Read Ebook: The Concept of Nature The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College November 1919 by Whitehead Alfred North

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I now pass to descriptive phrases. The expositor says,

'A college in Regent's Park is commodious.'

The recipient knows Regent's Park well. The phrase 'A college in Regent's Park' is descriptive for him. If its phraseology is not elliptical, which in ordinary life it certainly will be in some way or other, this proposition simply means,

'There is an entity which is a college building in Regent's Park and is commodious.'

If the recipient rejoins,

'The lion-house in the Zoo is the only commodious building in Regent's Park,'

he now contradicts the expositor, on the assumption that a lion-house in a Zoo is not a college building.

Thus whereas in the first dialogue the recipient merely quarrelled with the expositor without contradicting him, in this dialogue he contradicts him. Thus a descriptive phrase is part of the proposition which it helps to express, whereas a demonstrative phrase is not part of the proposition which it helps to express.

Again the expositor might be standing in Green Park--where there are no college buildings--and say,

'This college building is commodious.'

Probably no proposition will be received by the recipient because the demonstrative phrase,

'This college building'

has failed to demonstrate owing to the absence of the background of sense-awareness which it presupposes.

But if the expositor had said,

'A college building in Green Park is commodious,'

the recipient would have received a proposition, but a false one.

Language is usually ambiguous and it is rash to make general assertions as to its meanings. But phrases which commence with 'this' or 'that' are usually demonstrative, whereas phrases which commence with 'the' or 'a' are often descriptive. In studying the theory of propositional expression it is important to remember the wide difference between the analogous modest words 'this' and 'that' on the one hand and 'a' and 'the' on the other hand. The sentence

'The college building in Regent's Park is commodious'

means, according to the analysis first made by Bertrand Russell, the proposition,

'There is an entity which is a college building in Regent's Park and is commodious and is such that any college building in Regent's Park is identical with it.'

The descriptive character of the phrase 'The college building in Regent's Park' is thus evident. Also the proposition is denied by the denial of any one of its three component clauses or by the denial of any combination of the component clauses. If we had substituted 'Green Park' for 'Regent's Park' a false proposition would have resulted. Also the erection of a second college in Regent's Park would make the proposition false, though in ordinary life common sense would politely treat it as merely ambiguous.

'The Iliad' for a classical scholar is usually a demonstrative phrase; for it demonstrates to him a well-known poem. But for the majority of mankind the phrase is descriptive, namely, it is synonymous with 'The poem named "the Iliad".'

Names may be either demonstrative or descriptive phrases. For example 'Homer' is for us a descriptive phrase, namely, the word with some slight difference in suggestiveness means 'The man who wrote the Iliad.'

This discussion illustrates that thought places before itself bare objectives, entities as we call them, which the thinking clothes by expressing their mutual relations. Sense-awareness discloses fact with factors which are the entities for thought. The separate distinction of an entity in thought is not a metaphysical assertion, but a method of procedure necessary for the finite expression of individual propositions. Apart from entities there could be no finite truths; they are the means by which the infinitude of irrelevance is kept out of thought.

To sum up: the termini for thought are entities, primarily with bare individuality, secondarily with properties and relations ascribed to them in the procedure of thought; the termini for sense-awareness are factors in the fact of nature, primarily relata and only secondarily discriminated as distinct individualities.

No characteristic of nature which is immediately posited for knowledge by sense-awareness can be explained. It is impenetrable by thought, in the sense that its peculiar essential character which enters into experience by sense-awareness is for thought merely the guardian of its individuality as a bare entity. Thus for thought 'red' is merely a definite entity, though for awareness 'red' has the content of its individuality. The transition from the 'red' of awareness to the 'red' of thought is accompanied by a definite loss of content, namely by the transition from the factor 'red' to the entity 'red.' This loss in the transition to thought is compensated by the fact that thought is communicable whereas sense-awareness is incommunicable.

Thus there are three components in our knowledge of nature, namely, fact, factors, and entities. Fact is the undifferentiated terminus of sense-awareness; factors are termini of sense-awareness, differentiated as elements of fact; entities are factors in their function as the termini of thought. The entities thus spoken of are natural entities. Thought is wider than nature, so that there are entities for thought which are not natural entities.

When we speak of nature as a complex of related entities, the 'complex' is fact as an entity for thought, to whose bare individuality is ascribed the property of embracing in its complexity the natural entities. It is our business to analyse this conception and in the course of the analysis space and time should appear. Evidently the relations holding between natural entities are themselves natural entities, namely they are also factors of fact, there for sense-awareness. Accordingly the structure of the natural complex can never be completed in thought, just as the factors of fact can never be exhausted in sense-awareness. Unexhaustiveness is an essential character of our knowledge of nature. Also nature does not exhaust the matter for thought, namely there are thoughts which would not occur in any homogeneous thinking about nature.

