THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
In so far as the intellectual climates of different epochs can be
contrasted, the eighteenth century in Europe was the complete antithesis
to the Middle Ages. The contrast is symbolised by the difference between
the cathedral of Chartres and the Parisian salons, where D’Alembert
conversed with Voltaire. The Middle Ages were haunted with the desire to
rationalise the infinite: the men of the eighteenth century rationalised
the social life of modern communities, and based their sociological
theories on an appeal to the facts of nature. The earlier period was the
age of faith, based upon reason. In the later period, they let sleeping
dogs lie: it was the age of reason, based upon faith. To illustrate my
meaning:—St. Anselm would have been distressed if he had failed to find
a convincing argument for the existence of God, and on this argument he
based his edifice of faith, whereas Hume based his _Dissertation on the
Natural History of Religion_ upon his faith in the order of nature. In
comparing these epochs it is well to remember that reason can err, and
that faith may be misplaced.
In my previous lecture I traced the evolution, during the seventeenth
century, of the scheme of scientific ideas which has dominated thought
ever since. It involves a fundamental duality, with _material_ on the
one hand, and on the other hand _mind_. In between there lie the
concepts of life, organism, function, instantaneous reality,
interaction, order of nature, which collectively form the Achilles heel
of the whole system.
I also expressed my conviction that if we desired to obtain a more
fundamental expression of the concrete character of natural fact, the
element in this scheme which we should first criticise is the concept of
_simple location_. In view therefore of the importance which this idea
will assume in these lectures, I will repeat the meaning which I have
attached to this phrase. To say that a bit of matter has _simple
location_ means that, in expressing its spatio-temporal relations, it is
adequate to state that it is where it is, in a definite finite region of
space, and throughout a definite finite duration of time, apart from any
essential reference of the relations of that bit of matter to other
regions of space and to other durations of time. Again, this concept of
simple location is independent of the controversy between the absolutist
and the relativist views of space or of time. So long as any theory of
space, or of time, can give a meaning, either absolute or relative, to
the idea of a definite region of space, and of a definite duration of
time, the idea of simple location has a perfectly definite meaning. This
idea is the very foundation of the seventeenth century scheme of nature.
Apart from it, the scheme is incapable of expression. I shall argue that
among the primary elements of nature as apprehended in our immediate
experience, there is no element whatever which possesses this character
of simple location. It does not follow, however, that the science of the
seventeenth century was simply wrong. I hold that by a process of
constructive abstraction we can arrive at abstractions which are the
simply-located bits of material, and at other abstractions which are the
minds included in the scientific scheme. Accordingly, the real error is
an example of what I have termed: The Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness.
The advantage of confining attention to a definite group of
abstractions, is that you confine your thoughts to clear-cut definite
things, with clear-cut definite relations. Accordingly, if you have a
logical head, you can deduce a variety of conclusions respecting the
relationships between these abstract entities. Furthermore, if the
abstractions are well-founded, that is to say, if they do not abstract
from everything that is important in experience, the scientific thought
which confines itself to these abstractions will arrive at a variety of
important truths relating to our experience of nature. We all know those
clear-cut trenchant intellects, immovably encased in a hard shell of
abstractions. They hold you to their abstractions by the sheer grip of
personality.
The disadvantage of exclusive attention to a group of abstractions,
however well-founded, is that, by the nature of the case, you have
abstracted from the remainder of things. In so far as the excluded
things are important in your experience, your modes of thought are not
fitted to deal with them. You cannot think without abstractions;
accordingly, it is of the utmost importance to be vigilant in critically
revising your _modes_ of abstraction. It is here that philosophy finds
its niche as essential to the healthy progress of society. It is the
critic of abstractions. A civilisation which cannot burst through its
current abstractions is doomed to sterility after a very limited period
of progress. An active school of philosophy is quite as important for
the locomotion of ideas, as is an active school of railway engineers for
the locomotion of fuel.
