philosophy passed on its way to the refined AristoteHan concept of substance and to which science returned as it reacted against philosophic abstractions. -Earth, fire, and water in the Ionic philosophy and the shaped elements in the Timaeus are comparable to the matter and ether of modern scientific doctrine. But substance represents the final philosophic concept of the sub- stratum which underlies any attribute. Matter (in the scientific sense) is already in space and time. Thus matter represents the refusal to think away spatial and temporal characteristics and to arrive at the bare con- cept of an individual entity. It is this refusal which has caused the muddle of importing the mere procedure of thought into the fact of nature. The entity, bared of all characteristics except those of space and time, has ac- quired a physical status as the ultimate texture of nature ; so that the course of nature is conceived as being merely the fortunes of matter in its adventure through space. Thus the origin of the doctrine of matter is the out- come of uncritical acceptance of space and time as external conditions for natural existence. By this I do not mean that any doubt should be thrown on facts of space and time as ingredients in nature. What I do mean is 'the unconscious presupposition of space and time as being that within which nature is set.' This is exactly the sort of presupposition which tinges thought in any reaction against the subtlety of philosophical criticism. My theory of the formation of the scientific doctrine of matter is that first philosophy illegitimately transformed the bare entity, which is simply an ab- straction necessary for the method of thought, into the metaphysical substratum of these factors in nature which in various senses are assigned to entities as their
i] NATURE AND THOUGHT 21
attributes ; and that, as a second step, scientists (includ-
ing philosophers who were scientists) in conscious or
unconscious ignoration of philosophy presupposed this
substratum, qua substratum for attributes, as never-
theless in time and space.
This is surely a muddle. The whole being of substance is as a substratum for attributes. Thus time and space should be attributes of the substance. This they palpably are not, if the matter be the substance of nature, since it is impossible to express spatio-temporal truths without having recourse to relations involving relata other than bits of matter. I waive this point however, and come to another. It is not the substance which is in space, but the attributes. What we find in space are the red of the rose and the smell of the jasmine and the noise of cannon. We have all told our dentists where our toothache is. Thus space is not a relation between substances, but between attributes.
Thus even if you admit that the adherents of sub- stance can be allowed to conceive substance as matter, it is a fraud to slip substance into space on the plea that space expresses relations between substances. On the face of it space has nothing to do with substances, but only with their attributes. What I mean is, that if you choose — as I think wrongly — ^to construe our ex- perience of nature as an awareness of the attributes of substances, we are by this theory precluded from finding any analogous direct relations between substances as disclosed in our experience. What we do find are relations between the attributes of substances. Thus if matter is looked on as substance in space, the space in which it finds itself has very little to do with the space of our experience.
22 THE CONCEPT OF NATURE [ch.
The above argument has been expressed in terms of
the relational theory of space. But if space be absolute
—namely, if it have a being independent of things in it
— the course of the argument is hardly changed. For
things in space must have a certain fundamental relation
to space which we will call occupation. Thus the ob-
jection that it is the attributes which are observed as
related to space, still holds.
The scientific doctrine of matter is held in conjunc-
tion with an absolute theory of time. The same argu-
ments apply to the relations between matter and time
as apply to the relations between space and matter.
There is however (in the current philosophy) a difference
in the connexions of space with matter from those of
time with matter, which I will proceed to explain.
Space is not merely an ordering of material entities so that any one entity bears certain relations to other material entities. The occupation of space impresses a certain character on each material entity in itself. By reason of its occupation of space matter has extension. By reason of its extension each bit of matter is divisible into parts, and each part is a numerically distinct entity from every other such part. Accordingly it would seem that every material entity is not really one entity. It is an essential multiplicity of entities. There seems to be no stopping this dissociation of matter into multiplicities short of finding each ultimate entity occupying one individual point. This essential multi- plicity of material entities is certainly not what is meant by science, nor does it correspond to anything disclosed in sense-awareness. It is absolutely necessary that at a certain stage in this dissociation of matter a halt should be called, and that the material entities thus obtained
I] Nature and Thought 23
should be treated as units. The stage of arrest may be
arbitrary or may be set by the characteristics of nature ;
but all reasoning in science ultimately drops its space-
analysis and poses to itself the problem, ' Here is one
material entity, what is happening to it as a unit
entity?' Yet this material entity is still retaining its
extension, and as thus extended is a mere multiplicity.
Thus there is an essential atomic property in nature
which is independent of the dissociation of extension.
There is something which in itself is one, and which is
more than the logical aggregate of entities occupying
points within the volume which the unit occupies.
Indeed we may well be sceptical as to these ultimate
entities at points, and doubt whether there are any such
entities at all. They have the suspicious character that
we are driven to accept them by abstract logic and not
by observed fact.
Time (in the current philosophy) does not exert the same disintegrating effect on matter which occupies it. If matter occupies a duration of time, the whole matter occupies every part of that duration. Thus the connexion between matter and time differs from the connexion between matter and space as expressed in current scientific philosophy. There is obviously a greater difficulty in conceiving time as the outcome of relations between different bits of matter than there is in the analogous conception of space. At an instant distinct volumes of space are occupied by distinct bits of matter. Accordingly there is so far no intrinsic difficulty in conceiving that space is merely the resultant of relations between the bits of matter. But in the one-dimensional time the same bit of matter occupies different portions of time. Accordingly time would have to be expressible
24 the Concept of Nature ["
in terms of the relations of a bit of matter with itsel]
My own view is a behef in the relational theory both c
space and of time, and of disbelief in the current fori]
of the relational theory of space which exhibits bit
of matter as the relata for spatial relations. The tru
relata are events. The distinction which I have jus
pointed out between time and space in their cormexio)
with matter makes it evident that any assimilation o
time and space cannot proceed along the traditional lin
of taking matter as a fundamental element in space
formation.
