Science and the modern world

by Alfred North Whitehead

The consideration of the general flux of events leads to this analysis into an underlying eternal energy in whose nature there stands an envisagement of the realm of all eternal objects. Such an envisagement is the ground of the individualised thoughts which emerge as thought-aspects grasped within the life-history of the subtler and more complex enduring patterns. Also in the nature of the eternal activity there must stand an envisagement of all values to be obtained by a real togetherness of eternal objects, as envisaged in ideal situations. Such ideal situations, apart from any reality, are devoid of intrinsic value, but are valuable as elements in purpose. The individualised prehension into individual events of aspects of these ideal situations takes the form of individualised thoughts, and as such has intrinsic value. Thus value arises because there is now a real togetherness of the ideal aspects, as in thought, with the actual aspects, as in process of occurrence. Accordingly no value is to be ascribed to the underlying activity as divorced from the matter-of-fact events of the real world.

Finally, to sum up this train of thought, the underlying activity, as conceived apart from the fact of realisation, has three types of envisagement. These are: first, the envisagement of eternal objects; secondly, the envisagement of possibilities of value in respect to the synthesis of eternal objects; and lastly, the envisagement of the actual matter of fact which must enter into the total situation which is achievable by the addition of the future. But in abstraction from actuality, the eternal activity is divorced from value. For the actuality is the value. The individual perception arising from enduring objects will vary in its individual depth and width according to the way in which the pattern dominates its own route. It may represent the faintest ripple differentiating the general substrate energy; or, in the other extreme, it may rise to conscious thought, which includes poising before self-conscious judgment the abstract possibilities of value inherent in various situations of ideal togetherness. The intermediate cases will group round the individual perception as envisaging (without self-consciousness) that one immediate possibility of attainment which represents the closest analogy to its own immediate past, having regard to the actual aspects which are there for prehension. The laws of physics represent the harmonised adjustment of development which results from this unique principle of determination. Thus dynamics is dominated by a principle of least action, whose detailed character has to be learnt from observation.

The atomic material entities which are considered in physical science are merely these individual enduring entities, conceived in abstraction from everything except what concerns their mutual interplay in determining each other’s historical routes of life-history. Such entities are partially formed by the inheritance of aspects from their own past. But they are also partially formed by the aspects of other events forming their environments. The laws of physics are the laws declaring how the entities mutually react among themselves. For physics these laws are arbitrary, because that science has abstracted from what the entities are in themselves. We have seen that this fact of what the entities are in themselves is liable to modification by their environments. Accordingly, the assumption that no modification of these laws is to be looked for in environments, which have any striking difference from the environments for which the laws have been observed to hold, is very unsafe. The physical entities may be modified in very essential ways, so far as these laws are concerned. It is even possible that they may be developed into individualities of more fundamental types, with wider embodiment of envisagement. Such envisagement might reach to the attainment of the poising of alternative values with exercise of choice lying outside the physical laws, and expressible only in terms of purpose. Apart from such remote possibilities, it remains an immediate deduction that an individual entity, whose own life-history is a part within the life-history of some larger, deeper, more complete pattern, is liable to have aspects of that larger pattern dominating its own being, and to experience modifications of that larger pattern reflected in itself as modifications of its own being. This is the theory of organic mechanism.

According to this theory the evolution of laws of nature is concurrent with the evolution of enduring pattern. For the general state of the universe, as it now is, partly determines the very essences of the entities whose modes of functioning these laws express. The general principle is that in a new environment there is an evolution of the old entities into new forms.

This rapid outline of a thoroughgoing organic theory of nature enables us to understand the chief requisites of the doctrine of evolution. The main work, proceeding during this pause at the end of the nineteenth century, was the absorption of this doctrine as guiding the methodology of all branches of science. By a blindness which is almost judicial as being a penalty affixed to hasty, superficial thinking, many religious thinkers opposed the new doctrine; although, in truth, a thoroughgoing evolutionary philosophy is inconsistent with materialism. The aboriginal stuff, or material, from which a materialistic philosophy starts is incapable of evolution. This material is in itself the ultimate substance. Evolution, on the materialistic theory, is reduced to the rôle of being another word for the description of the changes of the external relations between portions of matter. There is nothing to evolve, because one set of external relations is as good as any other set of external relations. There can merely be change, purposeless and unprogressive. But the whole point of the modern doctrine is the evolution of the complex organisms from antecedent states of less complex organisms. The doctrine thus cries aloud for a conception of organism as fundamental for nature. It also requires an underlying activity—a substantial activity—expressing itself in individual embodiments, and evolving in achievements of organism. The organism is a unit of emergent value, a real fusion of the characters of eternal objects, emerging for its own sake.

