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The Concept of
NATURE
THE TARNER LECTURES
DELIVERED IN TRINITY COLLEGE
NOVEMBER 1919
Alfred North Whitehead
PREFACE
The contents of this book were originally delivered at Trinity College
in the autumn of 1919 as the inaugural course of Tarner lectures. The
Tarner lectureship is an occasional office founded by the liberality of
Mr Edward Tarner. The duty of each of the successive holders of the post
will be to deliver a course on 'the Philosophy of the Sciences and the
Relations or Want of Relations between the different Departments of
Knowledge.' The present book embodies the endeavour of the first
lecturer of the series to fulfil his task.
The chapters retain their original lecture form and remain as delivered
with the exception of minor changes designed to remove obscurities of
expression. The lecture form has the advantage of suggesting an audience
with a definite mental background which it is the purpose of the lecture
to modify in a specific way. In the presentation of a novel outlook with
wide ramifications a single line of communications from premises to
conclusions is not sufficient for intelligibility. Your audience will
construe whatever you say into conformity with their pre-existing
outlook. For this reason the first two chapters and the last two
chapters are essential for intelligibility though they hardly add to the
formal completeness of the exposition. Their function is to prevent the
reader from bolting up side tracks in pursuit of misunderstandings. The
same reason dictates my avoidance of the existing technical terminology
of philosophy. The modern natural philosophy is shot through and
through with the fallacy of bifurcation which is discussed in the second
chapter of this work. Accordingly all its technical terms in some subtle
way presuppose a misunderstanding of my thesis. It is perhaps as well to
state explicitly that if the reader indulges in the facile vice of
bifurcation not a word of what I have here written will be intelligible.
The last two chapters do not properly belong to the special course.
Chapter VIII is a lecture delivered in the spring of 1920 before the
Chemical Society of the students of the Imperial College of Science and
Technology. It has been appended here as conveniently summing up and
applying the doctrine of the book for an audience with one definite type
of outlook.
This volume on 'the Concept of Nature' forms a companion book to my
previous work _An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Natural
Knowledge_. Either book can be read independently, but they supplement
each other. In part the present book supplies points of view which were
omitted from its predecessor; in part it traverses the same ground with
an alternative exposition. For one thing, mathematical notation has been
carefully avoided, and the results of mathematical deductions are
assumed. Some of the explanations have been improved and others have
been set in a new light. On the other hand important points of the
previous work have been omitted where I have had nothing fresh to say
about them. On the whole, whereas the former work based itself chiefly
on ideas directly drawn from mathematical physics, the present book
keeps closer to certain fields of philosophy and physics to the
exclusion of mathematics. The two works meet in their discussions of
some details of space and time.
I am not conscious that I have in any way altered my views. Some
developments have been made. Those that are capable of a
non-mathematical exposition have been incorporated in the text. The
mathematical developments are alluded to in the last two chapters. They
concern the adaptation of the principles of mathematical physics to the
form of the relativity principle which is here maintained. Einstein's
method of using the theory of tensors is adopted, but the application is
worked out on different lines and from different assumptions. Those of
his results which have been verified by experience are obtained also by
my methods. The divergence chiefly arises from the fact that I do not
accept his theory of non-uniform space or his assumption as to the
peculiar fundamental character of light-signals. I would not however be
misunderstood to be lacking in appreciation of the value of his recent
work on general relativity which has the high merit of first disclosing
the way in which mathematical physics should proceed in the light of the
principle of relativity. But in my judgment he has cramped the
development of his brilliant mathematical method in the narrow bounds of
a very doubtful philosophy.
The object of the present volume and of its predecessor is to lay the
basis of a natural philosophy which is the necessary presupposition of a
reorganised speculative physics. The general assimilation of space and
time which dominates the constructive thought can claim the independent
support of Minkowski from the side of science and also of succeeding
relativists, while on the side of philosophers it was, I believe, one
theme of Prof. Alexander's Gifford lectures delivered some few years ago
but not yet published. He also summarised his conclusions on this
question in a lecture to the Aristotelian Society in the July of 1918.
