SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY
In the present lecture, it is my object to consider some reactions of
science upon the stream of philosophic thought during the modern
centuries with which we are concerned. I shall make no attempt to
compress a history of modern philosophy within the limits of one
lecture. We shall merely consider some contacts between science and
philosophy, in so far as they lie within the scheme of thought which it
is the purpose of these lectures to develop. For this reason the whole
of the great German idealistic movement will be ignored, as being out of
effective touch with its contemporary science so far as reciprocal
modification of concepts is concerned. Kant, from whom this movement
took its rise, was saturated with Newtonian physics, and with the ideas
of the great French physicists—such as Clairaut,[11] for instance—who
developed the Newtonian ideas. But the philosophers who developed the
Kantian school of thought, or who transformed it into Hegelianism,
either lacked Kant’s background of scientific knowledge, or lacked his
potentiality of becoming a great physicist if philosophy had not
absorbed his main energies.
Footnote 11:
_Cf._ the curious evidence of Kant’s scientific reading in the
_Critique of Pure Reason, Transcendental Analytic, Second Analogy of
Experience_, where he refers to the phenomenon of capillary action.
This is an unnecessarily complex illustration; a book resting on a
table would have equally well sufficed. But the subject had just been
adequately treated for the first time by Clairaut in an appendix to
his _Figure of the Earth_. Kant evidently had read this appendix, and
his mind was full of it.
The origin of modern philosophy is analogous to that of science, and is
contemporaneous. The general trend of its development was settled in the
seventeenth century, partly at the hands of the same men who established
the scientific principles. This settlement of purpose followed upon a
transitional period dating from the fifteenth century. There was in fact
a general movement of European mentality, which carried along with its
stream, religion, science and philosophy. It may shortly be
characterised as being the direct recurrence to the original sources of
Greek inspiration on the part of men whose spiritual shape had been
derived from inheritance from the Middle Ages. There was therefore no
revival of Greek mentality. Epochs do not rise from the dead. The
principles of aesthetics and of reason, which animated the Greek
civilisation, were reclothed in a modern mentality. Between the two
there lay other religions, other systems of law, other anarchies, and
other racial inheritances, dividing the living from the dead.
Philosophy is peculiarly sensitive to such differences. For, whereas you
can make a replica of an ancient statue, there is no possible replica of
an ancient state of mind. There can be no nearer approximation than that
which a masquerade bears to real life. There may be understanding of the
past, but there is a difference between the modern and the ancient
reactions to the same stimuli.
In the particular case of philosophy, the distinction in tonality lies
on the surface. Modern philosophy is tinged with subjectivism, as
against the objective attitude of the ancients. The same change is to be
seen in religion. In the early history of the Christian Church, the
theological interest centred in discussions on the nature of God, the
meaning of the Incarnation, and apocalyptic forecasts of the ultimate
fate of the world. At the Reformation, the Church was torn asunder by
dissension as to the individual experiences of believers in respect to
justification. The individual subject of experience had been substituted
for the total drama of all reality. Luther asked, ‘How am I justified?’;
modern philosophers have asked, ‘How do I have knowledge?’ The emphasis
lies upon the subject of experience. This change of standpoint is the
work of Christianity in its pastoral aspect of shepherding the company
of believers. For century after century it insisted upon the infinite
worth of the individual human soul. Accordingly, to the instinctive
egotism of physical desires, it has superadded an instinctive feeling of
justification for an egotism of intellectual outlook. Every human being
is the natural guardian of his own importance. Without a doubt, this
modern direction of attention emphasises truths of the highest value.
For example, in the field of practical life, it has abolished slavery,
and has impressed upon the popular imagination the primary rights of
mankind.