Sometimes it happens that the service rendered by philosophy is entirely
obscured by the astonishing success of a scheme of abstractions in
expressing the dominant interests of an epoch. This is exactly what
happened during the eighteenth century. _Les philosophes_ were not
philosophers. They were men of genius, clear-headed and acute, who
applied the seventeenth century group of scientific abstractions to the
analysis of the unbounded universe. Their triumph, in respect to the
circle of ideas mainly interesting to their contemporaries, was
overwhelming. Whatever did not fit into their scheme was ignored,
derided, disbelieved. Their hatred of Gothic architecture symbolises
their lack of sympathy with dim perspectives. It was the age of reason,
healthy, manly, upstanding reason; but, of one-eyed reason, deficient in
its vision of depth. We cannot overrate the debt of gratitude which we
owe to these men. For a thousand years Europe had been a prey to
intolerant, intolerable visionaries. The common sense of the eighteenth
century, its grasp of the obvious facts of human suffering, and of the
obvious demands of human nature, acted on the world like a bath of moral
cleansing. Voltaire must have the credit, that he hated injustice, he
hated cruelty, he hated senseless repression, and he hated hocus-pocus.
Furthermore, when he saw them, he knew them. In these supreme virtues,
he was typical of his century, on its better side. But if men cannot
live on bread alone, still less can they do so on disinfectants. The age
had its limitations; yet we cannot understand the passion with which
some of its main positions are still defended, especially in the schools
of science, unless we do full justice to its positive achievements. The
seventeenth century scheme of concepts was proving a perfect instrument
for research.
This triumph of materialism was chiefly in the sciences of rational
dynamics, physics, and chemistry. So far as dynamics and physics were
concerned, progress was in the form of direct developments of the main
ideas of the previous epoch. Nothing fundamentally new was introduced,
but there was an immense detailed development. Special case after
special case was unravelled. It was as though the very Heavens were
being opened, on a set plan. In the second half of the century,
Lavoisier practically founded chemistry on its present basis. He
introduced into it the principle that no material is lost or gained in
any chemical transformations. This was the last success of materialistic
thought, which has not ultimately proved to be double-edged. Chemical
science now only waited for the atomic theory, in the next century.
In this century the notion of the mechanical explanation of all the
processes of nature finally hardened into a dogma of science. The notion
won through on its merits by reason of an almost miraculous series of
triumphs achieved by the mathematical physicists, culminating in the
_Méchanique Analytique_ of Lagrange, which was published in 1787.
Newton’s _Principia_ was published in 1687, so that exactly one hundred
years separates the two great books. This century contains the first
period of mathematical physics of the modern type. The publication of
Clerk Maxwell’s _Electricity and Magnetism_ in 1873 marks the close of
the second period. Each of these three books introduces new horizons of
thought affecting everything which comes after them.
In considering the various topics to which mankind has bent its
systematic thought, it is impossible not to be struck with the unequal
distribution of ability among the different fields. In almost all
subjects there are a few outstanding names. For it requires genius to
create a subject as a distinct topic for thought. But in the case of
many topics, after a good beginning very relevant to its immediate
occasion, the subsequent development appears as a weak series of
flounderings, so that the whole subject gradually loses its grip on the
evolution of thought. It was far otherwise with mathematical physics.
The more you study this subject, the more you will find yourself
astonished by the almost incredible triumphs of intellect which it
exhibits. The great mathematical physicists of the eighteenth and first
few years of the nineteenth century, most of them French, are a case in
point: Maupertuis, Clairaut, D’Alembert, Lagrange, Laplace, Fourier,
form a series of names, such that each recalls to mind some achievement
of the first rank. When Carlyle, as the mouthpiece of the subsequent
Romantic Age, scoffingly terms the period the Age of Victorious
Analysis, and mocks at Maupertuis as a ‘sublimish gentleman in a white
periwig,’ he only exhibits the narrow side of the Romanticists whom he
is then voicing.
It is impossible to explain intelligently, in a short time and without
technicalities, the details of the progress made by this school. I will,
however, endeavour to explain the main point of a joint achievement of
Maupertuis and Lagrange. Their results, in conjunction with some
subsequent mathematical methods due to two great German mathematicians
of the first half of the nineteenth century, Gauss and Riemann, have
recently proved themselves to be the preparatory work necessary for the
new ideas which Herz and Einstein have introduced into mathematical
physics. Also they inspired some of the best ideas in Clerk Maxwell’s
treatise, already mentioned in this lecture.