Since the publication of _An Enquiry concerning the Principles of
Natural Knowledge_ I have had the advantage of reading Mr C. D. Broad's
_Perception, Physics, and Reality_ [Camb. Univ. Press, 1914]. This
valuable book has assisted me in my discussion in Chapter II, though I
am unaware as to how far Mr Broad would assent to any of my arguments as
there stated.
It remains for me to thank the staff of the University Press, its
compositors, its proof-readers, its clerks, and its managing officials,
not only for the technical excellence of their work, but for the way
they have co-operated so as to secure my convenience.
A. N. W.
IMPERIAL COLLEGE OF SCIENCE
AND TECHNOLOGY.
_April_, 1920.
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I NATURE AND THOUGHT 1
II THEORIES OF THE BIFURCATION OF NATURE 26
III TIME 49
IV THE METHOD OF EXTENSIVE ABSTRACTION 74
V SPACE AND MOTION 99
VI CONGRUENCE 120
VII OBJECTS 143
VIII SUMMARY 164
IX THE ULTIMATE PHYSICAL CONCEPTS 185
NOTE: ON THE GREEK CONCEPT OF A POINT 197
NOTE: ON SIGNIFICANCE AND INFINITE EVENTS 197
INDEX 199
THE CONCEPT OF NATURE
CHAPTER I
NATURE AND THOUGHT
The subject-matter of the Tarner lectures is defined by the founder to
be 'the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Relations or Want of
Relations between the different Departments of Knowledge.' It is fitting
at the first lecture of this new foundation to dwell for a few moments
on the intentions of the donor as expressed in this definition; and I do
so the more willingly as I shall thereby be enabled to introduce the
topics to which the present course is to be devoted.
We are justified, I think, in taking the second clause of the definition
as in part explanatory of the earlier clause. What is the philosophy of
the sciences? It is not a bad answer to say that it is the study of the
relations between the different departments of knowledge. Then with
admirable solicitude for the freedom of learning there is inserted in
the definition after the word 'relations' the phrase 'or want of
relations.' A disproof of relations between sciences would in itself
constitute a philosophy of the sciences. But we could not dispense
either with the earlier or the later clause. It is not every relation
between sciences which enters into their philosophy. For example biology
and physics are connected by the use of the microscope. Still, I may
safely assert that a technical description of the uses of the microscope
in biology is not part of the philosophy of the sciences. Again, you
cannot abandon the later clause of the definition; namely that
referring to the relations between the sciences, without abandoning the
explicit reference to an ideal in the absence of which philosophy must
languish from lack of intrinsic interest. That ideal is the attainment
of some unifying concept which will set in assigned relationships within
itself all that there is for knowledge, for feeling, and for emotion.
That far off ideal is the motive power of philosophic research; and
claims allegiance even as you expel it. The philosophic pluralist is a
strict logician; the Hegelian thrives on contradictions by the help of
his absolute; the Mohammedan divine bows before the creative will of
Allah; and the pragmatist will swallow anything so long as it 'works.'
The mention of these vast systems and of the age-long controversies from
which they spring, warns us to concentrate. Our task is the simpler one
of the philosophy of the sciences. Now a science has already a certain
unity which is the very reason why that body of knowledge has been
instinctively recognised as forming a science. The philosophy of a
science is the endeavour to express explicitly those unifying
characteristics which pervade that complex of thoughts and make it to be
a science. The philosophy of the sciences--conceived as one subject--is
the endeavour to exhibit all sciences as one science, or--in case of
defeat--the disproof of such a possibility.
Again I will make a further simplification, and confine attention to the
natural sciences, that is, to the sciences whose subject-matter is
nature. By postulating a common subject-matter for this group of
sciences a unifying philosophy of natural science has been thereby
presupposed.
What do we mean by nature? We have to discuss the philosophy of natural
science. Natural science is the science of nature. But--What is nature?