Descartes, in his _Discourse on Method_, and in his _Meditations_,
discloses with great clearness the general conceptions which have since
influenced modern philosophy. There is a subject receiving experience:
in the _Discourse_ this subject is always mentioned in the first person,
that is to say, as being Descartes himself. Descartes starts with
himself as being a mentality, which in virtue of its consciousness of
its own inherent presentations of sense and of thought, is thereby
conscious of its own existence as a unit entity. The subsequent history
of philosophy revolves round the Cartesian formulation of the primary
datum. The ancient world takes its stand upon the drama of the Universe,
the modern world upon the inward drama of the Soul. Descartes, in his
_Meditations_, expressly grounds the existence of this inward drama upon
the possibility of error. There may be no correspondence with objective
fact, and thus there must be a soul with activities whose reality is
purely derivative from itself. For example, here is a quotation[12] from
_Meditation II_: “But it will be said that these presentations are
false, and that I am dreaming. Let it be so. At all events it is certain
that I seem to see light, hear a noise, and feel heat; this cannot be
false, and this is what in me is properly called perceiving (sentire),
which is nothing else than thinking. From this I begin to know what I am
with somewhat greater clearness and distinctness than heretofore.” Again
in _Meditation III_: “...; for, as I before remarked, although the
things which I perceive or imagine are perhaps nothing at all apart from
me, I am nevertheless assured that those modes of consciousness which I
call perceptions and imaginations, in as far only as they are modes of
consciousness, exist in me.”
Footnote 12:
Quoted from Veitch’s translation.
The objectivism of the medieval and the ancient worlds passed over into
science. Nature is there conceived as for itself, with its own mutual
reactions. Under the recent influence of relativity, there has been a
tendency towards subjectivist formulations. But, apart from this recent
exception, nature, in scientific thought, has had its laws formulated
without any reference to dependence on individual observers. There is,
however, this difference between the older and the later attitudes
towards science. The anti-rationalism of the moderns has checked any
attempt to harmonise the ultimate concepts of science with ideas drawn
from a more concrete survey of the whole of reality. The material, the
space, the time, the various laws concerning the transition of material
configurations, are taken as ultimate stubborn facts, not to be tampered
with.
The effect of this antagonism to philosophy has been equally unfortunate
both for philosophy and for science. In this lecture we are concerned
with philosophy. Philosophers are rationalists. They are seeking to go
behind stubborn and irreducible facts: they wish to explain in the light
of universal principles the mutual reference between the various details
entering into the flux of things. Also, they seek such principles as
will eliminate mere arbitrariness; so that, whatever portion of fact is
assumed or given, the existence of the remainder of things shall satisfy
some demand of rationality. They demand meaning. In the words of Henry
Sidgwick[13]—“It is the primary aim of philosophy to unify completely,
bring into clear coherence, all departments of rational thought, and
this aim cannot be realised by any philosophy that leaves out of its
view the important body of judgments and reasonings which form the
subject matter of ethics.” Accordingly, the bias towards history on the
part of the physical and social sciences with their refusal to
rationalise below some ultimate mechanism, has pushed philosophy out of
the effective currents of modern life. It has lost its proper rôle as a
constant critic of partial formulations. It has retreated into the
subjectivist sphere of mind, by reason of its expulsion by science from
the objectivist sphere of matter. Thus the evolution of thought in the
seventeenth century coöperated with the enhanced sense of individual
personality derived from the Middle Ages. We see Descartes taking his
stand upon his own ultimate mind, which his philosophy assures him of;
and asking about its relations to the ultimate matter—exemplified, in
the second _Meditation_, by the human body and a lump of wax—which his
science assumes. There is Aaron’s rod, and the magicians’ serpents; and
the only question for philosophy is, which swallows which; or whether,
as Descartes thought, they all lived happily together. In this stream of
thought are to be found Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Kant. Two great names lie
outside this list, Spinoza and Leibniz. But there is a certain isolation
of both of them in respect to their philosophical influence so far as
science is concerned; as though they had strayed to extremes which lie
outside the boundaries of safe philosophy, Spinoza by retaining older
ways of thought, and Leibniz by the novelty of his monads.
Footnote 13:
_Cf._ _Henry Sidgwick: A Memoir_, Appendix I.
The history of philosophy runs curiously parallel to that of science. In
the case of both, the seventeenth century set the stage for its two
successors. But with the twentieth century a new act commences. It is an
exaggeration to attribute a general change in a climate of thought to
any one piece of writing, or to any one author. No doubt Descartes only
expressed definitely and in decisive form what was already in the air of
his period. Analogously, in attributing to William James the
inauguration of a new stage in philosophy, we should be neglecting other
influences of his time. But, admitting this, there still remains a
certain fitness in contrasting his essay, _Does Consciousness Exist_,
published in 1904, with Descartes’ _Discourse on Method_, published in
1637. James clears the stage of the old paraphernalia; or rather he
entirely alters its lighting. Take for example these two sentences from
his essay: “To deny plumply that ‘consciousness’ exists seems so absurd
on the face of it—for undeniably ‘thoughts’ do exist—that I fear some
readers will follow me no farther. Let me then immediately explain that
I mean only to deny that the word stands for an entity, but to insist
most emphatically that it does stand for a function.”