They aimed at discovering something more fundamental and more general
than Newton’s laws of motion which were discussed in the previous
lecture. They wanted to find some wider ideas, and in the case of
Lagrange some more general means of mathematical exposition. It was an
ambitious enterprise, and they were completely successful. Maupertuis
lived in the first half of the eighteenth century, and Lagrange’s active
life lay in its second half. We find in Maupertuis a tinge of the
theologic age which preceded his birth. He started with the idea that
the whole path of a material particle between any limits of time must
achieve some perfection worthy of the providence of God. There are two
points of interest in this motive principle. In the first place, it
illustrates the thesis which I was urging in my first lecture that the
way in which the medieval church had impressed on Europe the notion of
the detailed providence of a rational personal God was one of the
factors by which the trust in the order of nature had been generated. In
the second place, though we are now all convinced that such modes of
thought are of no direct use in detailed scientific enquiry, Maupertuis’
success in this particular case shows that almost any idea which jogs
you out of your current abstractions may be better than nothing. In the
present case what the idea in question did for Maupertuis was to lead
him to enquire what general property of the path as a whole could be
deduced from Newton’s laws of motion. Undoubtedly this was a very
sensible procedure whatever one’s theological notions. Also his general
idea led him to conceive that the property found would be a quantitative
sum, such that any slight deviation from the path would increase it. In
this supposition he was generalising Newton’s first law of motion. For
an isolated particle takes the shortest route with uniform velocity. So
Maupertuis conjectured that a particle travelling through a field of
force would realise the least possible amount of some quantity. He
discovered such a quantity and called it the integral action between the
time limits considered. In modern phraseology it is the sum through
successive small lapses of time of the difference between the kinetic
and potential energies of the particle at each successive instant. This
action, therefore, has to do with the interchange between the energy
arising from motion and the energy arising from position. Maupertuis had
discovered the famous theorem of least action. Maupertuis was not quite
of the first rank in comparison with such a man as Lagrange. In his
hands and in those of his immediate successors, his principle did not
assume any dominating importance. Lagrange put the same question on a
wider basis so as to make its answer relevant to actual procedure in the
development of dynamics. His Principle of Virtual Work as applied to
systems in motion is in effect Maupertuis’ principle conceived as
applying at each instant of the path of the system. But Lagrange saw
further than Maupertuis. He grasped that he had gained a method of
stating dynamical truths in a way which is perfectly indifferent to the
particular methods of measurement employed in fixing the positions of
the various parts of the system. Accordingly, he went on to deduce
equations of motion which are equally applicable whatever quantitative
measurements have been made, provided that they are adequate to fix
positions. The beauty and almost divine simplicity of these equations is
such that these formulae are worthy to rank with those mysterious
symbols which in ancient times were held directly to indicate the
Supreme Reason at the base of all things. Later Herz—inventor of
electromagnetic waves—based mechanics on the idea of every particle
traversing the shortest path open to it under the circumstances
constraining its motion; and finally Einstein, by the use of the
geometrical theories of Gauss and Riemann, showed that these
circumstances could be construed as being inherent in the character of
space-time itself. Such, in barest outline, is the story of dynamics
from Galileo to Einstein.
Meanwhile Galvani and Volta lived and made their electric discoveries;
and the biological sciences slowly gathered their material, but still
waited for dominating ideas. Psychology, also, was beginning to
disengage itself from its dependence on general philosophy. This
independent growth of psychology was the ultimate result of its
invocation by John Locke as a critic of metaphysical licence. All the
sciences dealing with life were still in an elementary observational
stage, in which classification and direct description were dominant. So
far the scheme of abstractions was adequate to the occasion.
In the realm of practice, the age which produced enlightened rulers,
such as the Emperor Joseph of the House of Hapsburg, Frederick the
Great, Walpole, the great Lord Chatham, George Washington, cannot be
said to have failed. Especially when to these rulers, it adds the
invention of parliamentary cabinet government in England, of federal
presidential government in the United States, and of the humanitarian
principles of the French Revolution. Also in technology it produced the
steam-engine, and thereby ushered in a new era of civilisation.