Nature is that which we observe in perception through the senses. In
this sense-perception we are aware of something which is not thought and
which is self-contained for thought. This property of being
self-contained for thought lies at the base of natural science. It means
that nature can be thought of as a closed system whose mutual relations
do not require the expression of the fact that they are thought about.
Thus in a sense nature is independent of thought. By this statement no
metaphysical pronouncement is intended. What I mean is that we can think
about nature without thinking about thought. I shall say that then we
are thinking 'homogeneously' about nature.
Of course it is possible to think of nature in conjunction with thought
about the fact that nature is thought about. In such a case I shall say
that we are thinking 'heterogeneously' about nature. In fact during the
last few minutes we have been thinking heterogeneously about nature.
Natural science is exclusively concerned with homogeneous thoughts about
nature.
But sense-perception has in it an element which is not thought. It is a
difficult psychological question whether sense-perception involves
thought; and if it does involve thought, what is the kind of thought
which it necessarily involves. Note that it has been stated above that
sense-perception is an awareness of something which is not thought.
Namely, nature is not thought. But this is a different question, namely
that the fact of sense-perception has a factor which is not thought. I
call this factor 'sense-awareness.' Accordingly the doctrine that
natural science is exclusively concerned with homogeneous thoughts about
nature does not immediately carry with it the conclusion that natural
science is not concerned with sense-awareness.
However, I do assert this further statement; namely, that though natural
science is concerned with nature which is the terminus of
sense-perception, it is not concerned with the sense-awareness itself.
I repeat the main line of this argument, and expand it in certain
directions.
Thought about nature is different from the sense-perception of nature.
Hence the fact of sense-perception has an ingredient or factor which is
not thought. I call this ingredient sense-awareness. It is indifferent
to my argument whether sense-perception has or has not thought as
another ingredient. If sense-perception does not involve thought, then
sense-awareness and sense-perception are identical. But the something
perceived is perceived as an entity which is the terminus of the
sense-awareness, something which for thought is beyond the fact of that
sense-awareness. Also the something perceived certainly does not contain
other sense-awarenesses which are different from the sense-awareness
which is an ingredient in that perception. Accordingly nature as
disclosed in sense-perception is self-contained as against
sense-awareness, in addition to being self-contained as against thought.
I will also express this self-containedness of nature by saying that
nature is closed to mind.
This closure of nature does not carry with it any metaphysical doctrine
of the disjunction of nature and mind. It means that in sense-perception
nature is disclosed as a complex of entities whose mutual relations are
expressible in thought without reference to mind, that is, without
reference either to sense-awareness or to thought. Furthermore, I do not
wish to be understood as implying that sense-awareness and thought are
the only activities which are to be ascribed to mind. Also I am not
denying that there are relations of natural entities to mind or minds
other than being the termini of the sense-awarenesses of minds.
Accordingly I will extend the meaning of the terms 'homogeneous
thoughts' and 'heterogeneous thoughts' which have already been
introduced. We are thinking 'homogeneously' about nature when we are
thinking about it without thinking about thought or about
sense-awareness, and we are thinking 'heterogeneously' about nature when
we are thinking about it in conjunction with thinking either about
thought or about sense-awareness or about both.
I also take the homogeneity of thought about nature as excluding any
reference to moral or aesthetic values whose apprehension is vivid in
proportion to self-conscious activity. The values of nature are perhaps
the key to the metaphysical synthesis of existence. But such a synthesis
is exactly what I am not attempting. I am concerned exclusively with the
generalisations of widest scope which can be effected respecting that
which is known to us as the direct deliverance of sense-awareness.
I have said that nature is disclosed in sense-perception as a complex of
entities. It is worth considering what we mean by an entity in this
connexion. 'Entity' is simply the Latin equivalent for 'thing' unless
some arbitrary distinction is drawn between the words for technical
purposes. All thought has to be about things. We can gain some idea of
this necessity of things for thought by examination of the structure of
a proposition.