The scientific materialism and the Cartesian Ego were both challenged at
the same moment, one by science and the other by philosophy, as
represented by William James with his psychological antecedents; and the
double challenge marks the end of a period which lasted for about two
hundred and fifty years. Of course, ‘matter’ and ‘consciousness’ both
express something so evident in ordinary experience that any philosophy
must provide some things which answer to their respective meanings. But
the point is that, in respect to both of them, the seventeenth century
settlement was infected with a presupposition which is now challenged.
James denies that consciousness is an entity, but admits that it is a
function. The discrimination between an entity and a function is
therefore vital to the understanding of the challenge which James is
advancing against the older modes of thought. In the essay in question,
the character which James assigns to consciousness is fully discussed.
But he does not unambiguously explain what he means by the notion of an
entity, which he refuses to apply to consciousness. In the sentence
which immediately follows the one which I have already quoted, he says:
“There is, I mean, no aboriginal stuff or quality of being, contrasted
with that of which material objects are made, out of which our thoughts
of them are made; but there is a function in experience which thoughts
perform, and for the performance of which this quality of being is
invoked. That function is _knowing_. ‘Consciousness’ is supposed
necessary to explain the fact that things not only are, but get
reported, are known.”
Thus James is denying that consciousness is a ‘stuff.’
The term ‘entity,’ or even that of ‘stuff,’ does not fully tell its own
tale. The notion of ‘entity’ is so general that it may be taken to mean
anything that can be thought about. You cannot think of mere nothing;
and the something which is an object of thought may be called an entity.
In this sense, a function is an entity. Obviously, this is not what
James had in his mind.
In agreement with the organic theory of nature which I have been
tentatively putting forward in these lectures, I shall for my own
purposes construe James as denying exactly what Descartes asserts in his
_Discourse_ and his _Meditations_. Descartes discriminates two species
of entities, _matter_ and _soul_. The essence of matter is spatial
extension; the essence of soul is its cogitation, in the full sense
which Descartes assigns to the word ‘_cogitare_.’ For example, in
Section Fifty-three of Part I of his _Principles of Philosophy_, he
enunciates: “That of every substance there is one principal attribute,
as thinking of the mind, extension of the body.” In the earlier,
Fifty-first Section, Descartes states: “By substance we can conceive
nothing else than a thing which exists in such a way as to stand in need
of nothing beyond itself in order to its existence.” Furthermore, later
on, Descartes says: “For example, because any substance which ceases to
endure ceases also to exist, duration is not distinct from substance
except in thought;....” Thus we conclude that, for Descartes, minds and
bodies exist in such a way as to stand in need of nothing beyond
themselves individually (God only excepted, as being the foundation of
all things); that both minds and bodies endure, because without
endurance they would cease to exist; that spatial extension is the
essential attribute of bodies; and that cogitation is the essential
attribute of minds.
It is difficult to praise too highly the genius exhibited by Descartes
in the complete sections of his _Principles_ which deal with these
questions. It is worthy of the century in which he writes, and of the
clearness of the French intellect. Descartes in his distinction between
time and duration, and in his way of grounding time upon motion, and in
his close relation between matter and extension, anticipates, as far as
it was possible at his epoch, modern notions suggested by the doctrine
of relativity, or by some aspects of Bergson’s doctrine of the
generation of things. But the fundamental principles are so set out as
to presuppose independently existing substances with simple location in
a community of temporal durations, and, in the case of bodies, with
simple location in the community of spatial extensions. Those principles
lead straight to the theory of a materialistic, mechanistic nature,
surveyed by cogitating minds. After the close of the seventeenth
century, science took charge of the materialistic nature, and philosophy
took charge of the cogitating minds. Some schools of philosophy admitted
an ultimate dualism; and the various idealistic schools claimed that
nature was merely the chief example of the cogitations of minds. But all
schools admitted the Cartesian analysis of the ultimate elements of
nature. I am excluding Spinoza and Leibniz from these statements as to
the main stream of modern philosophy, as derivative from Descartes;
though of course they were influenced by him, and in their turn
influenced philosophers. I am thinking mainly of the effective contacts
between science and philosophy.
