This likeness * consists in the fact that (i) a certain element of ‘form’ is a contributory component to the in- dividual satisfaction of each member of the society; and that (11) the contribution by this element to the objecti- fication of any one member of the society for prehension by other members promotes its analogous reproduction in the satisfactions of those other members. Thus a set of entities is a society (i) in virtue of a ‘defining charac- teristic’ shared by its members, and (11) in virtue of the presence of the defining characteristic being due to the environment provided by the society itself.
For example, the life of man is an historic route of actual occasions which in a marked degree—to be dis- cussed more fully later—inherit from each other. That set of occasions, dating from his first acquirement of the Greek language and including all those occasions up to his loss of any adequate knowledge of that language, con- stitutes a society in reference to knowledge of the Greek language. Such knowledge is a common characteristic inherited from occasion to occasion along the historic route. This example has purposely been chosen for its reference to a somewhat trivial element of order, viz. knowledge of the Greek language; a more important character of order would have been that complex charac- ter in virtue of which a man is considered to be the same enduring person from birth to death. Also in this in-
# Of Parti 1, Ch, WY, Sect. I.
138 Process and Reality
stance the members of the society are arranged in a
serial order by their genetic relations. Such a society is
said © to possess ‘personal order.’
Thus a society is, for each of its members, an environ-
ment with some element of order in it, persisting by rea-
son of the genetic relations between its own members.
Such an element of order is the order prevalent in the
society.
But there is no society in isolation. Every society must be considered with its background of a wider en- vironment of actual entities, which also contribute their objectifications to which the members of the society must conform. Thus the given contributions of the environ- ment must at least be permissive of the self-sustenance of the society. Also, in proportion to its importance, this background must contribute those general characters which the more special character of the society presup- poses for its members. But this means that the environ- ment, together with the society in question, must form a larger society in respect to some more general charac- ters than those defining the society from which we started. Thus we arrive at the principle that every soci- ety requires a social background, of which it is itself a part. In reference to any given society the world of actual entities is to be conceived as forming a back- ground in layers of social order, the defining characteris- tics becoming wider and more general as we widen the background. Of course, the remote actualities of the background have their own specific characteristics of various types of social order. But such specific charac- teristics have become irrelevant for the society in question by reason of the inhibitions and attenuations introduced by discordance, that is to say, by disorder.
The metaphysical characteristics of an actual entity
—in the proper general sense of ‘metaphysics’—should
be those which apply to all actual entities. It may be
doubted whether such metaphysical concepts have ever
"Cf. Part I, Ch. TI) Sect: Il.
The Order of Nature 139
been formulated in their strict purity—even taking into account the most general principles of logic and of math- ematics. We have to confine ourselves to societies suffi- ciently wide, and yet such that their defining character- istics cannot safely be ascribed to all actual entities which have been or may be.
The causal laws which dominate a social environment
are the product of the defining characteristic of that
society. But the society is only efficient through its in-
dividual members. Thus in a society, the members can
only exist by reason of the laws which dominate the
society, and the laws only come into being by reason
of the analogous characters of the members of the
society.
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 en- durance, 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 rele- vance to ourselves is traceable. This epoch is charac- terized 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 soci-
140 Process(and Rea Y
ety of protonic occasions. These occasions are the reasons for the electromagnetic laws; but their capacity for repro- duction, 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 in- stances of failure. There is accordingly a gradual transi- tion 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 geo- metrical 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 ex- tensiveness; also, that even extensiveness allows of grades of specialization, arbitrarily one way or another, antecedently to the introduction of any of these addi- tional notions. By this discovery the logical and mathe- matical 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 character-
istic. It only elicits that complex into importance for
its members, and secures the reproduction of its member-
ship. In speaking of a society—unless the context ex-
Tee Forder of Nature 141
pressly requires another interpretation—‘membership’ will always refer to the actual occasions, and not to subordinate enduring objects composed of actual occa- sions 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 elec- tronic and protonic occasions, and only occasionally— for the sake of brevity in statement—as a society of elec- trons and protons. There is the same distinction between thinking of an army either as a class of men, or as a class of regiments.
Thus the physical relations, the geometrical relations of measurement, the dimensional relations, and the vari- ous 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 socie- ties. This situation constitutes the physical and geo- metrical order of nature. Beyond these societies there is disorder, where ‘disorder’ is a relative term expressing the lack of importance possessed by the defining character- istics 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 the
142 Process and Reality
form of prevalent laws. This doctrine, that order is a
social product, appears in modern science as the statis-
tical 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 defini- tion 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.
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 scien- tific 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 alle- gory, 1t conveys profound truth; whereas the Scholiwm is an immensely able statement of details which, although abstract and inadequate as a philosophy, can within cer- tain 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 into
The Order of Nature 143
what I have elsewhere * termed the ‘fallacy of misplaced
concreteness.’ It is the office of metaphysics to deter-
mine 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 com- pletely, 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 defi- nite 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, im- manent, 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.