Let us suppose that a proposition is being communicated by an expositor
to a recipient. Such a proposition is composed of phrases; some of these
phrases may be demonstrative and others may be descriptive.
By a demonstrative phrase I mean a phrase which makes the recipient
aware of an entity in a way which is independent of the particular
demonstrative phrase. You will understand that I am here using
'demonstration' in the non-logical sense, namely in the sense in which a
lecturer demonstrates by the aid of a frog and a microscope the
circulation of the blood for an elementary class of medical students. I
will call such demonstration 'speculative' demonstration, remembering
Hamlet's use of the word 'speculation' when he says,
There is no speculation in those eyes.
Thus a demonstrative phrase demonstrates an entity speculatively. It may
happen that the expositor has meant some other entity--namely, the
phrase demonstrates to him an entity which is diverse from the entity
which it demonstrates to the recipient. In that case there is confusion;
for there are two diverse propositions, namely the proposition for the
expositor and the proposition for the recipient. I put this possibility
aside as irrelevant for our discussion, though in practice it may be
difficult for two persons to concur in the consideration of exactly the
same proposition, or even for one person to have determined exactly the
proposition which he is considering.
Again the demonstrative phrase may fail to demonstrate any entity. In
that case there is no proposition for the recipient. I think that we
may assume (perhaps rashly) that the expositor knows what he means.
A demonstrative phrase is a gesture. It is not itself a constituent of
the proposition, but the entity which it demonstrates is such a
constituent. You may quarrel with a demonstrative phrase as in some way
obnoxious to you; but if it demonstrates the right entity, the
proposition is unaffected though your taste may be offended. This
suggestiveness of the phraseology is part of the literary quality of the
sentence which conveys the proposition. This is because a sentence
directly conveys one proposition, while in its phraseology it suggests a
penumbra of other propositions charged with emotional value. We are now
talking of the one proposition directly conveyed in any phraseology.
This doctrine is obscured by the fact that in most cases what is in form
a mere part of the demonstrative gesture is in fact a part of the
proposition which it is desired directly to convey. In such a case we
will call the phraseology of the proposition elliptical. In ordinary
intercourse the phraseology of nearly all propositions is elliptical.
Let us take some examples. Suppose that the expositor is in London, say
in Regent's Park and in Bedford College, the great women's college which
is situated in that park. He is speaking in the college hall and he
says,
'This college building is commodious.'
The phrase 'this college building' is a demonstrative phrase. Now
suppose the recipient answers,
'This is not a college building, it is the lion-house in the Zoo.'
Then, provided that the expositor's original proposition has not been
couched in elliptical phraseology, the expositor sticks to his original
proposition when he replies,
'Anyhow, _it_ is commodious.'
Note that the recipient's answer accepts the speculative demonstration
of the phrase 'This college building.' He does not say, 'What do you
mean?' He accepts the phrase as demonstrating an entity, but declares
that same entity to be the lion-house in the Zoo. In his reply, the
expositor in his turn recognises the success of his original gesture as
a speculative demonstration, and waives the question of the suitability
of its mode of suggestiveness with an 'anyhow.' But he is now in a
position to repeat the original proposition with the aid of a
demonstrative gesture robbed of any suggestiveness, suitable or
unsuitable, by saying,
'_It_ is commodious.'
The '_it_' of this final statement presupposes that thought has seized
on the entity as a bare objective for consideration.
We confine ourselves to entities disclosed in sense-awareness. The
entity is so disclosed as a relatum in the complex which is nature. It
dawns on an observer because of its relations; but it is an objective
for thought in its own bare individuality. Thought cannot proceed
otherwise; namely, it cannot proceed without the ideal bare 'it' which
is speculatively demonstrated. This setting up of the entity as a bare
objective does not ascribe to it an existence apart from the complex in
which it has been found by sense-perception. The 'it' for thought is
essentially a relatum for sense-awareness.