This division of territory between science and philosophy was not a
simple business; and in fact it illustrated the weakness of the whole
cut-and-dried presupposition upon which it rested. We are aware of
nature as an interplay of bodies, colours, sounds, scents, tastes,
touches and other various bodily feelings, displayed as in space, in
patterns of mutual separation by intervening volumes, and of individual
shape. Also the whole is a flux, changing with the lapse of time. This
systematic totality is disclosed to us as one complex of things. But the
seventeenth century dualism cuts straight across it. The objective world
of science was confined to mere spatial material with simple location in
space and time, and subjected to definite rules as to its locomotion.
The subjective world of philosophy annexed the colours, sounds, scents,
tastes, touches, bodily feelings, as forming the subjective content of
the cogitations of the individual minds. Both worlds shared in the
general flux; but time, as measured, is assigned by Descartes to the
cogitations of the observer’s mind. There is obviously one fatal
weakness to this scheme. The cogitations of mind exhibit themselves as
holding up entities, such as colours for instance, before the mind as
the termini of contemplation. But in this theory these colours are,
after all, merely the furniture of the mind. Accordingly, the mind seems
to be confined to its own private world of cogitations. The
subject-object conformation of experience in its entirety lies within
the mind as one of its private passions. This conclusion from the
Cartesian data is the starting point from which Berkeley, Hume, and Kant
developed their respective systems. And, antecedently to them, it was
the point upon which Locke concentrated as being the vital question.
Thus the question as to how any knowledge is obtained of the truly
objective world of science becomes a problem of the first magnitude.
Descartes states that the objective body is perceived by the intellect.
He says (_Meditation II_): “I must, therefore, admit that I cannot even
comprehend by imagination what the piece of wax is, and that it is the
mind alone which perceives it. I speak of one piece in particular; for,
as to wax in general, this is still more evident. But what is the piece
of wax that can be perceived only by the mind?... The perception of it
is neither an act of sight, of touch, nor of imagination, and never was
either of these, though it might formerly seem so, but is simply an
_intuition_ (_inspectio_) of the mind,....” It must be noted that the
Latin word ‘inspectio’ is associated in its classical use with the
notion of theory as opposed to practice.
The two great preoccupations of modern philosophy now lie clearly before
us. The study of mind divides into psychology, or the study of mental
functionings as considered in themselves and in their mutual relations,
and into epistemology, or the theory of the knowledge of a common
objective world. In other words, there is the study of the cogitations,
_quâ_ passions of the mind, and their study _quâ_ leading to an
inspection (_intuition_) of an objective world. This is a very uneasy
division, giving rise to a host of perplexities whose consideration has
occupied the intervening centuries.
As long as men thought in terms of physical notions for the objective
world and of mentality for the subjective world, the setting out of the
problem, as achieved by Descartes, sufficed as a starting point. But the
balance has been upset by the rise of physiology. In the seventeenth
century men passed from the study of physics to the study of philosophy.
Towards the end of the nineteenth century, notably in Germany, men
passed from the study of physiology to the study of psychology. The
change in tone has been decisive. Of course, in the earlier period the
intervention of the human body was fully considered, for example, by
Descartes in Part V of the ‘_Discourse on Method_.’ But the
physiological instinct had not been developed. In considering the human
body, Descartes thought with the outfit of a physicist; whereas the
modern psychologists are clothed with the mentalities of medical
physiologists. The career of William James is an example of this change
in standpoint. He also possessed the clear, incisive genius which could
state in a flash the exact point at issue.
The reason why I have put Descartes and James in close juxtaposition is
now evident. Neither philosopher finished an epoch by a final solution
of a problem. Their great merit is of the opposite sort. They each of
them open an epoch by their clear formulation of terms in which thought
could profitably express itself at particular stages of knowledge, one
for the seventeenth century, the other for the twentieth century. In
this respect, they are both to be contrasted with St. Thomas Aquinas,
who expressed the culmination of Aristotelian scholasticism.
