(New Readers please read this first.)
John Locke, a groundbreaking English philosopher of the 17th and early 18th centuries, published his Essay Concerning Human Understanding at the end of 1689. It was the product of some twenty years of discussion, reflection and writing. This book has had a tremendous influence on the history of Western philosophy, and, have we have seen in his Preface, it was of special influence to Whitehead. Here, I quote in full the section that Whitehead cites as providing the inspiration for his philosophy of organism. In reading Locke's passage, we get a strong sense of what Whitehead considered to be of central importance when working out his thoughts.
Without further ado, here is the passage:
"Had we such ideas of substances as to know what real constitutions produce those sensible qualities we find in them and how those qualities flowed from thence, we could, by the specific ideas of their real essences in our own minds, more certainly find out their properties and discover what qualities they had or had not, than we can now by our senses; and to know the properties of gold, it would be no more necessary that gold should exist and that we should make experiments upon it than it is necessary, for the knowing the properties of a triangle, that a triangle should exist in any matter: the idea in our minds would serve for the one as well as the other. But we are so far from being admitted into the secrets of nature that we scarce so much as ever approach the first entrance towards them. For we are wont to consider the substances we meet with, each of them, as an entire thing by itself, having all its qualities in itself and independent of other things, overlooking, for the most part, the operations of those invisible fluids they are encompassed with and upon whose motions and operations depend the greatest part of those qualities which are taken notice of in them and are made by us the inherent marks of distinction whereby we know and denominate them. Put a piece of gold anywhere by itself, separate from the reach and influence of all other bodies, it will immediately lose all its colour and weight, and perhaps malleableness too, which for aught I know, would be changed into a perfect friability. Water, in which to us fluidity is an essential quality, left to itself, would cease to be fluid. But if inanimate bodies owe so much of their present state to other bodies without them that they would not be what they appear to us were those bodies that environ them removed, it is yet more so in vegetables, which are nourished, grow, and produce leaves, flowers, and seeds in a constant succession. And if we look a little nearer into the state of animals, we shall find that their dependence as to life, motion, and the most considerable qualities to be observed in them is so wholly on extrinsical causes and qualities of other bodies that make no part of them, that they cannot subsist a moment without them: though yet those bodies on which they depend are little taken notice of, and make no part of the complex ideas we frame of those animals. Take the air but a minute from the greatest part of living creatures, and they presently lose sense, life, and motion. This the necessity of breathing has been forced into our knowledge. But how many other extrinsical and possibly very remote bodies do the springs of those admirable machines depend on, which are not vulgarly observed or so much as thought on; and how many are there which the severest inquiry can never discover? The inhabitants of this spot of the universe, though removed so many millions of miles from the sun, yet depend so much on the duly tempered motion of particles coming from or agitated by it that, were this earth removed but a small part of that distance, out of its present situation, and placed a little further or nearer that source of heat, it is more than probable that the greatest part of the animals in it would immediately perish: since we find them so often destroyed by an excess or defect of the sun's warmth, which an accidental position, in some parts of this our little globe, exposes them to. The qualities observed in a loadstone must needs have their source far beyond the confines of that body; and the ravage made often on several sorts of animals by invisible causes, the certain death (as we are told) of some of them by barely passing the line or, as it is certain of others, by being removed into a neighbouring country, evidently show that the concurrence and operation of several bodies, with which they are seldom thought to have anything to do, is absolutely necessary to make them be what they appear to us and to preserve those qualities by which we know and distinguish them. We are then quite out of the way when we think that things contain within themselves the qualities that appear to us in them; and we in vain search for that constitution within the body of a fly or an elephant upon which depend those qualities and powers we observe in them. For which perhaps, to understand them aright, we ought to look not only beyond this our earth and atmosphere, but even beyond the sun or remotest star our eyes have yet discovered. For how much the being and operation of particular substances in this our globe depend on causes utterly beyond our view is impossible for us to determine. We see and perceive some of the motions and grosser operations of things here about us, but whence the streams come that keep all these curious machines in motion and repair, how conveyed and modified, is beyond our notice and apprehension; and the great parts and wheels, as I may so say, of this stupendous structure of the universe, may, four aught we know, have such a connexion and dependence in their influences and operations one upon the other, that perhaps things in this our mansion would put on quite another face and cease to be what they are, if some one of the stars or great bodies incomprehensibly remote from us should cease to be or move as it does. This is certain: things, however absolute and entire they seem in themselves, are but retainers to other parts of nature for that which they are most taken notice of by us. Their observable qualities, actions, and powers are owing something without them; and there is not so complete and perfect a part that we know of nature which does not owe the being it has, and the excellencies of it, to its neighbours; and we must not confine our thoughts within the surface of any body, but look a great deal further, to comprehend perfectly those qualities that are in it."
I won't comment too much on this dense thicket of words just yet (yes, it was written as one paragraph!), other than to remark how clearly Locke presages an ecological point-of-view in this passage. The ecological view will be central to Whitehead's cosmology.
I'll be referring back to this passage and other relevant passages in Locke's book as we progress.
