An enquiry concerning the principles of natural knowledge

by Alfred North Whitehead

, in this meaning of the term 'change,' will be called the 'passage' of

; and the word 'change' will not be used in this sense. Thus we say that events pass but do not change. The passage of an event is its passing into some other event which is not it.

An event in passing becomes part of larger events; and thus the passage of events is extension in the making. The terms 'the past,' 'the present,' and 'the future' refer to events. The irrevocableness of the past is the unchangeability of events. An event is what it is, when it is, and where it is. Externality and extension are the marks of events; an event is there and not here [or, here and not there], it is then and not now [or, now and not then], it is part of certain wholes and is a whole extending over certain parts.

[15. Objects]. 15.1 Objects enter into experience by recognition and without recognition experience would divulge no objects. Objects convey the permanences recognised in events, and are recognised as self-identical amid different circumstances; that is to say, the same object is recognised as related to diverse events. Thus the self-identical object maintains itself amid the flux of events: it is there and then, and it is here and now; and the 'it' which has its being there and here, then and now, is without equivocation the same subject for thought in the various judgments which are made upon it.

[15.2] The change of an object is the diverse relationships of the same object to diverse events. The object is permanent, because (strictly speaking) it is without time and space; and its change is merely the variety of its relations to the various events which are passing in time and in space. This passage of events in time and space is merely the exhibition of the relations of extension which events bear to each other, combined with the directional factor in time which expresses that ultimate becomingness which is the creative advance of nature. These extensional relations of events are analysed in later parts of this enquiry. But here we merely make clear that change in objects is no derogation from their permanence, and expresses their relation to the passage of events; whereas events are neither permanent nor do they change. Events (in a sense) are space and time, namely, space and time are abstractions from events. But objects are only derivatively in space and time by reason of their relations to events.

15.3 The ways in which events and objects enter into experience are distinct. Events are lived through, they extend around us. They are the medium within which our physical experience develops, or, rather, they are themselves the development of that experience. The facts of life are the events of life.

Objects enter into experience by way of the intellectuality of recognition. This does not mean that every object must have been known before; for in that case there never could have been a first knowledge. We must rid our imagination of the fallacious concept of the present as instantaneous. It is a duration, or stretch of time; and the primary recognition of an object consists of the recognition of its permanence amid the partial events of the duration which is present. Its recognition is carried beyond the present by means of recollection and memory.

Rational thought which is the comparison of event with event would be intrinsically impossible without objects.

[15.4] Objects and events are only waveringly discriminated in common thought. Whatever is purely matter of fact is an event. Whenever the concept of possibility can apply to a natural element, that element is an object. Namely, objects have the possibility of recurrence in experience: we can conceive imaginary circumstances in which a real object might occur. The essence of an object does not depend on its relations, which are external to its being. It has in fact certain relations to other natural elements; but it might (being the same object) have had other relations. In other words, its self-identity is not wholly dependent on its relations. But an event is just what it is, and is just how it is related; and it is nothing else.