The question as to whether sense-perception involves thought is largely verbal. If sense-perception involves a cognition of individuality abstracted from the actual position of the entity as a factor in fact, then it undoubtedly does involve thought. But if it is conceived as sense-awareness of a factor in fact competent to evoke emotion and purposeful action without further cognition, then it does not involve thought. In such a case the terminus of the sense-awareness is something for mind, but nothing for thought. The sense-perception of some lower forms of life may be conjectured to approximate to this character habitually. Also occasionally our own sense-perception in moments when thought-activity has been lulled to quiescence is not far off the attainment of this ideal limit.

The process of discrimination in sense-awareness has two distinct sides. There is the discrimination of fact into parts, and the discrimination of any part of fact as exhibiting relations to entities which are not parts of fact though they are ingredients in it. Namely the immediate fact for awareness is the whole occurrence of nature. It is nature as an event present for sense-awareness, and essentially passing. There is no holding nature still and looking at it. We cannot redouble our efforts to improve our knowledge of the terminus of our present sense-awareness; it is our subsequent opportunity in subsequent sense-awareness which gains the benefit of our good resolution. Thus the ultimate fact for sense-awareness is an event. This whole event is discriminated by us into partial events. We are aware of an event which is our bodily life, of an event which is the course of nature within this room, and of a vaguely perceived aggregate of other partial events. This is the discrimination in sense-awareness of fact into parts.

I shall use the term 'part' in the arbitrarily limited sense of an event which is part of the whole fact disclosed in awareness.

Sense-awareness also yields to us other factors in nature which are not events. For example, sky-blue is seen as situated in a certain event. This relation of situation requires further discussion which is postponed to a later lecture. My present point is that sky-blue is found in nature with a definite implication in events, but is not an event itself. Accordingly in addition to events, there are other factors in nature directly disclosed to us in sense-awareness. The conception in thought of all the factors in nature as distinct entities with definite natural relations is what I have in another place called the 'diversification of nature.'

There is one general conclusion to be drawn from the foregoing discussion. It is that the first task of a philosophy of science should be some general classification of the entities disclosed to us in sense-perception.

Among the examples of entities in addition to 'events' which we have used for the purpose of illustration are the buildings of Bedford College, Homer, and sky-blue. Evidently these are very different sorts of things; and it is likely that statements which are made about one kind of entity will not be true about other kinds. If human thought proceeded with the orderly method which abstract logic would suggest to it, we might go further and say that a classification of natural entities should be the first step in science itself. Perhaps you will be inclined to reply that this classification has already been effected, and that science is concerned with the adventures of material entities in space and time.

The history of the doctrine of matter has yet to be written. It is the history of the influence of Greek philosophy on science. That influence has issued in one long misconception of the metaphysical status of natural entities. The entity has been separated from the factor which is the terminus of sense-awareness. It has become the substratum for that factor, and the factor has been degraded into an attribute of the entity. In this way a distinction has been imported into nature which is in truth no distinction at all. A natural entity is merely a factor of fact, considered in itself. Its disconnexion from the complex of fact is a mere abstraction. It is not the substratum of the factor, but the very factor itself as bared in thought. Thus what is a mere procedure of mind in the translation of sense-awareness into discursive knowledge has been transmuted into a fundamental character of nature. In this way matter has emerged as being the metaphysical substratum of its properties, and the course of nature is interpreted as the history of matter.

Plato and Aristotle found Greek thought preoccupied with the quest for the simple substances in terms of which the course of events could be expressed. We may formulate this state of mind in the question, What is nature made of? The answers which their genius gave to this question, and more particularly the concepts which underlay the terms in which they framed their answers, have determined the unquestioned presuppositions as to time, space and matter which have reigned in science.

The unquestioned acceptance of the Aristotelian logic has led to an ingrained tendency to postulate a substratum for whatever is disclosed in sense-awareness, namely, to look below what we are aware of for the substance in the sense of the 'concrete thing.' This is the origin of the modern scientific concept of matter and of ether, namely they are the outcome of this insistent habit of postulation.

Accordingly ether has been invented by modern science as the substratum of the events which are spread through space and time beyond the reach of ordinary ponderable matter. Personally, I think that predication is a muddled notion confusing many different relations under a convenient common form of speech. For example, I hold that the relation of green to a blade of grass is entirely different from the relation of green to the event which is the life history of that blade for some short period, and is different from the relation of the blade to that event. In a sense I call the event the situation of the green, and in another sense it is the situation of the blade. Thus in one sense the blade is a character or property which can be predicated of the situation, and in another sense the green is a character or property of the same event which is also its situation. In this way the predication of properties veils radically different relations between entities.

Accordingly 'substance,' which is a correlative term to 'predication,' shares in the ambiguity. If we are to look for substance anywhere, I should find it in events which are in some sense the ultimate substance of nature.

Matter, in its modern scientific sense, is a return to the Ionian effort to find in space and time some stuff which composes nature. It has a more refined signification than the early guesses at earth and water by reason of a certain vague association with the Aristotelian idea of substance.

Earth, water, air, fire, and matter, and finally ether are related in direct succession so far as concerns their postulated characters of ultimate substrata of nature. They bear witness to the undying vitality of Greek philosophy in its search for the ultimate entities which are the factors of the fact disclosed in sense-awareness. This search is the origin of science.

