Abstract
Whitehead is faced with the problem how, if according to the physicist the physical world consists of atomic activities, we nevertheless perceive it as made up of such common sense objects as trees, houses, tables, etc., which have a continuity about them. He notes, for example, the difference between the paving stone as perceived visually and its physical molecular activities. Pragmatically, he tells us, a paving stone is a hard, solid, static, irremovable fact. But this, he goes on, is a very superficial account if physical science is correct. Our sense-experience would then seem to omit any discrimination of the fundamental activities within physical nature.1
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Notes
Nature and Life, pp. 64–5.
AI, p. 273. On the Category of Transmutation see PR, pp. 355–60.
AI, p. 275. Owing to the generality of the Category of Transmutation it does not specify the actual process of simplification. In sense-perception Whitehead’s account seems to be a paraphrase of the physiological findings. When describing the way the physical atomic activities are, as it were, “averaged out” into the continuous macroscopic objects of the physical world, Whitehead does lean heavily on contemporary physical theory.
AI, pp. 314–15.
PR, p. 446.
PR, p. 462.
AI, p. 315.
Symbolism its Meaning and Effect, p. 5.
PR, p. 243.
Bertrand Russell, Analysis of Matter, p. 400.
PNK, cf. pp. 84–85.
Symbolism its Meaning and Effect, p. 65.
Ibid., p. 65.
PR, Part IV, Chap. IV, “Strains,” pp. 439–456.
SMW, p.88.
SMW, pp. 111–112.
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© 1977 Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands
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Mays, W. (1977). Perception and Bodily Dependency. In: Whitehead’s Philosophy of Science and Metaphysics. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-1085-6_10
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