In many ways neither Descartes nor James were the most characteristic
philosophers of their respective epochs. I should be disposed to ascribe
these positions to Locke and to Bergson respectively, at least so far as
concerns their relations to the science of their times. Locke developed
the lines of thought which kept philosophy on the move; for example he
emphasized the appeal to psychology. He initiated the age of
epoch-making enquiries into urgent problems of limited scope.
Undoubtedly, in so doing, he infected philosophy with something of the
anti-rationalism of science. But the very groundwork of a fruitful
methodology is to start from those clear postulates which must be held
to be ultimate so far as concerns the occasion in question. The
criticism of such methodological postulates is thus reserved for another
opportunity. Locke discovered that the philosophical situation
bequeathed by Descartes involved the problems of epistemology and
psychology.
Bergson introduced into philosophy the organic conceptions of
physiological science. He has most completely moved away from the static
materialism of the seventeenth century. His protest against
spatialisation is a protest against taking the Newtonian conception of
nature as being anything except a high abstraction. His so-called
anti-intellectualism should be construed in this sense. In some respects
he recurs to Descartes; but the recurrence is accompanied with an
instinctive grasp of modern biology.
There is another reason for associating Locke and Bergson. The germ of
an organic theory of nature is to be found in Locke. His most recent
expositor, Professor Gibson,[14] states that Locke’s way of conceiving
the identity of self-consciousness ‘like that of a living organism,
involves a genuine transcending of the mechanical view of nature and of
mind, embodied in the composition theory.’ But it is to be noticed that
in the first place Locke wavers in his grasp of this position; and in
the second place, what is more important still, he only applies his idea
to self-consciousness. The physiological attitude has not yet
established itself. The effect of physiology was to put mind back into
nature. The neurologist traces first the effect of stimuli along the
bodily nerves, then integration at nerve centres, and finally the rise
of a projective reference beyond the body with a resulting motor
efficacy in renewed nervous excitement. In biochemistry, the delicate
adjustment of the chemical composition of the parts to the preservation
of the whole organism is detected. Thus the mental cognition is seen as
the reflective experience of a totality, reporting for itself what it is
in itself as one unit occurrence. This unit is the integration of the
sum of its partial happenings, but it is not their numerical aggregate.
It has its own unity as an event. This total unity, considered as an
entity for its own sake, is the prehension into unity of the patterned
aspects of the universe of events. Its knowledge of itself arises from
its own relevance to the things of which it prehends the aspects. It
knows the world as a system of mutual relevance, and thus sees itself as
mirrored in other things. These other things include more especially the
various parts of its own body.
Footnote 14:
_Cf._ his book, _Locke’s Theory of Knowledge and its Historical
Relations_, Camb. Univ. Press, 1917.
It is important to discriminate the bodily pattern, which endures, from
the bodily event, which is pervaded by the enduring pattern, and from
the parts of the bodily event. The parts of the bodily event are
themselves pervaded by their own enduring patterns, which form elements
in the bodily pattern. The parts of the body are really portions of the
environment of the total bodily event, but so related that their mutual
aspects, each in the other, are peculiarly effective in modifying the
pattern of either. This arises from the intimate character of the
relation of whole to part. Thus the body is a portion of the environment
for the part, and the part is a portion of the environment for the body;
only they are peculiarly sensitive, each to modifications of the other.
This sensitiveness is so arranged that the part adjusts itself to
preserve the stability of the pattern of the body. It is a particular
example of the favourable environment shielding the organism. The
relation of part to whole has the special reciprocity associated with
the notion of organism, in which the part is for the whole; but this
relation reigns throughout nature and does not start with the special
case of the higher organisms.
