The concept of nature(Translation Series of Classics in Science and Humanities).Whitehead, Yang Fubin, Chen Weigong, ISBN: 978-7-100-23098-8, The Commercial Press, November 2023.
Introduction:
This book was a transcript of Whitehead's 1919 lecture at the Tana Lecture at Trinity College, Cambridge, and was intended to lay the foundations for a new philosophy of nature based on the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics. In this book, Whitehead critiques the dualism of traditional philosophy of entities, especially the erroneous view of nature in traditional philosophy, based on the philosophical concepts implicit in relativity and quantum mechanics. He used Einstein's tensor theory method and came to the same conclusion as Einstein. At the same time, he also raised some disagreements with Einstein, namely that he disagreed with Einstein's theory of inhomogeneous space and his assumptions about the fundamental characteristics of optical signals.
The book is divided into nine chapters, the first chapter is the relationship between nature and thought, the second chapter is a critique of the dichotomy theory of nature, the third chapter is the relativistic view of time, the fourth chapter is the theory of abstract law, the fifth chapter is the relationship between space and motion, the sixth and seventh chapters are concerned with congruence and objects, the eighth chapter is a summary of the previous chapters, and the last chapter, chapter 9, proposes several fundamental physical concepts.
About the Author:
Whitehead, a member of the Royal Academy of Sciences, is a famous mathematician, physicist and philosopher, whose main works include Process and Reality, Science and the Modern World, The Exploration of Ideas, The Way of Thinking, The Concept of Nature, Principles of Natural Knowledge, and Principles of Mathematics (co-authored with Russell). He has taught at Cambridge University, Harvard University and other schools, and has been a research fellow at Trinity College and a professor of philosophy at Harvard University for a long time.
About the translator:
Professor Yang Fubin, Ph.D. in the Department of Philosophy of Renmin University of Chinese, Senior Visiting Scholar at Clermont Graduate University in California, Foreign Researcher of the Sino-American Institute of Postmodern Development, Professor of Law and Philosophy, Discipline Leader and Graduate Tutor of the School of Law and Politics of Beijing Second University of Foreign Chinese, Vice President of the Human Development Research Association of the Chinese Society of Historical Materialism, Adjunct Professor of Harbin Institute of Technology, Hebei University of Technology and other universities. His main translations include The Philosophy of Physical Science (Eddington, The Commercial Press, 2014), Process and Reality (Whitehead, Chinese Renmin University Press, 2013), Philosophy of Social Sciences (Chinese University Press, 2011), Husserl (2002 edition), Leibniz (2002 edition), Social Science Perspective**, Foundations of Social Sciences, and Phenomenology of Inner Time Consciousness (The last three books are all published by Huaxia Publishing House) and so on.
Chen Weigong, male, Doctor of Philosophy. Work unit: Beijing Second University of Foreign Chinese. His research interests include foreign philosophy and legal philosophy. Representative achievements: monograph "Intuition or Presupposition", translation "Methods of Legal Reasoning", *Whitehead's Theory of Value, translation "Is Ricoeur a Process Philosopher?" etc.
The content of this book was originally taken from the inaugural course of the Tana Lecture Series, which was delivered at Trinity College in the fall of 1919. The Tana Chair is an informal position generously created by Mr. Edward Tarner. The role of each presenter in this position is to teach a course on "The Existent or Non-Existent Relationship between the Philosophy of Science and Different Branches of Knowledge". This book exemplifies the efforts of the first speaker in the series to accomplish his task. Each chapter of the book retains the original lecture form, with the exception of minor adjustments aimed at eliminating ambiguity in expression, and the rest of the book strives to remain as it is. The advantage of the lecture format is that it suggests to the audience a definite psychological context, which is precisely the purpose of the lecture, which is to influence the audience in a particular way. In order to present new ideas with broad implications, a single path of communication from the front to the conclusion is not enough to reach understanding. Your audience will parse everything you say to conform to their pre-existing views. For this reason, the first two chapters and the last two chapters are indispensable in terms of intelligibility, although they do little to add to the formal integrity of the discourse. Their role is to prevent readers from being misled, which can lead to misunderstandings. For the same reason, I avoid using current philosophical jargon. The fallacy of bifurcation pervades modern natural philosophy, discussed in Chapter 2 of this book. Correspondingly, all of these terms presuppose a misunderstanding of my thesis in some subtle way. Perhaps, it can also be said explicitly, if the reader indulges in the sloppy conventions of dichotomy, then any word I write here will be incomprehensible.
The last two chapters of the book do not belong entirely to this lesson. Chapter VIII was a lecture given to the Chemistry Interest Group of the students of Imperial College London in the spring of 1920. I have attached it here to summarize and present the main thrust of the book, so that the reader can have a clear idea.
The book "The Concept of Nature" is a companion book to my previous book, "A Study of the Principles of Natural Knowledge". These two works can be read separately, but they complement each other. Some of the ideas presented in this book have been omitted in the previous book; Some go beyond the same scope by another interpretation. On the one hand, I tried my best to avoid using mathematical notations and assumed the results of those mathematical deductions. Some of these notes have been improved, while others have been refactored. On the other hand, I have omitted some of the main points from the previous writings, because I do not have anything new to say about them. On the whole, while the previous work was largely based on ideas derived directly from mathematical physics, this book eschews mathematics and is closer to certain areas of philosophy and physics. In discussing some of the details of space and time, the content of the two works overlaps and repeats.
I didn't realize in what way I had changed my previous perspective. Overall, I've made some progress in incorporating things that can be explained without mathematics in this book. In the last two chapters I mentioned the development of mathematics. They deal with the adaptation of the principles of mathematical physics to the principles of relativity that are upheld here. Although I have adopted Einstein's tensor theory approach, this application has been carried out in different ways and with different assumptions. His empirically verified conclusions can also be obtained using my method. This disagreement stems primarily from the fact that I do not accept his theory of non-uniform space, nor his assumption that light signals have special fundamental properties. However, do not mistake me for a lack of recognition of the value of his recent work on general relativity, on the contrary, the greatest merit of this work is that it first points out the way in which mathematical physics should be studied according to the principles of relativity. But in my judgment, within a very doubtful narrow philosophical confines, he restrained the development of his own remarkable mathematical method.
The purpose of this book and its companion works is to lay the foundations for natural philosophy, which is a necessary prerequisite for the reconception of critical physics. The generalized coherence of space and time that dominates this constructive thought can be supported independently in science by Minkowski and by subsequent relativists; And on the philosopher side, I believe, this is one of the topics of the yet-to-be-published Gifford Lectures that Professor Alexander did a few years ago. He also summarized his conclusions on this issue in a report to the Aristotelian Society in July 1918. Since the publication of Studies in the Principles of Natural Knowledge, I have had the privilege of reading Broad (C. Brown).d.Perception, Physics and Reality. This valuable work is useful to my discussion in Chapter II, though I do not know to what extent Mr. Broad agrees with which of the arguments I have made there.
Finally, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the staff of Cambridge University Press, including the typesetting, proofreading, sales and management staff, not only for their excellent professional skills, but also for the way they have worked together.
Whitehead. Imperial College London.
April 1920.
This article is excerpted from the "Preface" of "The Concept of Nature".