Whitehead, Alfred North (1861–1947)

Bifurcations

The natural sciences are concerned only with nature, that is, with the object of perceptual knowledge, and not with the synthesis of the knower with the known. The sciences are not concerned with reasons of knowledge but rather with a coherent explanation of nature. This point of fact led to the bifurcation of reality. Whitehead delivers two similar formulations of such bifurcations, both of which he rejects categorically: (1) The distinction between events of nature and events as they are formulated in scientific theories, and (2) the distinction between events of nature as they exist by themselves and as they appear to us.

The first concept maintains a purely conceptual existence of physical entities, such as atoms and electrons. On the one hand, there were phenomena, and on the other hand, logical terms of scientific formulae. For Whitehead, scientific concepts are derived, by way of logical abstraction, from nature. He argues against the bifurcation of reality into the mathematical world and the apparent [Page 1430]world. Concepts, as far as they are true, refer directly to facts of reality.

The second formulation of bifurcation is a direct consequence of the first one. Historically, after separating the realm of apparent nature from the realm of its physical description, John Locke asked how both realms could be connected. Isaac Newton developed a kinetic theory of atoms but did not explain how unperceivable atoms in absolute space and time are connected with our spacetime experiences. Locke realized that moving particles can only set other particles into motion, and that they do not produce the quality of redness. Therefore, he thought that there are secondary qualities not in the things themselves but that are, rather, psychological additions of a mental substance. In addition to the first bifurcation between scientific object and sensory perception, a second bifurcation appears between sensory perception and reality itself. This results in the banishing of the observer from nature. Thus, the observer can have knowledge only of his sensory impressions but not of the objects that produced them. The knowledge of reality now requires a theory.

Perception

To avoid these bifurcations, one has to consider the origin of every possible source of knowledge. Whitehead regards this origin as being in everyone's daily experiences and these experiences are the direct starting point for the British empiricists: First, every experience has its origin in perceptions. Second, the primary ideas of perception join secondary ideas deduced by reflection in order to put the sense data into an order. In addition to these two starting points of the British empiricists, Whitehead integrates psychic impressions like emotions, beauty, love, and satisfaction, among others.

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