Science and the modern world

by Alfred North Whitehead

Thus an actual occasion is a prehension of one infinite hierarchy (its associated hierarchy) together with various finite hierarchies. The synthesis into the occasion of the infinite hierarchy is according to its specific mode of realisation, and that of the finite hierarchies is according to various other specific modes of realisation. There is one metaphysical principle which is essential for the rational coherence of this account of the general character of an experient occasion. I call this principle, ‘The Translucency of Realisation.’ By this I mean that any eternal object is just itself in whatever mode of realisation it is involved. There can be no distortion of the individual essence without thereby producing a different eternal object. In the essence of each eternal object there stands an indeterminateness which expresses its indifferent patience for any mode of ingression into any actual occasion. Thus in cognitive experience, there can be the cognition of the same eternal object as in the same occasion having ingression with implication in more than one grade of realisation. Thus the translucency of realisation, and the possible multiplicity of modes of ingression into the same occasion, together form the foundation for the correspondence theory of truth.

In this account of an actual occasion in terms of its connection with the realm of eternal objects, we have gone back to the train of thought in our second chapter, where the nature of mathematics was discussed. The idea, ascribed to Pythagoras, has been amplified, and put forward as the first chapter in metaphysics. The next chapter is concerned with the puzzling fact that there is an actual course of events which is in itself a limited fact, in that metaphysically speaking it might have been otherwise. But other metaphysical investigations are omitted; for example, epistemology, and the classification of some elements in the unfathomable wealth of the field of possibility. This last topic brings metaphysics in sight of the special topics of the various sciences.

CHAPTER XI
GOD

Aristotle found it necessary to complete his metaphysics by the introduction of a Prime Mover—God. This, for two reasons, is an important fact in the history of metaphysics. In the first place if we are to accord to anyone the position of the greatest metaphysician, having regard to genius of insight, to general equipment in knowledge, and to the stimulus of his metaphysical ancestry, we must choose Aristotle. Secondly, in his consideration of this metaphysical question he was entirely dispassionate; and he is the last European metaphysician of first rate importance for whom this claim can be made. After Aristotle, ethical and religious interests began to influence metaphysical conclusions. The Jews dispersed, first willingly and then forcibly, and the Judaic-Alexandrian school arose. Then Christianity closely followed by Mahometanism, intervened. The Greek gods who surrounded Aristotle were subordinate metaphysical entities, well within nature. Accordingly on the subject of his Prime Mover, he would have no motive, except to follow his metaphysical train of thought whithersoever it led him. It did not lead him very far towards the production of a God available for religious purposes. It may be doubted whether any properly general metaphysics can ever, without the illicit introduction of other considerations, get much further than Aristotle. But his conclusion does represent a first step without which no evidence on a narrower experiential basis can be of much avail in shaping the conception. For nothing, within any limited type of experience, can give intelligence to shape our ideas of any entity at the base of all actual things, unless the general character of things requires that there be such an entity.

The phrase, Prime Mover, warns us that Aristotle’s thought was enmeshed in the details of an erroneous physics and an erroneous cosmology. In Aristotle’s physics special causes were required to sustain the motions of material things. These could easily be fitted into his system, provided that the general cosmic motions could be sustained. For then in relation to the general working system, each thing could be provided with its true end. Hence the necessity for a Prime Mover who sustains the motions of the spheres on which depend the adjustment of things. To-day we repudiate the Aristotelian physics and the Aristotelian cosmology, so that the exact form of the above argument manifestly fails. But if our general metaphysics is in any way similar to that outlined in the previous chapter, an analogous metaphysical problem arises which can be solved only in an analogous fashion. In the place of Aristotle’s God as Prime Mover, we require God as the Principle of Concretion. This position can be substantiated only by the discussion of the general implication of the course of actual occasions,—that is to say, of the process of realisation.

We conceive actuality as in essential relation to an unfathomable possibility. Eternal objects inform actual occasions with hierarchic patterns, included and excluded in every variety of discrimination. Another view of the same truth is that every actual occasion is a limitation imposed on possibility, and that by virtue of this limitation the particular value of that shaped togetherness of things emerges. In this way we express how a single occasion is to be viewed in terms of possibility, and how possibility is to be viewed in terms of a single actual occasion. But there are no single occasions, in the sense of isolated occasions. Actuality is through and through togetherness—togetherness of otherwise isolated eternal objects, and togetherness of all actual occasions. It is my task in this chapter to describe the unity of actual occasions. The previous chapter centered its interest in the abstract: the present chapter deals with the concrete, i.e., that which has grown together.

Consider an occasion α:—we have to enumerate how other actual occasions are in α, in the sense that their relationships with α are constitutive of the essence of α. What α is in itself, is that it is a unit of realised experience; accordingly we ask how other occasions are in the experience which is α. Also for the present I am excluding cognitive experience. The complete answer to this question is, that the relationships among actual occasions are as unfathomable in their variety of type as are those among eternal objects in the realm of abstraction. But there are fundamental types of such relationships in terms of which the whole complex variety can find its description.

A preliminary for the understanding of these types of entry (of one occasion into the essence of another) is to note that they are involved in the modes of realisation of abstractive hierarchies, discussed in the previous chapter. The spatio-temporal relationships, involved in those hierarchies as realised in α, have all a definition in terms of α and of the occasions entrant in α. Thus the entrant occasions lend their aspects to the hierarchies, and thereby convert spatio-temporal modalities into categorical determinations; and the hierarchies lend their forms to the occasions and thereby limit the entrant occasions to being entrant only under those forms. Thus in the same way (as seen in the previous chapter) that every occasion is a synthesis of all eternal objects under the limitation of gradations of actuality, so every occasion is a synthesis of all occasions under the limitation of gradations of types of entry. Each occasion synthesises the totality of content under its own limitations of mode.

In respect to these types of internal relationship between α and other occasions, these other occasions (as constitutive of α) can be classified in many alternative ways. These are all concerned with different definitions of past, present, and future. It has been usual in philosophy to assume that these various definitions must necessarily be equivalent. The present state of opinion in physical science conclusively shows that this assumption is without metaphysical justification, even though[though] any such discrimination may be found to be unnecessary for physical science. This question has already been dealt with in the chapter on Relativity. But the physical theory of relativity touches only the fringe of the various theories which are metaphysically tenable. It is important for my argument to insist upon the unbounded freedom within which the actual is a unique categorical determination.

Every actual occasion exhibits itself as a process: it is a becomingness. In so disclosing itself, it places itself as one among a multiplicity of other occasions, without which it could not be itself. It also defines itself as a particular individual achievement, focussing in its limited way an unbounded realm of eternal objects.