The Concept of Nature — the Tarner Lectures, 1920

The materialistic theory has all the completeness of the thought of the middle ages, which had a complete answer to everything, be it in heaven or in hell or in nature. There is a trimness about it, with its instantaneous present, its vanished past, its non-existent future, and its inert matter. This trimness is very medieval and ill accords with brute fact.

The theory which I am urging admits a greater ultimate mystery and a deeper ignorance. The past and the future meet and mingle in the ill-defined present. The passage of nature which is only another name for the creative force of existence has no narrow ledge of definite instantaneous present within which to operate. Its operative presence which is now urging nature forward must be sought for throughout the whole, in the remotest past as well as in the narrowest breadth of any present duration. Perhaps also in the unrealised future. Perhaps also in the future which might be as well as the actual future which will be. It is impossible to meditate on time and the mystery of the creative passage of nature without an overwhelming emotion at the limitations of human intelligence.

CHAPTER IV

THE METHOD OF EXTENSIVE
ABSTRACTION

To-day's lecture must commence with the consideration of limited events. We shall then be in a position to enter upon an investigation of the factors in nature which are represented by our conception of space.

The duration which is the immediate disclosure of our sense-awareness is discriminated into parts. There is the part which is the life of all nature within a room, and there is the part which is the life of all nature within a table in the room. These parts are limited events. They have the endurance of the present duration, and they are parts of it. But whereas a duration is an unlimited whole and in a certain limited sense is all that there is, a limited event possesses a completely defined limitation of extent which is expressed for us in spatio-temporal terms.

We are accustomed to associate an event with a certain melodramatic quality. If a man is run over, that is an event comprised within certain spatio-temporal limits. We are not accustomed to consider the endurance of the Great Pyramid throughout any definite day as an event. But the natural fact which is the Great Pyramid throughout a day, meaning thereby all nature within it, is an event of the same character as the man's accident, meaning thereby all nature with spatio-temporal limitations so as to include the man and the motor during the period when they were in contact.

CH.iv] METHOD OF EXTENSIVE ABSTRACTION 75

We are accustomed to analyse these events into three factors, time, space, and material. In fact, we at once apply to them the concepts of the materialistic theory of nature. I do not deny the utility of this analysis for the purpose of expressing important laws of nature. What I am denying is that anyone of these factors is posited for us in sense-awareness in concrete independence. JWe perceive one unit factor in nature; and this factor is that something is going on then — there. For example, we perceive the going-on of the Great Pyramid in its relations to the goings-on of the surrounding Egyptian events. We are so trained, both by language and by formal teaching and by the resulting convenience, to express our thoughts in terms of this materialistic analysis that intellectually we tend to ignore the true unity of the factor really exhibited in sense-awareness. It is this unit factor, retaining in itself the passage of nature, which is the primary concrete element discriminated in nature. These primary factors are what I mean by events.

Events are the field of a two-termed relation, namely the relation of extension which was considered in the last lecture. Events are the things related by the relation of extension. If an event A extends over an event B, then B is 'part of ' ^, and ^ is a 'whole of which 5 is a part'. Whole and part are invariably used in these lectures in this definite sense. It follows that in reference to this relation any two events A and B may have any one of four relations to each other, namely (i) A may extend over B, or (ii) B may extend over A, or (iii) A and B may both extend over some third event C, but neither over the other, or (iv) A and B may be entirely separate. These alternatives canp. 76 obviously be illustrated by Euler's diagrams as they appear in logical textbooks.

The continuity of nature is the continuity of events. This continuity is merely the name for the aggregate of a variety of properties of events in connexion with the relation of extension.

In the first place^ this relation is transitive ; secondly, every event contains other events as parts of itself; thirdly every event is a part of other events ; fourthly given any two finite events there are events each of which contains both of them as parts ; and fifthly there is a special relation between events which I term 'junction.'

Two events have junction when there is a third event of which both events are parts, and which is such that no part of it is separated from both of the two given events. Thus two events with junction make up exactly one event which is in a sense their sum.

Only certain pairs of events have this property. In general any event containing two events also contains parts which are separated from both events.

There is an alternative definition of the junction of two events which I have adopted in my recent book^. Two events have junction when there is a third event such that (i) it overlaps both events and (ii) it has no part which is separated from both the given events. If either of these alternative definitions is adopted as the definition of junction, the other definition appears as an axiom respecting the character of junction as we know it in nature. But we are not thinking of logical definition so much as the formulation of the results of direct observation. There is a certain continuity

^ Of. Enquiry.

p. 77

inherent in the observed unity of an event, and these two definitions of junction are really axioms based on observation respecting the character of this continuity.

The relations of whole and part and of overlapping are particular cases of the junction of events. But it is possible for events to have junction when they are separate from each other; for example, the upper and the lower part of the Great Pyramid are divided by some imaginary horizontal plane.

The continuity which nature derives from events has been obscured by the illustrations which I have been obliged to give. For example I have taken the existence of the Great Pyramid as a fairly well-known fact to which I could safely appeal as an illustration. This is a type of event which exhibits itself to us as the situation of a recognisable object ; and in the example chosen the object is so widely recognised that it has received a name. An object is an entity of a different type from an event. For example, the event which is the life of nature within the Great Pyramid yesterday and to-day is divisible into two parts, namely the Great Pyramid yesterday and the Great Pyramid to-day. But the recognisable object which is also called the Great Pyramid is the same object to-day as it was yesterday. I shall have to consider the theory of objects in another lecture.

The whole subject is invested with an unmerited air of subtlety by the fact that when the event is the situation of a well-marked object, we have no language to distinguish the event from the object. In the case of the Great Pyramid, the object is the perceived unit entity which as perceived remains self-identical through-

78 THE CUNUErr~u¥~rnrTTTRc. l^^n.

out the ages ; while the whole dance of molecules and the shifting play of the electromagnetic field are ingredients of the event. An object is in a sense out of time. It is only derivatively in time by reason of its having the relation to events which I term 'situation.' This relation of situation will require discussion in a subsequent lecture.