Process and Reality — the Gifford Lectures, 1929

There is another point in which the organic philosophy only repeats Plato. In the Timaeus the origin of the present cosmic epoch is traced back to an aboriginal disorder, chaotic according to our ideals. This is the evolutionary doctrine of the philosophy of organism. Plato’s notion has puzzled critics who are obsessed with the Semitic * theory of a wholly transcendent God creating out of nothing an accidental universe. Newton held the Semitic theory. The Scholium made no provision for the evolution of matter—very naturally, since the topic lay outside its scope. The result has been that the non-evolution of matter has been a tacit presupposition throughout modern thought. Until the last few years the sole alternatives were: either the material universe, with its present type of order, is eternal; or else it came into being, and will pass out of being, according to the fiat of Jehovah. Thus, on all sides, Plato’s allegory of the evolution of a new type of order based on new types of dominant societies became a daydream, puzzling to commentators.

Milton, curiously enough, in his Paradise Lost wavers between the Timaeus and the Semitic doctrine. This is only another instance of the intermixture of classical and Hebrew notions on which his charm of thought depends. In the description of Satan’s journey across Chaos, Satan discovers

The secrets of the hoary deep, a dark

Illimitable ocean, without bound,

Without dimension, where length, breadth and highth,
And time and’ place are lost; where eldest night

And Chaos, ancestors of Nature, hold

Eternal anarchy amidst the noise

Of endless wars, and by confusion stand.°

Milton is here performing for Plato the same poetic service that Lucretius performed for Democritus—with

° The book of Genesis is too primitive to bear upon this point. °Cf Paradise Lost, Bk. II.

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less justification, since Plato was quite capable of being his own poet. Also the fact of Satan’s journey helped to evolve order; for he left a permanent track, useful for the devils and the damned.

The appeal to Plato in this section has been an appeal to the facts against the modes of expression prevalent in the last few centuries. These recent modes of expression are partly the outcome of a mixture of theology and philosophy, and are partly due to the Newtonian physics, no longer accepted as a fundamental statement. But language and thought have been framed according to that mould; and it is necessary to remind ourselves that this is not the way in which the world has been described by some of the greatest intellects. Both for Plato and for Aristotle the process of the actual world has been conceived as a real incoming of forms into real potentiality, issuing into that real togetherness which is an actual thing. Also, for the Timaeus, the creation of the world is the incoming of a type of order establishing a cosmic epoch. It is not the beginning of matter of fact, but the incoming of a certain type of social order.

SECTION IV

The remainder of this chapter will be devoted to a discussion—largely conjectural—of the hierarchy of societies composing our present epoch. In this way, the preceding discussion of ‘order’ may be elucidated. It is to be carefully noted that we are now deserting metaphysical generality. We shall be considering the more special possibilities of explanation consistent with our general cosmological doctrine, but not necessitated by it.

The physical world is bound together by a general type of relatedness which constitutes it into an extensive continuum. When we analyse the properties of this continuum we discover that they fall into two classes, of which one—the more special—presupposes the other— the more general.*® The more general type of properties

1° Cf. Part IV for a detailed discussion.

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expresses the mere fact of ‘extensive connection,’ of ‘whole and part,’ of various types of ‘geometrical elements’ derivable by ‘extensive abstraction’; but excluding the introduction of more special properties by which straight lines are definable ** and measurability thereby introduced.

In these general properties of extensive connection, we discern the defining characteristic of a vast nexus extending far beyond our immediate cosmic epoch. It contains in itself other epochs, with more particular characteristics incompatible with each other. Then from the standpoint of our present epoch, the fundamental society in so far as it transcends our own epoch seems a vast confusion mitigated by the few, faint elements of order contained in its own defining characteristic of ‘extensive connection.’ We cannot discriminate its other epochs of vigorous order, and we merely conceive it as harbouring the faint flush of the dawn of order in our own epoch. This ultimate, vast society constitutes the whole environment within which our epoch is set, so far as systematic characteristics are discernible by us in our present stage of development. In the future the growth of theory may endow our successors with keener powers of discernment.

Our logical analysis, in company with immediate intuition (inspectio), enables us to discern a more special society within the society of pure extension. This is the ‘geometrical’ society. In this society ** those specialized relationships hold, in virtue of which straight lines are defined. Systematic geometry is illustrated in such a geometrical society; and metrical relationships can be defined in terms of the analogies of function within the scheme of any one systematic geometry. These ‘analogies of function’ are what is meant by the notion of ‘congruence.’ This notion is nonsense apart from a systematic geometry. The inclusion of extensive quantity

*? Cf. Part IV, Ch. III, IV, V. *? Cf. Part IV, especially Ch. IPE VEY.

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among fundamental categoreal notions is a complete mistake. This notion is definable in terms of each systematic geometry finding its application in a geometrical society. It is to be noticed that a systematic geometry is determined by the definition of straight lines applicable to the society in question. Contrary to the general opinion, this definition is possible in independence of the notion of ‘measurement.’ It cannot however be proved that in the same geometrical society there may not be competing families of loci with equal claims to the status of being a complete family of straight lines.