The third requisite, namely that of adequacy, is the one over which all the difficulty occurs. The ultimate data of science are commonly assumed to be time, space, material, qualities of material, and relations between material objects. But data as they occur in the scientific laws do not relate all the entities which present themselves in our perception of nature. For example, the wave-theory of light is an excellent well-established theory; but unfortunately it leaves out colour as perceived. Thus the perceived redness—or, other colour—has to be cut out of nature and made into the reaction of the mind under the impulse of the actual events of nature. In other words this concept of the fundamental relations within nature is inadequate. Thus we have to bend our energies to the enunciation of adequate concepts.
But in so doing, are we not in fact endeavouring to solve a metaphysical problem? I do not think so. We are merely endeavouring to exhibit the type of relations which hold between the entities which we in fact perceive as in nature. We are not called on to make any pronouncement as to the psychological relation of subjects to objects or as to the status of either in the realm of reality. It is true that the issue of our endeavour may provide material which is relevant evidence for a discussion on that question. It can hardly fail to do so. But it is only evidence, and is not itself the metaphysical discussion. In order to make clear the character of this further discussion which is out of our ken, I will set before you two quotations. One is from Schelling and I extract the quotation from the work of the Russian philosopher Lossky which has recently been so excellently translated into English[4]—‘In the “Philosophy of Nature” I considered the subject-object called nature in its activity of self-constructing. In order to understand it, we must rise to an intellectual intuition of nature. The empiricist does not rise thereto, and for this reason in all his explanations it is always he himself that proves to be constructing nature. It is no wonder, then, that his construction and that which was to be constructed so seldom coincide. A Natur-philosoph raises nature to independence, and makes it construct itself, and he never feels, therefore, the necessity of opposing nature as constructed (i.e. as experience) to real nature, or of correcting the one by means of the other.’
[4] The Intuitive Basis of Knowledge, by N. O. Lossky, transl. by Mrs Duddington, Macmillan and Co., 1919.
The other quotation is from a paper read by the Dean of St Paul’s before the Aristotelian Society in May of 1919. Dr Inge’s paper is entitled ‘Platonism and Human Immortality,’ and in it there occurs the following statement: ‘To sum up. The Platonic doctrine of immortality rests on the independence of the spiritual world. The spiritual world is not a world of unrealised ideals, over against a real world of unspiritual fact. It is, on the contrary, the real world, of which we have a true though very incomplete knowledge, over against a world of common experience which, as a complete whole, is not real, since it is compacted out of miscellaneous data, not all on the same level, by the help of the imagination. There is no world corresponding to the world of our common experience. Nature makes abstractions for us, deciding what range of vibrations we are to see and hear, what things we are to notice and remember.’
I have cited these statements because both of them deal with topics which, though they lie outside the range of our discussion, are always being confused with it. The reason is that they lie proximate to our field of thought, and are topics which are of burning interest to the metaphysically minded. It is difficult for a philosopher to realise that anyone really is confining his discussion within the limits that I have set before you. The boundary is set up just where he is beginning to get excited. But I submit to you that among the necessary prolegomena for philosophy and for natural science is a thorough understanding of the types of entities, and types of relations among those entities, which are disclosed to us in our perceptions of nature.
CHAPTER III
TIME
The two previous lectures of this course have been mainly critical. In the present lecture I propose to enter upon a survey of the kinds of entities which are posited for knowledge in sense-awareness. My purpose is to investigate the sorts of relations which these entities of various kinds can bear to each other. A classification of natural entities is the beginning of natural philosophy. To-day we commence with the consideration of Time.
In the first place there is posited for us a general fact: namely, something is going on; there is an occurrence for definition.
This general fact at once yields for our apprehension two factors, which I will name, the ‘discerned’ and the ‘discernible.’ The discerned is comprised of those elements of the general fact which are discriminated with their own individual peculiarities. It is the field directly perceived. But the entities of this field have relations to other entities which are not particularly discriminated in this individual way. These other entities are known merely as the relata in relation to the entities of the discerned field. Such an entity is merely a ‘something’ which has such-and-such definite relations to some definite entity or entities in the discerned field. As being thus related, they are—owing to the particular character of these relations—known as elements of the general fact which is going on. But we are not aware of them except as entities fulfilling the functions of relata in these relations.