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The concept of nature.
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TARNER LECTURES DELIVERED IN TRINITY COLLEGE NOVEMBER 1919
By
A. N. WHITEHEAD, Sc.D., F.R.S.
Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and
Professor of Applied Mathematics in
The Imperial College of Science
And Technology
Cambridge
At the University Press
Preface
The contents of this book were originally delivered at
Trinity College in the autumn of 19 19 as the inaugural
course of Tamer lectures. The Tarner lectureship is
an occasional office founded by the liberality of
Mr Edward Tarner. The duty of each of the successive
holders of the post will be to deliver a course on ' the
Philosophy of the Sciences and the Relations or Want
of Relations between the diiferent Departments of
Knowledge.' The present book embodies the endeavour
of the first lecturer of the series to fulfil his task.
The chapters retain their original lecture form and remain as delivered with the exception of minor changes designed to remove obscurities of expression. The lecture form has the advantage of suggesting an audience with a definite mental background which it is the purpose of the lecture to modify in a specific way. In the presentation of a novel outlook with wide rami- fications a single line of communications from premises to conclusions is not sufficient for intelligibility. Your audience will construe whatever you say into conformity with their pre-existing outlook. For this reason the first two chapters and the last two chapters are essential for intelligibility though they hardly add to the formal completeness of the exposition. Their function is to prevent the reader from bolting up side tracks in pursuit of misunderstandings. The same reason dictates my avoidance of the existing technical terminology of
VI I'KJil'AUli
philosophy. The modern natural philosophy is shot
through and through with the fallacy of bifurcation
which is discussed in the second chapter of this work.
Accordingly all its technical terms in some subtle way
presuppose a misunderstanding of my thesis. It is
perhaps as well to state explicitly that if the reader
indulges in the facile vice of bifurcation not a word of
what I have here written will be intelligible.
The last two chapters do not properly belong to the
special course. Chapter VIII is a lecture delivered in
the spring of 1920 before the Chemical Society of
the students of the Imperial College of Science and
Technology. It has been appended here as conveniently
summing up and applying the doctrine of the book
for an audience with one definite type of outlook.
This volume on 'the Concept of Nature' forms a
companion book to my previous work An Enquiry con-
cerning the Principles of Natural Knowledge. Either
book can be read independently, but they supplement
each other. In part the present book supplies points
of view which were omitted from its predecessor; in
part it traverses the same ground with an alternative
exposition. For one thing, mathematical notation has
been carefully avoided, and the results of mathematical
deductions are assumed. Some of the explanations have
been improved and others have been set in a new light.
On the other hand important points of the previous
work have been omitted where I have had nothing fresh
to say about them. On the whole, whereas the former
work based itself chiefly on ideas directly drawn from
PREFACE vii
mathematical physics, the present book keeps closer
to certain fields of philosophy and physics to the ex-
clusion of mathematics. The two works meet in their
discussions of some details of space and time.
I am not conscious that I have in any way altered my
views. Some developments have been made. Those
that are capable of a non-mathematical exposition have
been incorporated in the text. The mathematical de-
velopments are alluded to in the last two chapters. They
concern the adaptation of the principles of mathematical
physics to the form of the relativity principle which is
here maintained. Einstein's method of using the theory
of tensors is adopted, but the application is worked
out on different lines and from different assumptions.
Those of his results which have been verified by
experience are obtained also by my methods. The
divergence chiefly arises from the fact that I do not
accept his theory of non-uniform space or his assump-
tion as to the peculiar fundamental character of light-
signals. I would not however be misunderstood to be
lacking in appreciation of the value of his recent work
on general relativity which has the high merit of first
disclosing the way in which mathematical physics
should proceed in the light of the principle of relativity.
But in my judgment he has cramped the development
of his brilliant mathematical method in the narrow
bounds of a very doubtful philosophy. ,
The object of the present volume and of its pre-
decessor is to lay the basis of a natural philosophy which
is the necessary presupposition of a reorganised specu-
vui PREFACE
lative physics. The general assimilation of space and
time which dominates the constructive thought can
claim the independent support of Minkowski from the
side of science and also of succeeding relativists, while on
the side of philosophers it was, I believe, one theme of
Prof. Alexander's Gifford lectures delivered some few
years ago but not yet published. He also summarised
his conclusions on this question in a lecture to the
Aristotelian Society in the July of 191 8. Since the
publication of An Enquiry concerning the Principles of
Natural Knowledge I have had the advantage of reading
Mr C. D. Broad's Perception, Physics, and Reality
[Camb. Univ. Press, 1914]. This valuable book has
assisted me in my discussion in Chapter II, though I
am unaware as to how far Mr Broad would assent to
any of my arguments as there stated.
It remains for me to thank the staff of the University
Press, its compositors, its proof-readers, its clerks, and
its managing officials, not only for the technical ex-
cellence of their work, but for the way they have
co-operated so as to secure my convenience.
A. N. W.
IMPERIAL COLLEGE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY.
April, 1920.
