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"explains" the development of an organism by invoking a "vital force" or
"entelechy," he has not given us information about the l."Onditions for the
development of the organism. He has not given us knowledge, not because
entelecbies can not be observed, (neither can atoms nor electrons), but be–
cause he has asserted no determinate and controllable
relaJion.r
between the
presence of the alleged entelechy and the stages of the organic development.
Such a biologist has simply given a
name
to the fact of development, and he
has indulged in a performance which is dangerous in proportion to the
conviction it may produce that something has
been
proved. To my mind
Professor Whitehead's procedure is like that of such a biologist. In declaring
that nature is alive, that its various segments are characterized by feelings
and aims, has he not simply given a name to something he believes exists,
without stating what the determinate connections are between the occurrence
of such feelings and something else? Is there any reliable method with
whose help evidence can be obtained bearing upon the truth or falsity of
Professor Whitehead's system? Since he maintains that in philosophy insight
is
everything and that philosophy is either self-evident or it is not philosophy,
he may perhaps retort that if his critic is blind nothing will make him see
the obvious. But such a critic will at least be permitted to reply that to
accept Professor Whitehead's vision as something self-evident is a miracle
of faith to which he is unequal; and that in fact Professor Whitehead him–
self advances his system as a hypothesis, to be supported or rejected on
evidence in a manner comparable with that employed in the natural sciences.
But what is that evidence?
If
the occurrence of stresses is to be "explained"
by feelings and appetitions, one would expect that
difference.r
in stresses or
the non·occurrence of determinate stresses would be the consectuences of
determinate differences in these alleged feelings and appetitions.
If,
however,
feelings and appetitions are
perva.rive
traits of
all
things, if differences
between feelings and appetitions are either not analyzed or are imputed
solely
on the ground of the stresses they are invoked to explain, is not
their explanatory power aq illusion? Is the existence of stresses "explained"
or made "intelligible" by calling them forms of appetition or types of crea–
tive advances into the future? Can Professor Whitehead tell us "why in
the nature of things there should be any stresses at all"? Or is it not the
case that he has simply accepted the existence of such stresses and then
baptized them with a fancy and misleading name? .And is not the "enter–
tainment of the purely ideal" as
directive
of the creative advance into the
future on par with the biologist's entelechy-a mere
naming
of a fact and
not
a theoretical explanation of it?
Professor Whitehead claims in support of his metaphysics of process
the
conclusion of contemporary physics.
It
is doubtless presumptuous for
one who is not a physicist to try to tell Professor Whitehead what these
conclusions are. But is it really the case that modern physics proves that the
spatial universe is a field of force? Is not rather the import of the
gene~al
theory
of relativity that forces can be
eliminated
in the study
~f th~ behav~or
of matter? .And is it really the case that
matter
has been
1dentt~ed
w1th
energy and therefore with activity? Physicists will tell you, and the1r mono·
graphs and text·books will confirm their statements,,that it is the
m~JJ ~f
a body (not the matter of a body, whatever "matter may mean) wh1ch
IS
a function of its velocity with respect to a specified frame of reference ; and
