This failure to insist properly on 'process' is the reason for the paradoxical air attaching to the statement that 'objects are only derivatively in space and time by reason of their relations to events' [cf. [§ 15.2]]. Objects are of course essential for process, as appears clearly enough in the course of any analysis of process. But it is evident that particular times cannot result from the mere relations between objects which are at all times; and analogously for space. Accordingly space and time must result from something in process which transcends objects.
But natural objects require space and time, so that space and time belong to their relational essence without which they cannot be themselves.
In [§ 15.4] it is pointed out that it is viâ objects that the concept of possibility has application. This suggestion requires further elaboration which cannot be attempted here. Similarly in [§ 15.8], it is pointed out that continuity is derived from events, and atomicity from objects. This also requires development. It must suffice for the moment to suggest that a scientific object is an atomic structure imposed upon the continuity of events.
[Part II] should be read in connection with [Part IV] at the end of the book.
Note III. [Chapter VI] is made clearer by noting that the present duration [cf. [§ 16.2]] is primarily marked out by the significance of an interconnected display of sensa and of other associated objects immediately apparent. The duration is the realisation of a social entity in which the sense-objects and perceptual objects [cf. [§ 23.9]] are ingredient.
The antecedent physical objects [cf. [§ 24.5]] and scientific objects [cf. [§ 25]] which occasion the duration to be what it is are another story, and the persistent habit of muddling the two sets of entities in philosophy—following the lead of language—is the origin of much confusion. For example there are four distinct meanings according to which you can speak of a chair; you may mean (i) a collection of sense-data, or (ii) a perceptual object, or (iii) a physical object, or (iv) a collection of scientific objects, such as molecules or electrons.
It will be noted that I now make a distinction between perceptual objects and physical objects, contrary to [§ 24.5]. Thus a physical object is a social entity resulting from scientific objects, and halfway towards a perceptual object.
Physical objects and scientific objects are causal characters which are discussed in [Chapter XVI]. Also sense-objects and perceptual objects are the apparent characters discussed in that chapter. But the separation between the apparent and the causal must not be over stressed: it is relative to a deliberately limited point of view.
The whole of [§ 23] would be made clearer by the use of the term 'ingression' for the complex relation of a sense-object to the other factors of nature which make up a social entity in process of realisation. The over-simplification involved in the Aristotelian concept of 'quality-subject' has obscured the analysis of ingression.
Also [§ 24] is confused by a wavering between the 'class-theory' of perceptual objects and the 'control-theory' of physical objects, and by the confusion between perceptual and physical objects. I do not hold the class-theory now in any form, and was endeavouring in this book to get away from it. In [Chapter XVI] the 'causal character' is identical with the perceptual object so far as immediate perception is concerned, with the physical object so far as further discrimination of the significance of immediate appearance is concerned, and with scientific objects so far as more detailed analysis is concerned.