Undoubtedly, as a practical age the eighteenth century was a success. If
you had asked one of the wisest and most typical of its ancestors, who
just saw its commencement, I mean John Locke, what he expected from it,
he would hardly have pitched his hopes higher than its actual
achievements.
In developing a criticism of the scientific scheme of the eighteenth
century, I must first give my main reason for ignoring nineteenth
century idealism—I am speaking of the philosophic idealism which finds
the ultimate meaning of reality in mentality that is fully cognitive.
This idealistic school, as hitherto developed, has been too much
divorced from the scientific outlook. It has swallowed the scientific
scheme in its entirety as being the only rendering of the facts of
nature, and has then explained it as being an idea in the ultimate
mentality. In the case of absolute idealism, the world of nature is just
one of the ideas, somehow differentiating the unity of the Absolute: in
the case of pluralistic idealism involving monadic mentalities, this
world is the greatest common measure of the various ideas which
differentiate the various mental unities of the various monads. But,
however you take it, these idealistic schools have conspicuously failed
to connect, in any organic fashion, the fact of nature with their
idealistic philosophies. So far as concerns what will be said in these
lectures, your ultimate outlook may be realistic or idealistic. My point
is that a further stage of provisional realism is required in which the
scientific scheme is recast, and founded upon the ultimate concept of
_organism_.
In outline, my procedure is to start from the analysis of the status of
space and of time, or in modern phraseology, the status of space-time.
There are two characters of either. Things are separated by space, and
are separated by time: but they are also together in space, and together
in time, even if they be not contemporaneous. I will call these
characters the ‘_separative_’ and the ‘_prehensive_’ characters of
space-time. There is yet a third character of space-time. Everything
which is in space receives a definite limitation of some sort, so that
in a sense it has just that shape which it does have and no other, also
in some sense it is just in this place and in no other. Analogously for
time, a thing endures during a certain period, and through no other
period. I will call this the ‘_modal_’ character of space-time. It is
evident that the modal character taken by itself gives rise to the idea
of simple location. But it must be conjoined with the separative and
prehensive characters.
For simplicity of thought, I will first speak of space only, and will
afterwards extend the same treatment to time.
The volume is the most concrete element of space. But the separative
character of space, analyses a volume into sub-volumes, and so on
indefinitely. Accordingly, taking the separative character in isolation,
we should infer that a volume is a mere multiplicity of non-voluminous
elements, of points in fact. But it is the unity of volume which is the
ultimate fact of experience, for example, the voluminous space of this
hall. This hall as a mere multiplicity of points is a construction of
the logical imagination.
Accordingly, the prime fact is the prehensive unity of volume, and this
unity is mitigated or limited by the separated unities of the
innumerable contained parts. We have a prehensive unity, which is yet
held apart as an aggregate of contained parts. But the prehensive unity
of the volume is not the unity of a mere logical aggregate of parts. The
parts form an ordered aggregate, in the sense that each part is
something from the standpoint of every other part, and also from the
same standpoint every other part is something in relation to it. Thus if
A and B and C are volumes of space, B has an aspect from the standpoint
of A, and so has C, and so has the relationship of B and C. This aspect
of B from A is of the essence of A. The volumes of space have no
independent existence. They are only entities as within the totality;
you cannot extract them from their environment without destruction of
their very essence. Accordingly, I will say that the aspect of B from A
is the _mode_ in which B enters into the composition of A. This is the
modal character of space, that the prehensive unity of A is the
prehension into unity of the aspects of all other volumes from the
standpoint of A. The shape of a volume is the formula from which the
totality of its aspects can be derived. Thus the shape of a volume is
more abstract than its aspects. It is evident that I can use Leibniz’s
language, and say that every volume mirrors in itself every other volume
in space.
Exactly analogous considerations hold with respect to durations in time.
An instant of time, without duration, is an imaginative logical
construction. Also each duration of time mirrors in itself all temporal
durations.
But in two ways I have introduced a false simplicity. In the first
place, I should have conjoined space and time, and conducted my
explanation in respect to four-dimensional regions of space-time. I have
nothing to add in the way of explanation. In your minds, substitute such
four-dimensional regions for the spatial volumes of the previous
explanations.