Further, viewing the question as a matter of chemistry, there is no need
to construe the actions of each molecule in a living body by its
exclusive particular reference to the pattern of the complete living
organism. It is true that each molecule is affected by the aspect of
this pattern as mirrored in it, so as to be otherwise than what it would
have been if placed elsewhere. In the same way, under some circumstances
an electron may be a sphere, and under other circumstances an egg-shaped
volume. The mode of approach to the problem, so far as science is
concerned, is merely to ask if molecules exhibit in living bodies
properties which are not to be observed amid inorganic surroundings. In
the same way, in a magnetic field soft iron exhibits magnetic properties
which are in abeyance elsewhere. The prompt self-preservative actions of
living bodies, and our experience of the physical actions of our bodies
following the determinations of will, suggest the modification of
molecules in the body as the result of the total pattern. It seems
possible that there may be physical laws expressing the modification of
the ultimate basic organisms when they form part of higher organisms
with adequate compactness of pattern. It would, however, be entirely in
consonance with the empirically observed action of environments, if the
direct effects of aspects as between the whole body and its parts were
negligible. We should expect transmission. In this way the modification
of total pattern would transmit itself by means of a series of
modifications of a descending series of parts, so that finally the
modification of the cell changes its aspect in the molecule, thus
effecting a corresponding alteration in the molecule,—or in some subtler
entity. Thus the question for physiology is the question of the physics
of molecules in cells of different characters.
We can now see the relation of psychology to physiology and to physics.
The private psychological field is merely the event considered from its
own standpoint. The unity of this field is the unity of the event. But
it is the event as one entity, and not the event as a sum of parts. The
relations of the parts, to each other and to the whole, are their
aspects, each in the other. A body for an external observer is the
aggregate of the aspects for him of the body as a whole, and also of the
body as a sum of parts. For the external observer the aspects of shape
and of sense-objects are dominant, at least for cognition. But we must
also allow for the possibility that we can detect in ourselves direct
aspects of the mentalities of higher organisms. The claim that the
cognition of alien mentalities must necessarily be by means of indirect
inferences from aspects of shape and of sense-objects is wholly
unwarranted by this philosophy of organism. The fundamental principle is
that whatever merges into actuality, implants its aspects in every
individual event.
Further, even for self-cognition, the aspects of the parts of our own
bodies partly take the form of aspects of shape, and of sense-objects.
But that part of the bodily event, in respect to which the cognitive
mentality is associated, is for itself the unit psychological field. Its
ingredients are not referent to the event itself; they are aspects of
what lies beyond that event. Thus the self-knowledge inherent in the
bodily event is the knowledge of itself as a complex unity, whose
ingredients involve all reality beyond itself, restricted under the
limitation of its pattern of aspects. Thus we know ourselves as a
function of unification of a plurality of things which are other than
ourselves. Cognition discloses an event as being an activity, organising
a real togetherness of alien things. But this psychological field does
not depend on its cognition; so that this field is still a unit event as
abstracted from its self-cognition.
Accordingly, consciousness will be the function of knowing. But what is
known is already a prehension of aspects of the one real universe. These
aspects are aspects of other events as mutually modifying, each the
others. In the pattern of aspects they stand in their pattern of mutual
relatedness.
The aboriginal data in terms of which the pattern weaves itself are the
aspects of shapes, of sense-objects, and of other eternal objects whose
self-identity is not dependent on the flux of things. Wherever such
objects have ingression into the general flux, they interpret events,
each to the other. They are here in the perceiver; but, as perceived by
him, they convey for him something of the total flux which is beyond
himself. The subject-object relation takes its origin in the double rôle
of these eternal objects. They are modifications of the subject, but
only in their character of conveying aspects of other subjects in the
community of the universe. Thus no individual subject can have
independent reality, since it is a prehension of limited aspects of
subjects other than itself.
The technical phrase ‘subject-object’ is a bad term for the fundamental
situation disclosed in experience. It is really reminiscent of the
Aristotelian ‘subject-predicate.’ It already presupposes the
metaphysical doctrine of diverse subjects qualified by their private
predicates. This is the doctrine of subjects with private worlds of
experience. If this be granted, there is no escape from solipsism. The
point is that the phrase ‘subject-object’ indicates a fundamental entity
underlying the objects. Thus the ‘objects,’ as thus conceived, are
merely the ghosts of Aristotelian predicates. The primary situation
disclosed in cognitive experience is ‘ego-object amid objects.’ By this
I mean that the primary fact is an impartial world transcending the
‘here-now’ which marks the ego-object, and transcending the ‘now’ which
is the spatial world of simultaneous realisation. It is a world also
including the actuality of the past, and the limited potentiality of the
future, together with the complete world of abstract potentiality, the
realm of eternal objects, which transcends, and finds exemplification in
and comparison with, the actual course of realisation. The ego-object,
as consciousness here-now, is conscious of its experient essence as
constituted by its internal relatedness to the world of realities, and
to the world of ideas. But the ego-object, in being thus constituted, is
within the world of realities, and exhibits itself as an organism
requiring the ingression of ideas for the purpose of this status among
realities. This question of consciousness must be reserved for treatment
on another occasion.