This is surely a muddle. The whole being of substance is as a substratum for attributes. Thus time and space should be attributes of the substance. This they palpably are not, if the matter be the substance of nature, since it is impossible to express spatio-temporal truths without having recourse to relations involving relata other than bits of matter. I waive this point however, and come to another. It is not the substance which is in space, but the attributes. What we find in space are the red of the rose and the smell of the jasmine and the noise of cannon. We have all told our dentists where our toothache is. Thus space is not a relation between substances, but between attributes.

Thus even if you admit that the adherents of substance can be allowed to conceive substance as matter, it is a fraud to slip substance into space on the plea that space expresses relations between substances. On the face of it space has nothing to do with substances, but only with their attributes. What I mean is, that if you choose--as I think wrongly--to construe our experience of nature as an awareness of the attributes of substances, we are by this theory precluded from finding any analogous direct relations between substances as disclosed in our experience. What we do find are relations between the attributes of substances. Thus if matter is looked on as substance in space, the space in which it finds itself has very little to do with the space of our experience.

The above argument has been expressed in terms of the relational theory of space. But if space be absolute--namely, if it have a being independent of things in it--the course of the argument is hardly changed. For things in space must have a certain fundamental relation to space which we will call occupation. Thus the objection that it is the attributes which are observed as related to space, still holds.

The scientific doctrine of matter is held in conjunction with an absolute theory of time. The same arguments apply to the relations between matter and time as apply to the relations between space and matter. There is however a difference in the connexions of space with matter from those of time with matter, which I will proceed to explain.

Time does not exert the same disintegrating effect on matter which occupies it. If matter occupies a duration of time, the whole matter occupies every part of that duration. Thus the connexion between matter and time differs from the connexion between matter and space as expressed in current scientific philosophy. There is obviously a greater difficulty in conceiving time as the outcome of relations between different bits of matter than there is in the analogous conception of space. At an instant distinct volumes of space are occupied by distinct bits of matter. Accordingly there is so far no intrinsic difficulty in conceiving that space is merely the resultant of relations between the bits of matter. But in the one-dimensional time the same bit of matter occupies different portions of time. Accordingly time would have to be expressible in terms of the relations of a bit of matter with itself. My own view is a belief in the relational theory both of space and of time, and of disbelief in the current form of the relational theory of space which exhibits bits of matter as the relata for spatial relations. The true relata are events. The distinction which I have just pointed out between time and space in their connexion with matter makes it evident that any assimilation of time and space cannot proceed along the traditional line of taking matter as a fundamental element in space-formation.

I will conclude by guarding myself against a misapprehension. It is evident that the current doctrine of matter enshrines some fundamental law of nature. Any simple illustration will exemplify what I mean. For example, in a museum some specimen is locked securely in a glass case. It stays there for years: it loses its colour, and perhaps falls to pieces. But it is the same specimen; and the same chemical elements and the same quantities of those elements are present within the case at the end as were present at the beginning. Again the engineer and the astronomer deal with the motions of real permanences in nature. Any theory of nature which for one moment loses sight of these great basic facts of experience is simply silly. But it is permissible to point out that the scientific expression of these facts has become entangled in a maze of doubtful metaphysics; and that, when we remove the metaphysics and start afresh on an unprejudiced survey of nature, a new light is thrown on many fundamental concepts which dominate science and guide the progress of research.

THEORIES OF THE BIFURCATION OF NATURE

In my previous lecture I criticised the concept of matter as the substance whose attributes we perceive. This way of thinking of matter is, I think, the historical reason for its introduction into science, and is still the vague view of it at the background of our thoughts which makes the current scientific doctrine appear so obvious. Namely we conceive ourselves as perceiving attributes of things, and bits of matter are the things whose attributes we perceive.

In the seventeenth century the sweet simplicity of this aspect of matter received a rude shock. The transmission doctrines of science were then in process of elaboration and by the end of the century were unquestioned, though their particular forms have since been modified. The establishment of these transmission theories marks a turning point in the relation between science and philosophy. The doctrines to which I am especially alluding are the theories of light and sound. I have no doubt that the theories had been vaguely floating about before as obvious suggestions of common sense; for nothing in thought is ever completely new. But at that epoch they were systematised and made exact, and their complete consequences were ruthlessly deduced. It is the establishment of this procedure of taking the consequences seriously which marks the real discovery of a theory. Systematic doctrines of light and sound as being something proceeding from the emitting bodies were definitely established, and in particular the connexion of light with colour was laid bare by Newton.

The result completely destroyed the simplicity of the 'substance and attribute' theory of perception. What we see depends on the light entering the eye. Furthermore we do not even perceive what enters the eye. The things transmitted are waves or--as Newton thought--minute particles, and the things seen are colours. Locke met this difficulty by a theory of primary and secondary qualities. Namely, there are some attributes of the matter which we do perceive. These are the primary qualities, and there are other things which we perceive, such as colours, which are not attributes of matter, but are perceived by us as if they were such attributes. These are the secondary qualities of matter.

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