Secondly, my explanation has involved itself in a vicious circle. For I
have made the prehensive unity of the region A to consist of the
prehensive unification of the modal presences in A of other regions.
This difficulty arises because space-time cannot in reality be
considered as a self-subsistent entity. It is an abstraction, and its
explanation requires reference to that from which it has been extracted.
Space-time is the specification of certain general characters of events
and of their mutual ordering. This recurrence to concrete fact brings me
back to the eighteenth century, and indeed to Francis Bacon in the
seventeenth century. We have to consider the development in those
epochs, of the criticism of the reigning scientific scheme.
No epoch is homogeneous; whatever you may have assigned as the dominant
note of a considerable period, it will always be possible to produce
men, and great men, belonging to the same time, who exhibit themselves
as antagonistic to the tone of their age. This is certainly the case
with the eighteenth century. For example, the names of John Wesley and
of Rousseau must have occurred to you while I was drawing the character
of that time. But I do not want to speak of them, or of others. The man,
whose ideas I must consider at some length, is Bishop Berkeley. Quite at
the commencement of the epoch, he made all the right criticisms, at
least in principle. It would be untrue to say that he produced no
effect. He was a famous man. The wife of George II was one of the few
queens who, in any country, have been clever enough, and wise enough, to
patronise learning judiciously; accordingly, Berkeley was made a bishop,
in days when bishops in Great Britain were relatively far greater men
than they are now. Also, what was more important than his bishopric,
Hume studied him, and developed one side of his philosophy in a way
which might have disturbed the ghost of the great ecclesiastic. Then
Kant studied Hume. So, to say that Berkeley was uninfluential during the
century, would certainly be absurd. But all the same, he failed to
affect the main stream of scientific thought. It flowed on as if he had
never written. Its general success made it impervious to criticism, then
and since. The world of science has always remained perfectly satisfied
with its peculiar abstractions. They work, and that is sufficient for
it.
The point before us is that this scientific field of thought is now, in
the twentieth century, too narrow for the concrete facts which are
before it for analysis. This is true even in physics, and is more
especially urgent in the biological sciences. Thus, in order to
understand the difficulties of modern scientific thought and also its
reactions on the modern world, we should have in our minds some
conception of a wider field of abstraction, a more concrete analysis,
which shall stand nearer to the complete concreteness of our intuitive
experience. Such an analysis should find in itself a niche for the
concepts of matter and spirit, as abstractions in terms of which much of
our physical experience can be interpreted. It is in the search for this
wider basis for scientific thought that Berkeley is so important. He
launched his criticism shortly after the schools of Newton and Locke had
completed their work, and laid his finger exactly on the weak spots
which they had left. I do not propose to consider either the subjective
idealism which has been derived from him, or the schools of development
which trace their descent from Hume and Kant respectively. My point will
be that—whatever the final metaphysics you may adopt—there is another
line of development embedded in Berkeley, pointing to the analysis which
we are in search of. Berkeley overlooked it, partly by reason of the
over-intellectualism of philosophers, and partly by his haste to have
recourse to an idealism with its objectivity grounded in the mind of
God. You will remember that I have already stated that the key of the
problem lies in the notion of simple location. Berkeley, in effect,
criticises this notion. He also raises the question, What do we mean by
things being realised in the world of nature?
In Sections 23 and 24 of his _Principles of Human Knowledge_, Berkeley
gives his answer to this latter question. I will quote some detached
sentences from those Sections:
“23. But, say you, surely there is nothing easier than for me to imagine
trees, for instance, in a park, or books existing in a closet, and
nobody by to perceive them. I answer, you may so, there is no difficulty
in it; but what is all this, I beseech you, more than framing in your
mind certain ideas which you call books and trees, and at the same time
omitting to frame the idea of any one that may perceive them?...”
“When we do our utmost to conceive the existence of external bodies, we
are all the while only contemplating our own ideas. But the mind _taking
no notice of itself_, is deluded to think it can and does conceive
bodies existing unthought of or without the mind, though at the same
time they are apprehended by or exist in itself....”
