Alfred Whitehead: Modes of Thought

Understanding: Chapter 3

Para 75-76

Now process is the way by which the universe escapes from the exclusions of inconsistency.
Such exclusions belong to the finitude of circumstance. By means of process, the universe escapes from the limitations of the finite. Process is the immanence of the infinite in the finite; whereby all bounds are burst, and all inconsistencies dissolved.

No specific finitude is an ultimate shackle upon the universe. In process the finite possibilities of the universe travel towards their infinitude of realization.

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In the nature of things there are no ultimate exclusions, expressive in logical terms. For if we extend the stretch of our attention throughout the passage of time, two entities which are inconsistent for occurrence on this planet during a certain day in the long past and are inconsistent during another day in more recent past—these two entities may be consistent when we embrace the whole period involved, one entity occurring during the earlier day, and the other during the later day. Thus inconsistency is relative to the abstraction involved.


The sense of advance, of penetration, is essential to sustain interest. Also there are two types of advance. One is the advance in the use of assigned patterns for the co�rdination of an increased variety of detail.

But the assignment of the type of pattern restricts the choice of details. In this way the infinitude of the universe is dismissed as irrelevant. The advance which has started with the freshness of sunrise degenerates into a dull accumula-

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( 80) -tion of minor feats of co�rdination. The history of thought and the history of art illustrate this doctrine. We cannot prescribe the pattern of progress.

It is true that advance is partly the gathering of details into assigned patterns. This is the safe advance of dogmatic spirits, fearful of folly. But history discloses another type of progress, namelythe introduction of novelty of pattern into conceptual experience. In this way, details hitherto undiscriminated or dismissed as casual' irrelevances are lifted into co�rdinated experience. There is a new vision of the great Beyond.

7. Thus understanding has two modes of advance, the gathering of detail within assigned pattern, and the discovery of novel pattern with its emphasis on novel detail. The intelligence of mankind has been halted by dogmatism as to patterns of connexion. Religious thought, aesthetic thought, the understanding of social structures, the scientific analysis of observation, have alike been dwarfed by this fatal virus.

84 .There is one whole, arising from the interplay of many details. The importance arises from the vivid grasp of the interdependence of the one and the many.


Perspective:



The emphasis upon the higher sense-percepta, such as sights and sounds, has damaged the philosophic development of the preceding two centuries. The question, What do we know?, has been transformed into the question, What can we know? This latter question has been dogmatically solved by the presupposition that all knowledge starts from the consciousness of spatio-temporal patterns of such sense-percepta.

6. The study of human knowledge should start with a survey of the vague variety, discernible in the transitions of human experience. It cannot safely base itself upon simple arbitrary assumptions, such as this assumption of spatiotemporal patterns of sensa as the source of all knowledge. There is something very special about such spatio-temporal patterns, and also about arithmetic patterns. Speaking from my own frame of mind, I revolt against this concentration upon the multiplication table and the regular solids: in other words, against the notion that topology, based upon numerical relations, contains in itself the one fundamental key to the understanding of the nature of things. Surely we should start from principles which are larger, more penetrating. Arithmetic and Topology are specialties.



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( 115) finite existence refuses to be deprived of that infinitude of extension which is its perspective.

Again we require to understand how mere matter-of-fact refuses to be deprived of its relevance to potentialities beyond its own actuality of realization. The very character of concrete realization—that is to say, of historic fact—is suffused with the potentialities which it excludes with varying types of relevance. In the present fact there are the various characteristics of the past, partly reproduced and partly excluded; there are the characteristics of concurrent facts in the present, partly shared in and partly excluded; there are the possibilities for the future, partly prepared for and partly excluded. The discussion of present fact apart from reference to past, to concurrent present, and to future, and from reference to the preservation or destruction of forms of creation is to rob the universe of essential importance. In the absence of perspective there is triviality.



Forms of Process

We must first examine the notion of Process. The comprehension of this notion requires an analysis of the interweaving of data, form, transition, and issue. There is a rhythm of process whereby creation produces natural pulsation, each pulsation forming a natural unit of historic fact. In this way, amid the infinitude of the connected universe, we can discern vaguely finite units of fact. If process be fundamental to actuality, then each ultimate individual fact must be describable as process.


Every detail in the process of being actual involves its own gradation in reference to the other details. The effectiveness of any one such factor involves the elimination of elements in the data not to be reconciled with that detail playing that part in the process. Now elimination is a positive fact, so that the background of discarded data adds a tone of feeling to the whole pulsation. No fact of history, personal or social; is understood until we know what it has escaped and the narrowness of the escape.


We have here the basis of the large scale preservation of identities, amid minor changes. The planets, the stones, the living things all witness to the wide preservation of identity. But equally they witness to the partiality of such preservation. Nothing in realized matter-of-fact retains complete identity with its antecedent self. This self-identity in the sphere of realized fact is only partial. It holds for certain purposes. It dominates certain kinds of process. But in other sorts of process, the differences are important, and the self-identity is an interesting fable. For the purpose of inheriting real estate, the identity of the man of thirty years of age with the former baby of ten months is dominant. For the purpose of navigating a yacht, the differences between the man and the child are essential; the identity then sinks into a metaphysical irrevelancy.