The chances are that the dialogue as to the college building takes
another form. Whatever the expositor originally meant, he almost
certainly now takes his former statement as couched in elliptical
phraseology, and assumes that he was meaning,
'This is a college building and is commodious.'
Here the demonstrative phrase or the gesture, which demonstrates the
'it' which is commodious, has now been reduced to 'this'; and the
attenuated phrase, under the circumstances in which it is uttered, is
sufficient for the purpose of correct demonstration. This brings out the
point that the verbal form is never the whole phraseology of the
proposition; this phraseology also includes the general circumstances of
its production. Thus the aim of a demonstrative phrase is to exhibit a
definite 'it' as a bare objective for thought; but the _modus operandi_
of a demonstrative phrase is to produce an awareness of the entity as a
particular relatum in an auxiliary complex, chosen merely for the sake
of the speculative demonstration and irrelevant to the proposition. For
example, in the above dialogue, colleges and buildings, as related to
the 'it' speculatively demonstrated by the phrase 'this college
building,' set that 'it' in an auxiliary complex which is irrelevant to
the proposition
'It is commodious.'
Of course in language every phrase is invariably highly elliptical.
Accordingly the sentence
'This college building is commodious'
means probably
'This college building is commodious as a college building.'
But it will be found that in the above discussion we can replace
'commodious' by 'commodious as a college building' without altering our
conclusion; though we can guess that the recipient, who thought he was
in the lion-house of the Zoo, would be less likely to assent to.
'Anyhow, it is commodious as a college building.'
A more obvious instance of elliptical phraseology arises if the
expositor should address the recipient with the remark,
'That criminal is your friend.'
The recipient might answer,
'He is my friend and you are insulting.'
Here the recipient assumes that the phrase 'That criminal' is elliptical
and not merely demonstrative. In fact, pure demonstration is impossible
though it is the ideal of thought. This practical impossibility of pure
demonstration is a difficulty which arises in the communication of
thought and in the retention of thought. Namely, a proposition about a
particular factor in nature can neither be expressed to others nor
retained for repeated consideration without the aid of auxiliary
complexes which are irrelevant to it.
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 (i) is a college building in Regent's
Park and (ii) is commodious and (iii) 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[1] called the
'diversification of nature.'
[1] Cf. _Enquiry_.
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.
In Plato the forms of thought are more fluid than in Aristotle, and
therefore, as I venture to think, the more valuable. Their importance
consists in the evidence they yield of cultivated thought about nature
before it had been forced into a uniform mould by the long tradition of
scientific philosophy. For example in the _Timaeus_ there is a
presupposition, somewhat vaguely expressed, of a distinction between the
general becoming of nature and the measurable time of nature. In a later
lecture I have to distinguish between what I call the passage of nature
and particular time-systems which exhibit certain characteristics of
that passage. I will not go so far as to claim Plato in direct support
of this doctrine, but I do think that the sections of the _Timaeus_
which deal with time become clearer if my distinction is admitted.
This is however a digression. I am now concerned with the origin of the
scientific doctrine of matter in Greek thought. In the _Timaeus_ Plato
asserts that nature is made of fire and earth with air and water as
intermediate between them, so that 'as fire is to air so is air to
water, and as air is to water so is water to earth.' He also suggests a
molecular hypothesis for these four elements. In this hypothesis
everything depends on the shape of the atoms; for earth it is cubical
and for fire it is pyramidal. To-day physicists are again discussing
the structure of the atom, and its shape is no slight factor in that
structure. Plato's guesses read much more fantastically than does
Aristotle's systematic analysis; but in some ways they are more
valuable. The main outline of his ideas is comparable with that of
modern science. It embodies concepts which any theory of natural
philosophy must retain and in some sense must explain. Aristotle asked
the fundamental question, What do we mean by 'substance'? Here the
reaction between his philosophy and his logic worked very unfortunately.
In his logic, the fundamental type of affirmative proposition is the
attribution of a predicate to a subject. Accordingly, amid the many
current uses of the term 'substance' which he analyses, he emphasises
its meaning as 'the ultimate substratum which is no longer predicated of
anything else.'