Thus in the process of analysing the character of nature in itself, we find that the emergence of organisms depends on a selective activity which is akin to purpose. The point is that the enduring organisms are now the outcome of evolution; and that, beyond these organisms, there is nothing else that endures. On the materialistic theory, there is material—such as matter or electricity—which endures. On the organic theory, the only endurances are structures of activity, and the structures are evolved.

Enduring things are thus the outcome of a temporal process; whereas eternal things are the elements required for the very being of the process. We can give a precise definition of endurance in this way: Let an event A be pervaded by an enduring structural pattern. Then A can be exhaustively subdivided into a temporal succession of events. Let B be any part of A, which is obtained by picking out any one of the events belonging to a series which thus subdivides A. Then the enduring pattern is a pattern of aspects within the complete pattern prehended into the unity of A, and it is also a pattern within the complete pattern prehended into the unity of any temporal slice of A, such as B. For example, a molecule is a pattern exhibited in an event of one minute, and of any second of that minute. It is obvious that such an enduring pattern may be of more, or of less, importance. It may express some slight fact connecting the underlying activities thus individualised; or it may express some very close connection. If the pattern which endures is merely derived from the direct aspects of the external environment, mirrored in the standpoints of the various parts, then the endurance is an extrinsic fact of slight importance. But if the enduring pattern is wholly derived from the direct aspects of the various temporal sections of the event in question, then the endurance is an important intrinsic fact. It expresses a certain unity of character uniting the underlying individualised activities. There is then an enduring object with a certain unity for itself and for the rest of nature. Let us use the term physical endurance to express endurance of this type. Then physical endurance is the process of continuously inheriting a certain identity of character transmitted throughout a historical route of events. This character belongs to the whole route, and to every event of the route. This is the exact property of material. If it has existed for ten minutes, it has existed during every minute of the ten minutes, and during every second of every minute. Only if you take material to be fundamental, this property of endurance is an arbitrary fact at the base of the order of nature; but if you take organism to be fundamental, this property is the result of evolution.

It looks at first sight, as if a physical object, with its process of inheritance from itself, were independent of the environment. But such a conclusion is not justified. For let B and C be two successive slices in the life of such an object, such that C succeeds B. Then the enduring pattern in C is inherited from B, and from other analogous antecedent parts of its life. It is transmitted through B to C. But what is transmitted to C is the complete pattern of aspects derived from such events as B. These complete patterns include the influence of the environment on B, and on the other antecedent parts of the life of the object. Thus the complete aspects of the antecedent life are inherited as the partial pattern which endures throughout all the various periods of the life. Thus a favourable environment is essential to the maintenance of a physical object.

Nature, as we know it, comprises enormous permanences. There are the permanences of ordinary matter. The molecules within the oldest rocks known to geologists may have existed unchanged for over a thousand million years, not only unchanged in themselves, but unchanged in their relative dispositions to each other. In that length of time the number of pulsations of a molecule vibrating with the frequency of yellow sodium light would be about 16.3 × 10²² = 163,000 × (10⁶)³. Until recently, an atom was apparently indestructible. We know better now. But the indestructible atom has been succeeded by the apparently indestructible electron and the indestructible proton.

Another fact to be explained is the great similarity of these practically indestructible objects. All electrons are very similar to each other. We need not outrun the evidence, and say that they are identical; but our powers of observation cannot detect any differences. Analogously, all hydrogen nuclei are alike. Also we note the great numbers of these analogous objects. There are throngs of them. It seems as though a certain similarity were a favourable condition for endurance. Common sense also suggests this conclusion. If organisms are to survive, they must work together.