The Concept of Nature / The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919

by Alfred North Whitehead

An object is an ingredient in the character of some event. In fact the character of an event is nothing but the objects which are ingredient in it and the ways in which those objects make their ingression into the event. Thus the theory of objects is the theory of the comparison of events. Events are only comparable because they body forth permanences. We are comparing objects in events whenever we can say, ‘There it is again.’ Objects are the elements in nature which can ‘be again.’

Sometimes permanences can be proved to exist which evade recognition in the sense in which I am using that term. The permanences which evade recognition appear to us as abstract properties either of events or of objects. All the same they are there for recognition although undiscriminated in our sense-awareness. The demarcation of events, the splitting of nature up into parts is effected by the objects which we recognise as their ingredients. The discrimination of nature is the recognition of objects amid passing events. It is a compound of the awareness of the passage of nature, of the consequent partition of nature, and of the definition of certain parts of nature by the modes of the ingression of objects into them.

You may have noticed that I am using the term ‘ingression’ to denote the general relation of objects to events. The ingression of an object into an event is the way the character of the event shapes itself in virtue of the being of the object. Namely the event is what it is, because the object is what it is; and when I am thinking of this modification of the event by the object, I call the relation between the two ‘the ingression of the object into the event.’ It is equally true to say that objects are what they are because events are what they are. Nature is such that there can be no events and no objects without the ingression of objects into events. Although there are events such that the ingredient objects evade our recognition. These are the events in empty space. Such events are only analysed for us by the intellectual probing of science.

Ingression is a relation which has various modes. There are obviously very various kinds of objects; and no one kind of object can have the same sort of relations to events as objects of another kind can have. We shall have to analyse out some of the different modes of ingression which different kinds of objects have into events.

But even if we stick to one and the same kind of objects, an object of that kind has different modes of ingression into different events. Science and philosophy have been apt to entangle themselves in a simple-minded theory that an object is at one place at any definite time, and is in no sense anywhere else. This is in fact the attitude of common sense thought, though it is not the attitude of language which is naïvely expressing the facts of experience. Every other sentence in a work of literature which is endeavouring truly to interpret the facts of experience expresses differences in surrounding events due to the presence of some object. An object is ingredient throughout its neighbourhood, and its neighbourhood is indefinite. Also the modification of events by ingression is susceptible of quantitative differences. Finally therefore we are driven to admit that each object is in some sense ingredient throughout nature; though its ingression may be quantitatively irrelevant in the expression of our individual experiences.

This admission is not new either in philosophy or science. It is obviously a necessary axiom for those philosophers who insist that reality is a system. In these lectures we are keeping off the profound and vexed question as to what we mean by ‘reality.’ I am maintaining the humbler thesis that nature is a system. But I suppose that in this case the less follows from the greater, and that I may claim the support of these philosophers. The same doctrine is essentially interwoven in all modern physical speculation. As long ago as 1847 Faraday in a paper in the Philosophical Magazine remarked that his theory of tubes of force implies that in a sense an electric charge is everywhere. The modification of the electromagnetic field at every point of space at each instant owing to the past history of each electron is another way of stating the same fact. We can however illustrate the doctrine by the more familiar facts of life without recourse to the abstruse speculations of theoretical physics.

The waves as they roll on to the Cornish coast tell of a gale in mid-Atlantic; and our dinner witnesses to the ingression of the cook into the dining room. It is evident that the ingression of objects into events includes the theory of causation. I prefer to neglect this aspect of ingression, because causation raises the memory of discussions based upon theories of nature which are alien to my own. Also I think that some new light may be thrown on the subject by viewing it in this fresh aspect.

The examples which I have given of the ingression of objects into events remind us that ingression takes a peculiar form in the case of some events; in a sense, it is a more concentrated form. For example, the electron has a certain position in space and a certain shape. Perhaps it is an extremely small sphere in a certain test-tube. The storm is a gale situated in mid-Atlantic with a certain latitude and longitude, and the cook is in the kitchen. I will call this special form of ingression the ‘relation of situation’; also, by a double use of the word ‘situation,’ I will call the event in which an object is situated ‘the situation of the object.’ Thus a situation is an event which is a relatum in the relation of situation. Now our first impression is that at last we have come to the simple plain fact of where the object really is; and that the vaguer relation which I call ingression should not be muddled up with the relation of situation, as if including it as a particular case. It seems so obvious that any object is in such and such a position, and that it is influencing other events in a totally different sense. Namely, in a sense an object is the character of the event which is its situation, but it only influences the character of other events. Accordingly the relations of situation and influencing are not generally the same sort of relation, and should not be subsumed under the same term ‘ingression.’ I believe that this notion is a mistake, and that it is impossible to draw a clear distinction between the two relations.

For example, Where was your toothache? You went to a dentist and pointed out the tooth to him. He pronounced it perfectly sound, and cured you by stopping another tooth. Which tooth was the situation of the toothache? Again, a man has an arm amputated, and experiences sensations in the hand which he has lost. The situation of the imaginary hand is in fact merely thin air. You look into a mirror and see a fire. The flames that you see are situated behind the mirror. Again at night you watch the sky; if some of the stars had vanished from existence hours ago, you would not be any the wiser. Even the situations of the planets differ from those which science would assign to them.

Anyhow you are tempted to exclaim, the cook is in the kitchen. If you mean her mind, I will not agree with you on the point; for I am only talking of nature. Let us think only of her bodily presence. What do you mean by this notion? We confine ourselves to typical manifestations of it. You can see her, touch her, and hear her. But the examples which I have given you show that the notions of the situations of what you see, what you touch, and what you hear are not so sharply separated out as to defy further questioning. You cannot cling to the idea that we have two sets of experiences of nature, one of primary qualities which belong to the objects perceived, and one of secondary qualities which are the products of our mental excitements. All we know of nature is in the same boat, to sink or swim together. The constructions of science are merely expositions of the characters of things perceived. Accordingly to affirm that the cook is a certain dance of molecules and electrons is merely to affirm that the things about her which are perceivable have certain characters. The situations of the perceived manifestations of her bodily presence have only a very general relation to the situations of the molecules, to be determined by discussion of the circumstances of perception.