An enquiry concerning the principles of natural knowledge

by Alfred North Whitehead

This perceptive power of figures carries us to the direct recognition of sorts of objects which otherwise would remain in the region of abstract logical concepts. For example, our perception of sight-figures leads to the recognition of colour as being what is common to all particular colours.

[63. Geometrical Figures]. 63.1 The generalisation which introduces geometrical figures is an extreme instance of the sort of generalisation already considered. Namely, instead of generalising from a dark-blue figure to a sight-figure, we pass to the concept of the relation of any sense-object to the volumes of its situation. This concept of a figure, in which any particular sense has been lost sight of, would be entirely without any counterpart in perception, if it were not for the fact of perceptual objects. A perceptual object is the association in one situation of a set of sense-objects, in general 'conveyed' by the normal perception of one of them. The high perceptive capacity of sense-figures leads to their association in a generalised figure, which is the geometrical figure of the object. Indeed, the insistent obviousness of the geometrical figure is one reason for the perception of perceptual objects. The object is not the figure, but our awareness of it is derived from our awareness of the figure. The reason for discriminating the perceptual object from its figure in that situation is that the physical object persists while its figure changes. For example, a sock can be twisted into all sorts of figures.

63.2 The current doctrine of different kinds of space—tactual space, visual space, and so on—arises entirely from the error of deducing space from the relations between figures. With such a procedure, since there are different types of figures for different types of sense, evidently there must be different types of space for different types of sense. And the demand created the supply.

63.3 If however the modern assimilation of space and time is to hold, we must then go further and admit different kinds of time for different kinds of sense, namely a tactual time, a visual time, and so on. If this be allowed, it is difficult to understand how the disjecta membra of our perceptual experience manage to collect themselves into a common world.

For example, it would require a pre-established harmony to secure that the visual newspaper was delivered at the visual time of the visual breakfast in the visual room and also the tactual newspaper was delivered at the tactual time of the tactual breakfast in the tactual room. It is difficult enough for the plain man—such as the present author—to accept the miracle of getting the two newspapers into the two rooms daily with such admirable exactitude at the same time. But the additional miracle introduced by the two times is really incredible.

The procedure of this enquiry admits the different types of figures, but rejects the different types of space.

[CHAPTER XVIII]
RHYTHMS

[64. Rhythms]. 64.1 The theory of percipient objects is beyond the scope of this work of which the aim is to illustrate the principles of natural knowledge by an examination of the data and experiential laws fundamental for physical science. A percipient object is in some sense beyond nature.

But nature includes life; and the way of conceiving nature developed in the preceding chapter has its bearing on biological conceptions as to the sense in which life can be said to be thus included.

64.2 An object is a characteristic of an event. Such an object may be in fact a multiple relation between objects situated in various parts of the whole event. In this case the quality of the whole is the relationship between its parts, and the relation between the parts is the quality of the whole. The whole event being what it is, its parts have thereby certain defined relations; and the parts having all the relations which they do have, it follows that the whole event is what it is. The whole is explained by a full knowledge of the parts as situations of objects, and the parts by a full knowledge of the whole. Such an object is a pattern.