Process and Reality — the Gifford Lectures, 1929

The Timaeus of Plato, and the Scholiwm of Newton— the latter already in large part quoted—are the two statements of cosmological theory which have had the chief influence on Western thought. To the modern reader, the TJzmaeus, considered as a statement of scientific details, is in comparison with the Scholium simply foolish. But what it lacks in superficial detail, it makes up for by its philosophic depth. If it be read as an allegory, 1t conveys profound truth; whereas the Scholiwm is an immensely able statement of details which, although abstract and inadequate as a philosophy, can within certain limits be thoroughly trusted for the deduction of truths at the same level of abstraction as itself. The penalty of its philosophical deficiency is that the Scholium conveys no hint of the limits of its own application. The practical effect is that the readers, and almost certainly Newton himself, so construe its meaning as to fall intop. 143 what I have elsewhere * termed the ‘fallacy of misplaced concreteness.’ It is the office of metaphysics to determine the limits of the applicability of such abstract notions.

The Scholium betrays its abstractness by affording no hint of that aspect of self-production, of generation, of gvots, of natura naturans, which is so prominent in nature. For the Scholium, nature is merely, and completely, there, externally designed and obedient. The full sweep of the modern doctrine of evolution would have confused the Newton of the Scholium, but would have enlightened the Plato of the Timaeus. So far as Newton is concerned, we have his own word for this statement. In a letter to Bentley, he writes: “When I wrote my treatise about our system, I had an eye upon such principles as might work with considering men for the belief of a Deity; .. .”” The concept in Newton’s mind is that of a fully articulated system requiring a definite supernatural origin with that articulation. This is the form of the cosmological argument, now generally abandoned as invalid; because our notion of causation concerns the relations of states of things within the actual world, and can only be illegitimately extended to a transcendent derivation. The notion of God, which will be discussed later (cf. Part V), is that of an actual entity immanent in the actual world, but transcending any finite cosmic epoch—a being at once actual, eternal, immanent, and transcendent. The transcendence of God is not peculiar to him. Every actual entity, in virtue of its novelty, transcends its universe, God included.

In the Scholium, space and time, with all their current mathematical properties, are ready-made for the material masses; the material masses are ready-made for the ‘forces’ which constitute their action and reaction; and space, and time, and material masses, and forces, are

° Cf. Science and The Modern World, Ch. III.
7 This quotation is taken from Jebb’s Life of Bentley, Ch. I. The
Life is published in the English Men of Letters series.

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alike ready-made for the initial motions which the Deity impresses throughout the universe. It is not possible to extract from the Scholiwm—construed with misplaced concreteness—either a theism, or an atheism, or an epistemology, which can survive a comparison with the facts. This is the inescapable conclusion to be inferred from Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. Biology is also reduced to a mystery; and finally physics itself has now reached a stage of experimental knowledge inexplicable in terms of the categories of the Scholzwm.

In the Timaeus, there are many phrases and statements which find their final lucid expression in the Scholium. While noting this concurrence of the two great cosmological documents guiding Western thought, it cannot be too clearly understood that, within its limits of abstraction, what the Scholium says is true, and that it is expressed with the lucidity of genius. Thus any cosmological document which cannot be read as an interpretation of the Scholium is worthless. But there is another side to the Timaeus which finds no analogy in the Scholium. In general terms, this side of the Timaeus may be termed its metaphysical character, that is to say, its endeavour to connect the behaviour of things with the formal nature of things. The behaviour apart from the things is abstract, and so are the things apart from their behaviour. Newton—wisely, for his purposes— made this abstraction which the Timaeus endeavours to avoid.

In the first place, the Timaeus connects behaviour with the ultimate molecular characters of the actual entities. Plato conceives the notion of definite societies of actual molecular entities, each society with its defining characteristics. He does not conceive this assemblage of societies as causa sui. But he does conceive it as the work of subordinate deities, who are the animating principles of those departments of nature. In Greek thought, either poetic or philosophic, the separation between the qvotc and such deities had not that absolute character which it has for us who have inherited the Semitic Jehovah.

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Newton could have accepted a molecular theory as easily as Plato, but there is this difference between them: Newton would have been surprised at the modern quantum theory and at the dissolution of quanta into vibrations; Plato would have expected it. While we note the many things said by Plato in the Timaeus which are now foolishness, we must also give him credit for that aspect of his teaching in which he was two thousand years ahead of his time. Plato accounted for the sharp-cut differences between kinds of natural things, by assuming an approximation of the molecules of the fundamental kinds respectively to the mathematical forms of the regular solids. He also assumed that certain qualitative contrasts in occurrences, such as that between musical notes, depended on the participation of these occurrences in some of the simpler ratios between integral numbers. He thus obtained a reason why there should be an approximation to sharp-cut differences between kinds of molecules, and why there should be sharp-cut relations of harmony standing out amid dissonance. Thus ‘contrast’ —as the opposite of incompatibility—depends on a certain simplicity of circumstance; but the higher contrasts depend on the assemblage of a multiplicity of lower contrasts, this assemblage again exhibiting higher types of simplicity.

It is well to remember that the modern quantumtheory, with its surprises in dealing with the atom, is only the latest instance of a well-marked character of nature, which in each particular instance is only explained by some ad hoc dogmatic assumption. The theory of biological evolution would not in itself lead us to expect the sharply distinguished genera and species which we find in nature. There might be an occasional bunching of individuals round certain typical forms; but there is no explanation of the almost complete absence of intermediate forms. Again Newton’s Scholiuwm gives no hint of the ninety-two possibilities for atoms, or of the limited number of ways in which atoms can be combined so as to form molecules. Physicists are now explaining thesep. 146 chemical facts by means of conceptions which Plato would have welcomed.