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.
The succession of ideas starting from the crude guesses of the early
Ionian thinkers and ending in the nineteenth century ether reminds us
that the scientific doctrine of matter is really a hybrid through which
philosophy passed on its way to the refined Aristotelian concept of
substance and to which science returned as it reacted against
philosophic abstractions. Earth, fire, and water in the Ionic philosophy
and the shaped elements in the _Timaeus_ are comparable to the matter
and ether of modern scientific doctrine. But substance represents the
final philosophic concept of the substratum which underlies any
attribute. Matter (in the scientific sense) is already in space and
time. Thus matter represents the refusal to think away spatial and
temporal characteristics and to arrive at the bare concept of an
individual entity. It is this refusal which has caused the muddle of
importing the mere procedure of thought into the fact of nature. The
entity, bared of all characteristics except those of space and time, has
acquired a physical status as the ultimate texture of nature; so that
the course of nature is conceived as being merely the fortunes of matter
in its adventure through space.
Thus the origin of the doctrine of matter is the outcome of uncritical
acceptance of space and time as external conditions for natural
existence. By this I do not mean that any doubt should be thrown on
facts of space and time as ingredients in nature. What I do mean is 'the
unconscious presupposition of space and time as being that within which
nature is set.' This is exactly the sort of presupposition which tinges
thought in any reaction against the subtlety of philosophical criticism.
My theory of the formation of the scientific doctrine of matter is that
first philosophy illegitimately transformed the bare entity, which is
simply an abstraction necessary for the method of thought, into the
metaphysical substratum of these factors in nature which in various
senses are assigned to entities as their attributes; and that, as a
second step, scientists (including philosophers who were scientists) in
conscious or unconscious ignoration of philosophy presupposed this
substratum, _qua_ substratum for attributes, as nevertheless in time and
space.
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 (in the current philosophy) a difference in the
connexions of space with matter from those of time with matter, which I
will proceed to explain.
Space is not merely an ordering of material entities so that any one
entity bears certain relations to other material entities. The
occupation of space impresses a certain character on each material
entity in itself. By reason of its occupation of space matter has
extension. By reason of its extension each bit of matter is divisible
into parts, and each part is a numerically distinct entity from every
other such part. Accordingly it would seem that every material entity is
not really one entity. It is an essential multiplicity of entities.
There seems to be no stopping this dissociation of matter into
multiplicities short of finding each ultimate entity occupying one
individual point. This essential multiplicity of material entities is
certainly not what is meant by science, nor does it correspond to
anything disclosed in sense-awareness. It is absolutely necessary that
at a certain stage in this dissociation of matter a halt should be
called, and that the material entities thus obtained should be treated
as units. The stage of arrest may be arbitrary or may be set by the
characteristics of nature; but all reasoning in science ultimately drops
its space-analysis and poses to itself the problem, 'Here is one
material entity, what is happening to it as a unit entity?' Yet this
material entity is still retaining its extension, and as thus extended
is a mere multiplicity. Thus there is an essential atomic property in
nature which is independent of the dissociation of extension. There is
something which in itself is one, and which is more than the logical
aggregate of entities occupying points within the volume which the unit
occupies. Indeed we may well be sceptical as to these ultimate entities
at points, and doubt whether there are any such entities at all. They
have the suspicious character that we are driven to accept them by
abstract logic and not by observed fact.
Time (in the current philosophy) 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.
The philosophy of nature took a wrong turn during its development by
Greek thought. This erroneous presupposition is vague and fluid in
Plato's _Timaeus_. The general groundwork of the thought is still
uncommitted and can be construed as merely lacking due explanation and
the guarding emphasis. But in Aristotle's exposition the current
conceptions were hardened and made definite so as to produce a faulty
analysis of the relation between the matter and the form of nature as
disclosed in sense-awareness. In this phrase the term 'matter' is not
used in its scientific sense.
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.