“24. It is very obvious, upon the least inquiry into our thoughts, to
know whether it be possible for us to understand what is meant by the
_absolute existence of sensible objects in themselves, or without the
mind_. To me it is evident those words mark out either a direct
contradiction, or else nothing at all....”
Again there is a very remarkable passage in Section 10, of the fourth
Dialogue of Berkeley’s _Alciphron_. I have already quoted it, at greater
length, in my _Principles of Natural Knowledge_:
“_Euphranor._ Tell me, Alciphron, can you discern the doors, window and
battlements of that same castle?
_Alciphron._ I cannot. At this distance it seems only a small round
tower.
_Euph._ But I, who have been at it, know that it is no small round
tower, but a large square building with battlements and turrets, which
it seems you do not see.
_Alc_. What will you infer from thence?
_Euph._ I would infer that the very object which you strictly and
properly perceive by sight is not that thing which is several miles
distant.
_Alc._ Why so?
_Euph._ Because a little round object is one thing, and a great square
object is another. Is it not so?...”
Some analogous examples concerning a planet and a cloud are then cited
in the dialogue, and this passage finally concludes with:
“_Euphranor._ Is it not plain, therefore, that neither the castle, the
planet, nor the cloud, _which you see here_, are those real ones which
you suppose exist at a distance?”
It is made explicit in the first passage, already quoted, that Berkeley
himself adopts an extreme idealistic interpretation. For him mind is the
only absolute reality, and the unity of nature is the unity of ideas in
the mind of God. Personally, I think that Berkeley’s solution of the
metaphysical problem raises difficulties not less than those which he
points out as arising from a realistic interpretation of the scientific
scheme. There is, however, another possible line of thought, which
enables us to adopt anyhow an attitude of provisional realism, and to
widen the scientific scheme in a way which is useful for science itself.
I recur to the passage from Francis Bacon’s _Natural History_, already
quoted in the previous lecture:
“It is certain that all bodies whatsoever, though they have no sense,
yet they have perception: ... and whether the body be alterant or
altered, evermore a perception precedeth operation; for else all bodies
would be alike one to another....”
Also in the previous lecture I construed _perception_ (as used by Bacon)
as meaning _taking account_ of the essential character of the thing
perceived, and I construed _sense_ as meaning _cognition_. We certainly
do take account of things of which at the time we have no explicit
cognition. We can even have a cognitive memory of the taking account,
without having had a contemporaneous cognition. Also, as Bacon points
out by his statement, “... for else all bodies would be alike one to
another,” it is evidently some element of the essential character which
we take account of, namely something on which diversity is founded and
not mere bare logical diversity.
The word ‘_perceive_’ is, in our common usage, shot through and through
with the notion of cognitive apprehension. So is the word
‘_apprehension_’, even with the adjective _cognitive_ omitted. I will
use the word ‘_prehension_’ for _uncognitive apprehension_: by this I
mean _apprehension_ which may or or may not be cognitive. Now take
Euphranor’s last remark:
“Is it not plain, therefore, that neither the castle, the planet, nor
the cloud, _which you see here_, are those real ones which you suppose
exist at distance?” Accordingly, there is a prehension, _here_ in this
place, of things which have a reference to _other_ places.
Now go back to Berkeley’s sentences, quoted from his _Principles of
Human Knowledge_. He contends that what constitutes the realisation of
natural entities is the being perceived within the unity of mind.
We can substitute the concept, that the realisation is a gathering of
things into the unity of a prehension; and that what is thereby realised
is the prehension, and not the things. This unity of a prehension
defines itself as a _here_ and a _now_, and the things so gathered into
the grasped unity have essential reference to other places and other
times. For Berkeley’s _mind_, I substitute a process of prehensive
unification. In order to make intelligible this concept of the
progressive realisation of natural occurrences, considerable expansion
is required, and confrontation with its actual implications in terms of
concrete experience. This will be the task of the subsequent lectures.