The point to be made for the purposes of the present discussion is that
a philosophy of nature as organic must start at the opposite end to that
requisite for a materialistic philosophy. The materialistic starting
point is from independently existing substances, matter and mind. The
matter suffers modifications of its external relations of locomotion,
and the mind suffers modifications of its contemplated objects. There
are, in this materialistic theory, two sorts of independent substances,
each qualified by their appropriate passions. The organic starting point
is from the analysis of process as the realisation of events disposed in
an interlocked community. The event is the unit of things real. The
emergent enduring pattern is the stabilisation of the emergent
achievement so as to become a fact which retains its identity throughout
the process. It will be noted that endurance is not primarily the
property of enduring beyond itself, but of enduring within itself. I
mean that endurance is the property of finding its pattern reproduced in
the temporal parts of the total event. It is in this sense that a total
event carries an enduring pattern. There is an intrinsic value identical
for the whole and for its succession of parts. Cognition is the
emergence, into some measure of individualised reality, of the general
substratum of activity, poising before itself possibility, actuality,
and purpose.
It is equally possible to arrive at this organic conception of the world
if we start from the fundamental notions of modern physics, instead of,
as above, from psychology and physiology. In fact by reason of my own
studies in mathematics and mathematical physics, I did in fact arrive at
my convictions in this way. Mathematical physics presumes in the first
place an electromagnetic field of activity pervading space and time. The
laws which condition this field are nothing else than the conditions
observed by the general activity of the flux of the world, as it
individualises itself in the events. In physics, there is an
abstraction. The science ignores what anything is in itself. Its
entities are merely considered in respect to their extrinsic reality,
that is to say, in respect to their aspects in other things. But the
abstraction reaches even further than that; for it is only the aspects
in other things, as modifying the spatio-temporal specifications of the
life histories of those other things, which count. The intrinsic reality
of the observer comes in: I mean what the observer is for himself is
appealed to. For example, the fact that he will see red or blue enters
into scientific statements. But the red which the observer sees does not
in truth enter into science. What is relevant is merely the bare
diversity of the observer’s red experiences from all of his other
experiences. Accordingly, the intrinsic character of the observer is
merely relevant in order to fix the self-identical individuality of the
physical entities. These entities are only considered as agencies in
fixing the routes in space and in time of the life histories of enduring
entities.
The phraseology of physics is derived from the materialistic ideas of
the seventeenth century. But we find that, even in its extreme
abstraction, what it is really presupposing is the organic theory of
aspects as explained above. First, consider any event in empty space
where the word ‘empty’ means devoid of electrons, or protons, or of any
other form of electric charge. Such an event has three rôles in physics.
In the first place, it is the actual scene of an adventure of energy,
either as its _habitat_ or as the locus of a particular stream of
energy: anyhow, in this rôle the energy is there, either as located in
space during the time considered, or as streaming through space.
In its second rôle, the event is a necessary link in the pattern of
transmission, by which the character of every event receives some
modification from the character of every other event.
In its third rôle, the event is the repository of a possibility, as to
what would happen to an electric charge, either by way of deformation or
of locomotion, if it should have happened to be there.
If we modify our assumption by considering an event which includes in
itself a portion of the life-history of an electric charge, then the
analysis of its three rôles still remains; except that the possibility
embodied in the third rôle is now transformed into an actuality. In this
replacement of possibility by actuality, we obtain the distinction
between empty and occupied events.
Recurring to the empty events, we note the deficiency in them of
individuality of intrinsic content. Considering the first rôle of an
empty event, as being a _habitat_ of energy, we note that there is no
individual discrimination of an individual bit of energy, either as
statically located, or as an element in the stream. There is simply a
quantitative determination of activity, without individualisation of the
activity in itself. This lack of individualisation is still more evident
in the second and third rôles. An empty event is something in itself,
but it fails to realise a stable individuality of content. So far as its
content is concerned, the empty event is one realised element in a
general scheme of organised activity.
