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
Objects which are not posited by sense-awareness may be known to the
intellect. For example, relations between objects and relations between
relations may be factors in nature not disclosed in sense-awareness but
known by logical inference as necessarily in being. Thus objects for our
knowledge may be merely logical abstractions. For example, a complete
event is never disclosed in sense-awareness, and thus the object which
is the sum total of objects situated in an event as thus inter-related
is a mere abstract concept. Again a right-angle is a perceived object
which can be situated in many events; but, though rectangularity is
posited by sense-awareness, the majority of geometrical relations are
not so posited. Also rectangularity is in fact often not perceived when
it can be proved to have been there for perception. Thus an object is
often known merely as an abstract relation not directly posited in
sense-awareness although it is there in nature.
The identity of quality between congruent segments is generally of this
character. In certain special cases this identity of quality can be
directly perceived. But in general it is inferred by a process of
measurement depending on our direct sense-awareness of selected cases
and a logical inference from the transitive character of congruence.
Congruence depends on motion, and thereby is generated the connexion
between spatial congruence and temporal congruence. Motion along a
straight line has a symmetry round that line. This symmetry is expressed
by the symmetrical geometrical relations of the line to the family of
planes normal to it.
Also another symmetry in the theory of motion arises from the fact that
rest in the points of β corresponds to uniform motion along a definite
family of parallel straight lines in the space of α. We must note the
three characteristics, (i) of the uniformity of the motion
corresponding to any point of β along its correlated straight line in α,
and (ii) of the equality in magnitude of the velocities along the
various lines of α correlated to rest in the various points of β, and
(iii) of the parallelism of the lines of this family.
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