In the first place, note that the idea of simple location has gone. The
things which are grasped into a realised unity, here and now, are not
the castle, the cloud, and the planet simply in themselves; but they are
the castle, the cloud, and the planet from the standpoint, in space and
time, of the prehensive unification. In other words, it is the
perspective of the castle over there from the standpoint of the
unification here. It is, therefore, aspects of the castle, the cloud,
and the planet which are grasped into unity here. You will remember that
the idea of perspectives is quite familiar in philosophy. It was
introduced by Leibniz, in the notion of his monads mirroring
perspectives of the universe. I am using the same notion, only I am
toning down his monads into the unified events in space and time. In
some ways, there is a greater analogy with Spinoza’s modes; that is why
I use the terms ‘_mode_’ and ‘_modal_.’ In the analogy with Spinoza, his
one substance is for me the one underlying activity of realisation
individualising itself in an interlocked plurality of modes. Thus,
concrete fact is process. Its primary analysis is into underlying
activity of prehension, and into realised prehensive events. Each event
is an individual matter of fact issuing from an individualisation of the
substrate activity. But individualisation does not mean substantial
independence.
An entity of which we become aware in sense perception is the terminus
of our act of perception. I will call such an entity, a
‘_sense-object_’. For example, green of a definite shade is a
sense-object; so is a sound of definite quality and pitch; and so is a
definite scent; and a definite quality of touch. The way in which such
an entity is related to space during a definite lapse of time is
complex. I will say that a sense-object has ‘_ingression_’ into
space-time. The cognitive perception of a sense-object is the awareness
of the prehensive unification (into a standpoint A) of various modes of
various sense-objects, including the sense-object in question. The
standpoint A is, of course, a region of space-time; that is to say, it
is a volume of space through a duration of time. But as one entity, this
standpoint is a unit of realised experience. A mode of a sense-object at
A (as abstracted from the sense-object whose relationship to A the mode
is conditioning) is the aspect from A of some other region B. Thus the
sense-object is present in A with the mode of location in B. Thus if
green be the sense-object in question, green is not simply at A where it
is being perceived, nor is it simply at B where it is perceived as
located; but it is present at A with the mode of location in B. There is
no particular mystery about this. You have only got to look into a
mirror and to see the image in it of some green leaves behind your back.
For you at A there will be green; but not green simply at A where you
are. The green at A will be green with the mode of having location at
the image of the leaf behind the mirror. Then turn round and look at the
leaf. You are now perceiving the green in the same way as you did
before, except that now the green has the mode of being located in the
actual leaf. I am merely describing what we do perceive: we are aware of
green as being one element in a prehensive unification of sense-objects;
each sense-object, and among them green, having its particular mode,
which is expressible as location elsewhere. There are various types of
modal location. For example, sound is voluminous: it fills a hall, and
so sometimes does diffused colour. But the modal location of a colour
may be that of being the remote boundary of a volume, as for example the
colours on the walls of a room. Thus primarily space-time is the locus
of the modal ingression of sense-objects. This is the reason why space
and time (if for simplicity we disjoin them) are given in their
entireties. For each volume of space, or each lapse of time, includes in
its essence aspects of all volumes of space, or of all lapses of time.
The difficulties of philosophy in respect to space and time are founded
on the error of considering them as primarily the loci of simple
locations. Perception is simply the cognition of prehensive unification;
or more shortly, perception is cognition of prehension. The actual world
is a manifold of prehensions; and a ‘prehension’ is a ‘prehensive
occasion’; and a prehensive occasion is the most concrete finite entity,
conceived as what it is in itself and for itself, and not as from its
aspect in the essence of another such occasion. Prehensive unification
might be said to have simple location in its volume A. But this would be
a mere tautology. For space and time are simply abstractions from the
totality of prehensive unifications as mutually patterned in each other.
Thus a prehension has simple location at the volume A in the same way as
that in which a man’s face fits on to the smile which spreads over it.
There is, so far as we have gone, more sense in saying that an act of
perception has simple location; for it may be conceived as being simply
at the cognised prehension.
