Science and the modern world

by Alfred North Whitehead

Recurring to the empty events, we note the deficiency in them of individuality of intrinsic content. Considering the first rôle of an empty event, as being a habitat of energy, we note that there is no individual discrimination of an individual bit of energy, either as statically located, or as an element in the stream. There is simply a quantitative determination of activity, without individualisation of the activity in itself. This lack of individualisation is still more evident in the second and third rôles. An empty event is something in itself, but it fails to realise a stable individuality of content. So far as its content is concerned, the empty event is one realised element in a general scheme of organised activity.

Some qualification is required when the empty event is the scene of the transmission of a definite train of recurrent wave-forms. There is now a definite pattern which remains permanent in the event. We find here the first faint trace of enduring individuality. But it is individuality without the faintest capture of originality: for it is merely a permanence arising solely from the implication of the event in a larger scheme of patterning.

Turning now to the examination of an occupied event, the electron has a determinate individuality. It can be traced throughout its life-history through a variety of events. A collection of electrons, together with the analogous atomic charges of positive electricity, forms a body such as we ordinarily perceive. The simplest body of this kind is a molecule, and a set of molecules forms a lump of ordinary matter, such as a chair, or a stone. Thus a charge of electricity is the mark of individuality of content, as additional to the individuality of an event in itself. This individuality of content is the strong point of the materialistic doctrine.

It can, however, be equally well explained on the theory of organism. When we look into the function of the electric charge, we note that its rôle is to mark the origination of a pattern which is transmitted through space and time. It is the key of some particular pattern. For example, the field of force in any event is to be constructed by attention to the adventures of electrons and protons, and so also are the streams and distributions of energy. Further, the electric waves find their origin in the vibratory adventures of these charges. Thus the transmitted pattern is to be conceived as the flux of aspects throughout space and time derived from the life history of the atomic charge. The individualisation of the charge arises by a conjunction of two characters, in the first place by the continued identity of its mode of functioning as a key for the determination of a diffusion of pattern; and, in the second place, by the unity and continuity of its life history.

We may conclude, therefore, that the organic theory represents directly what physics actually does assume respecting its ultimate entities. We also notice the complete futility of these entities, if they are conceived as fully concrete individuals. So far as physics is concerned, they are wholly occupied in moving each other about, and they have no reality outside this function. In particular for physics, there is no intrinsic reality.

It is obvious that the basing of philosophy upon the presupposition of organism must be traced back to Leibniz.[^[15]] His monads are for him the ultimately real entities. But he retained the Cartesian substances with their qualifying passions, as also equally expressing for him the final characterisation of real things. Accordingly for him there was no concrete reality of internal relations. He had therefore on his hands two distinct points of view. One was that the final real entity is an organising activity, fusing ingredients into a unity, so that this unity is the reality. The other point of view is that the final real entities are substances supporting qualities. The first point of view depends upon the acceptance of internal relations binding together all reality. The latter is inconsistent with the reality of such relations. To combine these two points of view, his monads were therefore windowless; and their passions merely mirrored the universe by the divine arrangement of a preëstablished harmony. This system thus presupposed an aggregate of independent entities. He did not discriminate the event, as the unit of experience, from the enduring organism as its stabilisation into importance, and from the cognitive organism as expressing an increased completeness of individualisation. Nor did he admit the many-termed relations, relating sense-data to various events in diverse ways. These many-termed relations are in fact the perspectives which Leibniz does admit, but only on the condition that they are purely qualities of the organising monads. The difficulty really arises from the unquestioned acceptance of the notion of simple location as fundamental for space and time, and from the acceptance of the notion of independent individual substance as fundamental for a real entity. The only road open to Leibniz was thus the same as that later taken by Berkeley [in a prevalent interpretation of his meaning], namely an appeal to a Deux ex machinâ who was capable of rising superior to the difficulties of metaphysics.

[15]. Cf. Bertrand Russell, The Philosophy of Leibniz, for the suggestion of this line of thought.

In the same way as Descartes introduced the tradition of thought which kept subsequent philosophy in some measure of contact with the scientific movement, so Leibniz introduced the alternative tradition that the entities, which are the ultimate actual things, are in some sense procedures of organisation. This tradition has been the foundation of the great achievements of German philosophy. Kant reflected the two traditions, one upon the other. Kant was a scientist, but the schools derivative from Kant have had but slight effect on the mentality of the scientific world. It should be the task of the philosophical schools of this century to bring together the two streams into an expression of the world-picture derived from science, and thereby end the divorce of science from the affirmations of our aesthetic and ethical experiences.

CHAPTER X
ABSTRACTION

In the previous chapters I have been examining the reactions of the scientific movement upon the deeper issues which have occupied modern thinkers. No one man, no limited society of men, and no one epoch can think of everything at once. Accordingly for the sake of eliciting the various impacts of science upon thought, the topic has been treated historically. In this retrospect I have kept in mind that the ultimate issue of the whole story is the patent dissolution of the comfortable scheme of scientific materialism which has dominated the three centuries under review. Accordingly various schools of criticism of the dominant opinions have been stressed; and I have endeavoured to outline an alternative cosmological doctrine, which shall be wide enough to include what is fundamental both for science and for its critics. In this alternative scheme, the notion of material, as fundamental, has been replaced by that of organic synthesis. But the approach has always been from the consideration of the actual intricacies of scientific thought, and of the peculiar perplexities which it suggests.