The philosophy of nature took a wrong turn durinj
its development by Greek thought. This erroneou
presupposition is vague and fluid in Plato's Timaem
The general groundwork of the thought is still un
committed and can be construed as merely lacking du
explanation and the guarding emphasis. But ii
Aristotle's exposition the current conceptions wer
hardened and made definite so as to produce a fault
analysis of the relation between the matter and the forr
of nature as disclosed in sense-awareness. In this phras
the term ' matter ' is not used in its scientific sense.
I will conclude by guarding myself against a mis
apprehension. It is evident that the current doctrine c
matter enshrines some fundamental law of nature. An
simple illustration will exemplify what I mean. Fo
example, in a museum some specimen is locked securel
in a glass case. It stays there for years : it loses its coloui
and perhaps falls to pieces. But it is the same specimen
and the same chemical elements and the same quantitie
of those elements are present within the case at the en
as were present at the beginning. Again the engines
and the astronomer deal with the motions of real pei
I] Nature and Thought 25
manences in nature. Any theory of nature which for one moment loses sight of these great basic facts of experience is simply silly. But it is permissible to point out that the scientific expression of these facts has be- come entangled in a maze of doubtful metaphysics; and that, when we remove the metaphysics and start afresh on an unprejudiced survey of nature, a new light is thrown on many fundamental concepts which domi- nate science and guide the progress of research.
Chapter Ii
THEORIES OF THE BIFURCATION OF NATURE
In my previous lecture I criticised the concept of matter as the substance whose attributes we perceive. This way of thinking of matter is, I think, the historical reason for its introduction into science, and is still the vague view of it at the background of our thoughts which makes the current scientific doctrine appear so obvious. Namely we conceive ourselves as perceiving attributes of things, and bits of matter are the things whose attributes we perceive.
In the seventeenth century the sweet simplicity of
this aspect of matter received a rude shock. The trans-
mission doctrines of science were then in process of
elaboration and by the end of the century were un-
questioned, though their particular forms have since
been modified. The establishment of these transmission
theories marks a turning point in the relation between
science and philosophy. The doctrines to which I am
especially alluding are the theories of light and sound.
I have no doubt that the theories had been vaguely
floating about before as obvious suggestions of common
sense; for nothing in thought is ever completely new.
But at that epoch they were systematised and made
exact, and their complete consequences were ruthlessly
deduced. It is the establishment of this procedure of
taking the consequences seriously which marks the
real discovery of a theory. Systematic doctrines of
light and sound as being something proceeding from
CH.ii] THEORIES OF BIFURCATION OF NATURE 27
the emitting bodies were definitely established, and in
particular the connexion of light with colour was laid
bare by Newton.
The result completely destroyed the simplicity of the
'substance and attribute' theory of perception. What
we see depends on the light entering the eye. Further-
more we do not even perceive what enters the eye. The
things transmitted are waves or — as Newton thought —
minute particles, and the things seen are colours. Locke
met this difficulty by a theory of primary and secondary
qualities. Namely, there are some attributes of the
matter which we do perceive. These are the primary
qualities, and there are other things which we perceive,
such as colom-s, which are not attributes of matter, but
are perceived by us as if they were such attributes.
These are the secondary qualities of matter.
Why should we perceive secondary qualities? It seems an extremely unfortunate arrangement that we should perceive a lot of things that are not there. Yet this is what the theory of secondary qualities in fact comes to. There is now reigning in philosophy and in science an apathetic acquiescence in the conclusion that no coherent account can be given of nature as it is disclosed to us in sense-awareness, without dragging in its relations to mind. The modern account of nature is not, as it should be, merely an account of what the mind knows of nature ; but it is also confused with an account of what nature does to the mind. The result has been disastrous both to science and to philosophy, but chiefly to philosophy. It has transformed the grand question of the relations between nature and mind into the petty form of the interaction between the human body and mind.
28 THE CONCEPT OF NATURE [ch.
Berkeley's polemic against matter was based on this
confusion introduced by the transmission theory of
light. He advocated, rightly as I think, the abandon-
ment of the doctrine of matter in its present form. He
had however nothing to put in its place except a theory
of the relation of finite minds to the divine mind.
But we are endeavouring in these lectures to limit
ourselves to nature itself and not to travel beyond
entities which are disclosed in sense-awareness.
Percipience in itself is taken for granted. We consider
indeed conditions for percipience, but only so far as
those conditions are among the disclosures of percep-
tion. We leave to metaphysics the synthesis of the
knower and the known. Some further explanation and
defence of this position is necessary, if the line of argu-
ment of these lectures is to be comprehensible.
Thcijmmediate thesis for discussion is that any meta-
physical interpretation is an illegitimate importation into
the philosophy of natural science. By a metaphysical
interpretation I mean any discussion of the how (beyond
nature) and of the why (beyond nature) of thought and
#ense-awareness. In the philosophy of science we seek
the general notions which apply to nature, namely, to
what we are aware of in perception. It is the philosophy
of the thing perceived, and it should not be confused
with the metaphysics of reality of which the scope
embraces both perceiver and perceived. No perplexity
concerning the object of knowledge can be solved by
saying that there is a mind knowing it^.
In other words, the ground taken is this: sense-
awareness is an awareness of something. What then is
the general character of that something of which we
^ Cf. Enquiry, preface.