Process and Reality — the Gifford Lectures, 1929

But there is not any perfect attainment of an ideal order whereby the indefinite endurance of a society is secured. A society arises from disorder, where ‘disorder’ is defined by reference to the ideal for that society; the favourable background of a larger environment either itself decays, or ceases to favour the persistence of the society after some stage of growth: the society then ceases to reproduce its members, and finally after a stage of decay passes out of existence. Thus a system of ‘laws’ determining reproduction in some portion of the universe gradually rises into dominance; it has its stage of endurance, and passes out of existence with the decay of the society from which it emanates.

The arbitrary, as it were ‘given,’ elements in the laws of nature warn us that we are in a special cosmic epoch. Here the phrase ‘cosmic epoch’ is used to mean that widest society of actual entities whose immediate relevance to ourselves is traceable. This epoch is characterized by electronic and protonic actual entities, and by yet more ultimate actual entities which can be dimly discerned in the quanta of energy. Maxwell’s equations of the electromagnetic field hold sway by reason of the throngs of electrons and of protons. Also each electron is a society of electronic occasions, and each proton is a socip. 140ety of protonic occasions. These occasions are the reasons for the electromagnetic laws; but their capacity for reproduction, whereby each electron and each proton has a long life, and whereby new electrons and new protons come into being, is itself due to these same laws. But there is disorder in the sense that the laws are not perfectly obeyed, and that the reproduction is mingled with instances of failure. There is accordingly a gradual transition to new types of order, supervening upon a gradual rise into dominance on the part of the present natural laws.

But the arbitrary factors in the order of nature are not confined to the electromagnetic laws. There are the four dimensions of the spatio-temporal continuum, the geometrical axioms, even the mere dimensional character of the continuum—apart from the particular number of dimensions—and the fact of measurability. In later chapters (cf. Part IV) it will be evident that all these properties are additional to the more basic fact of extensiveness; also, that even extensiveness allows of grades of specialization, arbitrarily one way or another, antecedently to the introduction of any of these additional notions. By this discovery the logical and mathematical investigations of the last two centuries are very relevant to philosophy. For the cosmological theories of Descartes, Newton, Locke, Hume, and Kant were framed in ignorance of that fact. Indeed, in the Timaeus Plato seems to be more aware of it than any of his successors, in the sense that he frames statements whose meaning is elucidated by its explicit recognition. These ‘given’ factors in geometry point to the wider society of which the electronic cosmic epoch constitutes a fragment.

A society does not in any sense create the complex of eternal objects which constitutes its defining characteristic. It only elicits that complex into importance for its members, and secures the reproduction of its membership. In speaking of a society—unless the context exp. 141pressly requires another interpretation—‘membership’ will always refer to the actual occasions, and not to subordinate enduring objects composed of actual occasions such as the life of an electron or of a man. These latter societies are the strands of ‘personal’ order which enter into many societies; generally speaking, whenever we are concerned with occupied space, we are dealing with this restricted type of corpuscular societies; and whenever we are thinking of the physical field in empty space, we are dealing with societies of the wider type. It seems as if the careers of waves of light illustrate the transition from the more restricted type to the wider type.

Thus our cosmic epoch is to be conceived primarily as a society of electromagnetic occasions, including electronic and protonic occasions, and only occasionally— for the sake of brevity in statement—as a society of electrons and protons. There is the same distinction between thinking of an army either as a class of men, or as a class of regiments.

SECTION III

Thus the physical relations, the geometrical relations of measurement, the dimensional relations, and the various grades of extensive relations, involved in the physical and geometrical theory of nature, are derivative from a series of societies of increasing width of prevalence, the more special societies being included in the wider societies. This situation constitutes the physical and geometrical order of nature. Beyond these societies there is disorder, where ‘disorder’ is a relative term expressing the lack of importance possessed by the defining characteristics of the societies in question beyond their own bounds. When those societies decay, it will not mean that their defining characteristics cease to exist; but that they lapse into unimportance for the actual entities in question. The term ‘disorder’ refers to a society only partially influential in impressing its characteristics in thep. 142 form of prevalent laws. This doctrine, that order is a social product, appears in modern science as the statistical theory of the laws of nature, and in the emphasis on genetic relation.

But there may evidently be a state in which there are no prevalent societies securing any congruent unity of effect. This is a state of chaotic disorder; it is disorder approaching an absolute sense of that term. In such an ideal state, what is ‘given’ for any actual entity is the outcome of thwarting, contrary decisions from the settled world. Chaotic disorder means lack of dominant definition of compatible contrasts in the satisfactions attained, and consequent enfeeblement of intensity. It means the lapse towards slighter actuality. It is a natural figure of speech, but only a figure of speech, to conceive a slighter actuality as being an approach towards nonentity. But you cannot approach nothing; for there is nothing to approach. It is an approach towards the futility of being a faint compromise between contrary reasons. The dominance of societies, harmoniously requiring each other, is the essential condition for depth of satisfaction.