Process and Reality — the Gifford Lectures, 1929

This extensiveness is the pervading generic form to which morphological structure of the organisms of the world conform. These. organisms are of two types: one type consists of the individual actual entities; the other type consists of nexus of actual entities. Both types are correlated by their common extensiveness. If we confine our attention to the subdivision of an actual entity into coordinate parts, we shall conceive of extensiveness as purely derived from the notion of ‘whole and part,’ that is to say, ‘extensive whole and extensive part.’ This was the view taken in by my two earlier investigations of thep. 440 subject. This defect of starting point revenged itself in the fact that the ‘method of extensive abstraction’ developed in those works was unable to define a ‘point,’ without the intervention of the theory of ‘duration.’ Thus what should have been a property of ‘durations’ became the definition of a point. By this mode of approach the extensive relations of actual entities mutually external to each other were pushed into the background; though they are equally fundamental.

Since that date Professor T. de Laguna * has shown that the somewhat more general notion of ‘extensive connection’ can be adopted as the starting point for the investigation of extension; and that the more limited notion of ‘whole and part’ can be defined in terms of it. In this way, as Professor de Laguna has shown, my difficulty in the definition of a point, without recourse to other considerations, can be overcome.

This whole question is investigated in the succeeding chapters of this part. Also I there give a definition of a straight line, and of ‘flat’ loci generally, in terms of purely extensive principles without reference to measurement or to durations.

SECTION IV

An actual entity, in its character of being a physical occasion, is an act of blind perceptivity of the other physical occasions of the actual world. When we consider such an occasion morphologically, as a given entity, its perceptive bonds are divisible by reason of the extensive divisibility of its own standpoints, and by reason of the extensive divisibility of the other actual occasions. Thus we reach perceptive bonds involving one sub-region of the basic region of the perceiver, and one subdivision of the basic region of the perceived. The relationship between these sub-regions involves the status of inter-

*Cf. The Principles of Natural Knowledge, 1919, and The Concept of Nature, 1920, Cambridge University Press, England.

* Cf. Professor de Lajuna’s three articles in the Journal of Philosophy,

SE and Scientific Method, Vol. XIX, 1922, especially the third article.

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mediate regions functioning as agents in the process of transmission. In other words, the perspective of one sub-region from the other is dependent on the fact that the extensive relations express the conditions laid on the actual world in its function of a medium.

These extensive relations do not make determinate what is transmitted; but they do determine conditions to which all transmission must conform. They represent the systematic scheme which is involved in the real potentiality from which every actual occasion arises. This scheme is also involved in the attained fact which every actual occasion is. The ‘extensive’ scheme is nothing else than the generic morphology of the internal relations which bind the actual occasions into a nexus, and which bind the prehensions of any one actual occasion into a unity, coordinately divisible.

For Descartes the primary attribute of physical bodies is extension; for the philosophy of organism the primary relationship of physical occasions is extensive connection. This ultimate relationship is sui generis, and cannot be defined or explained. But its formal properties can be stated. Also in view of these formal properties, there are definable derivative notions which are of importance in expressing the morphological structure. Some general character of coordinate divisibility is probably an ultimate metaphysical character, persistent in every cosmic epoch of physical occasions. Thus some of the simpler characteristics of extensive connection, as here stated, are probably such ultimate metaphysical necessities.

But when we examine’ the characteristics considered in the next chapter, it is difficult to draw the line distinguishing characteristics so general that we cannot conceive any alternatives, from characteristics so special that we imagine them to belong merely to our cosmic epoch. Such an epoch may be, relatively to our powers, of immeasurable extent, temporally and spatially. But in reference to the ultimate nature of things, it is a limited nexus. Beyond that nexus, entities with new relationships, unrealized in our experiences and unforeseen by our imagip. 442nations, will make their appearance, introducing into the universe new types of order.

But, for our epoch, extensive connection with its various characteristics is the fundamental organic relationship whereby the physical world is properly described as a community. There are no important physical relationships outside the extensive scheme. To be an actual occasion in the physical world means that the entity in question is a relatum in this scheme of extensive connection. In this epoch, the scheme defines what is physically actual.

The more ultimate side of this scheme, perhaps that side which is metaphysically necessary, is at once evident by the consideration of the mutual implication of extensive whole and extensive part. If you abolish the whole, you abolish its parts; and if you abolish any part, then that whole is abolished.

In this general description of the states of extension, nothing has been said about physical time or physical space, or of the more general notion of creative advance. These are notions which presuppose the more general relationship of extension. They express additional facts about the actual occasions. The extensiveness of space is really the spatialization of extension; and the extensiveness of time is really the temporalization of extension. Physical time expresses the reflection of genetic divisibility into coordinate divisibility.

So far as mere extensiveness is concerned, space might as well have three hundred and thirty-three dimensions, instead of the modest three dimensions of our present epoch. The three dimensions of space form an additional fact about the physical occasions. Indeed the sheer dimensionality of space, apart from the precise number of dimensions, is such an additional fact, not involved in the mere notion of extension. Also the seriality of time, unique or multiple, cannot be derived from the sole notion of extension.

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The notion of nature as an organic extensive community omits the equally essential point of view that nature is never complete. It is always passing beyond itself. This is the creative advance of nature. Here we come to the problem of time. The immediately relevant point to notice is that time and space are characteristics of nature which presuppose the scheme of extension. But extension does not in itself determine the special facts which. are true respecting physical time and physical space.

SECTION V

The consideration of coordination and genesis raises a question wider than any yet discussed in this chapter.