Some qualification is required when the empty event is the scene of the
transmission of a definite train of recurrent wave-forms. There is now a
definite pattern which remains permanent in the event. We find here the
first faint trace of enduring individuality. But it is individuality
without the faintest capture of originality: for it is merely a
permanence arising solely from the implication of the event in a larger
scheme of patterning.
Turning now to the examination of an occupied event, the electron has a
determinate individuality. It can be traced throughout its life-history
through a variety of events. A collection of electrons, together with
the analogous atomic charges of positive electricity, forms a body such
as we ordinarily perceive. The simplest body of this kind is a molecule,
and a set of molecules forms a lump of ordinary matter, such as a chair,
or a stone. Thus a charge of electricity is the mark of individuality of
content, as additional to the individuality of an event in itself. This
individuality of content is the strong point of the materialistic
doctrine.
It can, however, be equally well explained on the theory of organism.
When we look into the function of the electric charge, we note that its
rôle is to mark the origination of a pattern which is transmitted
through space and time. It is the key of some particular pattern. For
example, the field of force in any event is to be constructed by
attention to the adventures of electrons and protons, and so also are
the streams and distributions of energy. Further, the electric waves
find their origin in the vibratory adventures of these charges. Thus the
transmitted pattern is to be conceived as the flux of aspects throughout
space and time derived from the life history of the atomic charge. The
individualisation of the charge arises by a conjunction of two
characters, in the first place by the continued identity of its mode of
functioning as a key for the determination of a diffusion of pattern;
and, in the second place, by the unity and continuity of its life
history.
We may conclude, therefore, that the organic theory represents directly
what physics actually does assume respecting its ultimate entities. We
also notice the complete futility of these entities, if they are
conceived as fully concrete individuals. So far as physics is concerned,
they are wholly occupied in moving each other about, and they have no
reality outside this function. In particular for physics, there is no
intrinsic reality.
It is obvious that the basing of philosophy upon the presupposition of
organism must be traced back to Leibniz.[15] His monads are for him the
ultimately real entities. But he retained the Cartesian substances with
their qualifying passions, as also equally expressing for him the final
characterisation of real things. Accordingly for him there was no
concrete reality of internal relations. He had therefore on his hands
two distinct points of view. One was that the final real entity is an
organising activity, fusing ingredients into a unity, so that this unity
is the reality. The other point of view is that the final real entities
are substances supporting qualities. The first point of view depends
upon the acceptance of internal relations binding together all reality.
The latter is inconsistent with the reality of such relations. To
combine these two points of view, his monads were therefore windowless;
and their passions merely mirrored the universe by the divine
arrangement of a preëstablished harmony. This system thus presupposed an
aggregate of independent entities. He did not discriminate the event, as
the unit of experience, from the enduring organism as its stabilisation
into importance, and from the cognitive organism as expressing an
increased completeness of individualisation. Nor did he admit the
many-termed relations, relating sense-data to various events in diverse
ways. These many-termed relations are in fact the perspectives which
Leibniz does admit, but only on the condition that they are purely
qualities of the organising monads. The difficulty really arises from
the unquestioned acceptance of the notion of simple location as
fundamental for space and time, and from the acceptance of the notion of
independent individual substance as fundamental for a real entity. The
only road open to Leibniz was thus the same as that later taken by
Berkeley [in a prevalent interpretation of his meaning], namely an
appeal to a _Deux ex machinâ_ who was capable of rising superior to the
difficulties of metaphysics.
Footnote 15:
_Cf._ Bertrand Russell, _The Philosophy of Leibniz_, for the
suggestion of this line of thought.
In the same way as Descartes introduced the tradition of thought which
kept subsequent philosophy in some measure of contact with the
scientific movement, so Leibniz introduced the alternative tradition
that the entities, which are the ultimate actual things, are in some
sense procedures of organisation. This tradition has been the foundation
of the great achievements of German philosophy. Kant reflected the two
traditions, one upon the other. Kant was a scientist, but the schools
derivative from Kant have had but slight effect on the mentality of the
scientific world. It should be the task of the philosophical schools of
this century to bring together the two streams into an expression of the
world-picture derived from science, and thereby end the divorce of
science from the affirmations of our aesthetic and ethical experiences.