green patch has parts. But in talking of the green patch
we are speaking of the event in its sole capacity of being for us the
situation of green. The green itself is numerically one self-identical
entity, without parts because it is without passage.
Factors in nature which are without passage will be called objects.
There are radically different kinds of objects which will be considered
in the succeeding lecture.
Recognition is reflected into the intellect as comparison. The
recognised objects of one event are compared with the recognised objects
of another event. The comparison may be between two events in the
present, or it may be between two events of which one is posited by
memory-awareness and the other by immediate sense-awareness. But it is
not the events which are compared. For each event is essentially unique
and incomparable. What are compared are the objects and relations of
objects situated in events. The event considered as a relation between
objects has lost its passage and in this aspect is itself an object.
This object is not the event but only an intellectual abstraction. The
same object can be situated in many events; and in this sense even the
whole event, viewed as an object, can recur, though not the very event
itself with its passage and its relations to other events.
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