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.Our 'percipient event' is that event included in our observational present whichwe distinguish as being in some peculiar way our standpoint for perception.It isroughly speaking that event which is our bodily life(188) within the present duration.The theory of perception as evolved by medicalpsychology is based on significance.The distant situation of a perceived objectis merely known to us as signified by our bodily state, i.e.by our percipientevent.In fact perception requires sense-awareness of the significations of ourpercipient event together with sense-awareness of a peculiar relation (situation)between certain objects and the events thus signified.Our percipient event issaved by being the whole of nature by this fact of its significations.This isthe meaning of calling the percipient event our standpoint for perception.Thecourse of a ray of light is only derivatively connected with perception.What wedo perceive are objects as related to events signified by the bodily statesexcited by the ray.These signified events (as is the case of images seen behinda mirror) may have very little to do with the actual course of the ray.In thePage 73Easy PDF Creator is professional software to create PDF.If you wish to remove this line, buy it now. Alfred North Whitehead - The Concept Of Nature.txtcourse of evolution those animals have survived whose sense-awareness isconcentrated on those significations of their bodily states which are on theaverage important for their welfare.The whole world of events is signified, butthere are some which exact the death penalty for inattention.The percipient event is always here and now in the associated present duration.It has, what may be called, an absolute position in that duration.Thus onedefinite duration is associated with a definite percipient event, and we are thusaware of a peculiar relation which finite events can bear to durations.I callthis relation 'cogredience.' The notion of rest is derivative from that ofcogredience, and the notion of motion is derivative from that of inclusion withina duration without cogredience with it.In fact motion is a relation (of varying(189) character) between an observed event and an observed duration, andcogredience is the most simple character or subspecies of motion.To sum up, aduration and a percipient event are essentially involved in the general characterof each observation of nature, and the percipient event is cogredient with theduration.Our knowledge of the peculiar characters of different events depends upon ourpower of comparison.I call the exercise of this factor in our knowledge'recognition,' and the requisite sense-awareness of the comparable characters Icall 'sense-recognition.' Recognition and abstraction essentially involve eachother.Each of them exhibits an entity for knowledge which is less than theconcrete fact, but is a real factor in that fact.The most concrete fact capableof separate discrimination is the event.We cannot abstract without recognition,and we cannot recognise without abstraction.Perception involves apprehension ofthe event and recognition of the factors of its character.The things recognised are what 1 call 'objects.' in this general sense of theterm the relation of extension is itself an object.In practice however 1restrict the term to those objects which can in some sense or other be said tohave a situation in an event; namely, in the phrase 'There it is again' Irestrict the 'there' to be the indication of a special event which is thesituation of the object.Even so, there are different types of objects, andstatements which are true of objects of one type are not in general true ofobjects of other types.The objects with which we are here concerned in theformulation of physical laws are material objects, such as bits of matter,molecules and electrons.An object of one of these types has relations to eventsother than those(190) belonging to the stream of its situations.The fact of its situationswithin this stream has impressed on all other events certain modifications oftheir characters.In truth the object in its completeness may be conceived as aspecific set of correlated modifications of the characters of all events, withthe property that these modifications attain to a certain focal property forthose events which belong to the stream of its situations.The total assemblageof the modifications of the characters of events due to the existence of anobject in a stream of situations is what I call the 'physical field' due to theobject.But the object cannot really be separated from its field.The object isin fact nothing else than the systematically adjusted set of modifications of thefield.The conventional limitation of the object to the focal stream of events inwhich it is said to be 'situated' is convenient for some purposes, but itobscures the ultimate fact of nature.From this point of view the antithesisbetween action at a distance and action by transmission is meaningless.Thedoctrine of this paragraph is nothing else than another way of expressing theunresolvable multiple relation of an object to events.A complete time-system is formed by any one family of parallel durations.Twodurations are parallel if either (i) one includes the other, or (ii) they overlapso as to include a third duration common to both, or (iii) are entirely separate.The excluded case is that of two durations overlapping so as to include in commonan aggregate of finite events but including in common no other complete duration.The recognition of the fact of an indefinite number of families of paralleldurations is what differentiates the concept of nature here put forward from theolder orthodox concept ofPage 74Easy PDF Creator is professional software to create PDF.If you wish to remove this line, buy it now. Alfred North Whitehead - The Concept Of Nature.txt(191) the essentially unique time-systems.Its divergence from Einstein's conceptof nature will be briefly indicated later
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