There are more entities involved in nature than the mere sense-objects,
so far considered. But, allowing for the necessity of revision
consequent on a more complete point of view, we can frame our answer to
Berkeley’s question as to the character of the reality to be assigned to
nature. He states it to be the reality of ideas in mind. A complete
metaphysic which has attained to some notion of mind, and to some notion
of ideas, may perhaps ultimately adopt that view. It is unnecessary for
the purpose of these lectures to ask such a fundamental question. We can
be content with a provisional realism in which nature is conceived as a
complex of prehensive unifications. Space and time exhibit the general
scheme of interlocked relations of these prehensions. You cannot tear
any one of them out of its context. Yet each one of them within its
context has all the reality that attaches to the whole complex.
Conversely, the totality has the same reality as each prehension; for
each prehension unifies the modalities to be ascribed, from its
standpoint, to every part of the whole. A prehension is a process of
unifying. Accordingly, nature is a process of expansive development,
necessarily transitional from prehension to prehension. What is achieved
is thereby passed beyond, but it is also retained as having aspects of
itself present to prehensions which lie beyond it.
Thus nature is a structure of evolving processes. The reality is the
process. It is nonsense to ask if the colour red is real. The colour red
is ingredient in the process of realisation. The realities of nature are
the prehensions in nature, that is to say, the events in nature.
Now that we have cleared space and time from the taint of simple
location, we may partially abandon the awkward term prehension. This
term was introduced to signify the essential unity of an event, namely,
the event as one entity, and not as a mere assemblage of parts or of
ingredients. It is necessary to understand that space-time is nothing
else than a system of pulling together of assemblages into unities. But
the word _event_ just means one of these spatio-temporal unities.
Accordingly, it may be used instead of the term ‘prehension’ as meaning
the thing prehended.
An event has contemporaries. This means that an event mirrors within
itself the modes of its contemporaries as a display of immediate
achievement. An event has a past. This means that an event mirrors
within itself the modes of its predecessors, as memories which are fused
into its own content. An event has a future. This means that an event
mirrors within itself such aspects as the future throws back onto the
present, or, in other words, as the present has determined concerning
the future. Thus an event has anticipation:
“The prophetic soul
Of the wide world dreaming on things to come.” [cvii]
These conclusions are essential for any form of realism. For there is in
the world for our cognisance, memory of the past, immediacy of
realisation, and indication of things to come.
In this sketch of an analysis more concrete than that of the scientific
scheme of thought, I have started from our own psychological field, as
it stands for our cognition. I take it for what it claims to be: the
self-knowledge of our bodily event. I mean the total event, and not the
inspection of the details of the body. This self-knowledge discloses a
prehensive unification of modal presences of entities beyond itself. I
generalise by the use of the principle that this total bodily event is
on the same level as all other events, except for an unusual complexity
and stability of inherent pattern. The strength of the theory of
materialistic mechanism has been the demand, that no arbitrary breaks be
introduced into nature, to eke out the collapse of an explanation. I
accept this principle. But if you start from the immediate facts of our
psychological experience, as surely an empiricist should begin, you are
at once led to the organic conception of nature of which the description
has been commenced in this lecture.
It is the defect of the eighteenth century scientific scheme that it
provides none of the elements which compose the immediate psychological
experiences of mankind. Nor does it provide any elementary trace of the
organic unity of a whole, from which the organic unities of electrons,
protons, molecules, and living bodies can emerge. According to that
scheme, there is no reason in the nature of things why portions of
material should have any physical relations to each other. Let us grant
that we cannot hope to be able to discern the laws of nature to be
necessary. But we can hope to see that it is necessary that there should
be an order of nature. The concept of the order of nature is bound up
with the concept of nature as the locus of organisms in process of
development.
NOTE. In connection with the latter portion of this chapter a sentence
from Descartes’ ‘Reply to Objections ... against the Meditations’ is
interesting:—“Hence the idea of the sun will be the sun itself
existing in the mind, not indeed formally, as it exists in the sky,
but objectively, _i.e._, in the way in which objects are wont to exist
in the mind; and this mode of being is truly much less perfect than
that in which things exist outside the mind, but it is not on that
account mere nothing, as I have already said.” [Reply to Objections I,
Translation by Haldane and Ross, vol. ii, p. 10.] I find difficulty in
reconciling this theory of ideas (with which I agree) with other parts
of the Cartesian philosophy.