Contents
Chap. Page
I NATURE AND THOUGHT i
Ii Theories of the Bifurcation of Nature . 26
' Iii Time 49
' Iv the Method of Extensive Abstraction . 74
' V Space and Motion 99
Vi Congruence 120
Vii Objects 143
Viii Summary 164
IX THE ULTIMATE PHYSICAL CONCEPTS . .185 NOTE : On the Greek Concept of a Point . . .197
NOTE: On Significance AND Infinite Events . . 197
Index 199
Chapter I
Nature and Thought
The subject-matter of the Tarner lectures is defined by
the founder to be ' the Philosophy of the Sciences and
the Relations or Want of Relations between the different
Departments of Knowledge.' It is fitting at the first
lecture of this new foundation to dwell for a few moments
on the intentions of the donor as expressed in this
definition; and I do so the more willingly as I shall
thereby be enabled to introduce the topics to which the
present course is to be devoted.
We are justified, I think, in taking the second clause of the definition as in part explanatory of the earlier clause. What is the philosophy of the sciences.'' It is not a bad answer to say that it is the study of the rela- tions between the different departments of knowledge. Then with admirable solicitude for the freedom of learning there is inserted in the definition after the word 'relations' the phrase 'or want of relations.' A disproof of relations between sciences would in itself constitute a philosophy of the sciences. But we could not dispense either with the earlier or the later clause. It is not every relation between sciences which enters into their philosophy. For example biology and physics are connected by the use of the microscope. Still, I may safely assert that a technical description of the uses of the microscope in biology is not part of the philosophy of the sciences. Again, you cannot abandon the later
W.N. I
2 THE CONCEPT OF NATURE [cH.
clause of the definition; namely that referring to the relations between the sciences, without abandoning the explicit reference to an ideal in the absence of which philosophy must languish from lack of intrinsic interest. That ideal is the attainment of some unifying concept which will set in assigned relationships within itself -all that there is for knowledge, for feeling, and for emotion. That far off ideal is the motive power of philosophic research; and claims allegiance even as you expel it. The philosophic pluralist is a strict logician; the Hegelian thrives on contradictions by the help of his absolute; the Mohammedan divine bows before the creative will of Allah ; and the pragmatist will swallow anything so long as it 'works.'
The mention of these vast systems and of the age- long controversies from which they spring, warns us to concentrate. Our task is the simpler one of the philosophy of the sciences. Now a science has already a certain unity which is the very reason why that body of knowledge has been instinctively recognised as forming a science. The philosophy of a science is the endeavour to express explicitly those unifying charac- teristics which pervade that complex of thoughts and make it to be a science. The philosophy of the sciences — conceived as one subject — -is the endeavour to exhibit all sciences as one science, or — in case of defeat — the disproof of such a possibility.
Again I will make a further simplification, and con-
fine attention to the natural sciences, that is, to the
sciences whose subject-matter is nature. By postulating
a common subject-matter for this group of sciences, a
unifying philosophy of natural science has been thereby
presupposed.
1] Nature and Thought 3
What do we mean by nature? We have to discuss
the philosophy of natural science. Natural science is
the science of nature. But — What is nature?
^ Nature is that which we observe in perception
through the senses. In this sense-perception we are
aware of something which is not thought and which is
self-contained for thought. This property of being self-
contained for thought lies at the base of natural science.
It means that nature can be thought of as a closed
system whose mutual relations do not require the
expression of the fact that they are thought about.
Thus in a sense nature is independent of thought. By
this statement no metaphysical pronouncement is in-
tended. What I mean is that we can think about nature
without thinking about thought. I shall say that then
we are thinking ' homogeneously ' about nature.
Of course it is possible to think of nature in conjunc-
tion with thought about thjB'fact that nature is thought
about. In such a case I shall say that we are thinking
* hieterogeneously ' about nature. In fact during the last
few minutes we have been thinking heterogeneously
about nature. Natural science is exclusively concerned
with homogeneous thoughts about nature.
But sense-perception has in it an element which is
not thought. It is a difficult psychological question
whether sense-perception involves thought; and if it
does involve thought, what is the kind of thought which
it necessarily involves. Note that it has been stated
above that sense-perception is an awareness of some-
thing which is not thought. Namely, nature is not
thought. But this is a different question, namely that
the fact of sense-perception has a factor which is not
thought. I call this factor 'sense-awareness.' Accord-
4 THE CONCEPT OF NATURE [ch.
ingly the doctrine that natural science is exclusively
concerned with homogeneous thoughts about nature
does not immediately carry with it the conclusion that
natural science is not concerned with sense-awareness.
However, I do assert this further statement ; namely,
that though natural science is concerned with nature
which is the terminus of sense-perception, it is not con-
cerned with the sense-awareness itself.
I repeat the main line of this argument, and expand it in certain directions.
Thought about nature is different from the sense-
perception of nature. Hence the fact of sense-perception
has an ingredient or factor which is not thought. I call
this ingredient sense-awareness. It is indifferent to my
argument whether sense-perception has or has not
thought as another ingredient. If sense-perception does
not involve thought, then sense-awareness and sense-
perception are identical. But the something perceived
is perceived as an entity which is the terminus of the
sense-awareness, something which for thought is
beyond the fact of that sense-awareness. Also the
something perceived certainly does not contain other
sense-awarenesses which are different from the sense-
awareness which is an ingredient in that perception.
Accordingly nature as disclosed in sense-perception is
self-contained as against sense-awareness, in addition
to being self-contained as against thought. I will also
express this self-containedness of nature by saying that
nature is closed to m'nd.
This closure of nature does not carry with it any
metaphysical doctrine of the disjunction of nature and
mind. It means that in sense-perception nature^ Js_
disclosed as a compjex o^entities whose mutual relations