The analysis of matter

HITHERTO we have been taking perception as our starting-point, and considering how physics could be obtained as an inference from perception. In the present chapter, I want to pursue the opposite course, and consider how, assuming physics, percepts can find their place in the physical world.

Let us first of all exclude certain problems which are not relevant to this inquiry. A "percept," considered as the epistemological basis of physics, must be a "datum"—it must be something noticed. Obviously, therefore, whatever may be true of percepts in general, those which afford empirical premisses for physics have to be "known." But it is unnecessary for us to define "knowing": for physics, only the percepts are important, and our relation to them may be taken for granted. Similarly we need not consider whether, when we perceive, the occurrence is relational, involving a percept and a percipient, or whether the occurrence of the percept is all that happens at the moment, and its "mental" character is conferred by memory (in its most general sense). Such psychological questions need not concern us. What I wish to discuss is the physical status of percepts, i.e. of patches of colour, noises, smells, hardnesses, etc., as well as perceived spatial relations. And in this discussion I am now assuming ordinary physics, subject to the latitude of interpretation explained in Chapter I.

Dr Whitehead's books are a protest against the "bifurcation of nature" which has resulted from the causal theory of perception. With this protest I am in complete agreement. Locke's belief, that the primary qualities belong to the object and the secondary to the percipient, has been that of science in practice, whatever individual scientific men may have thought in their philosophic moments. The view which I wish to advocate is quite different. I hold that the world is very full of events, that often a group of these events, or some characteristic which the members of the group possess in varying degrees, is such as to suggest arrangement in an order, generally a symmetrical order about a centre—e.g. the percepts of different people when they look at a penny may be ordered by their size and by their shape. The orders derived from different sources are roughly identical: e.g. if we move so as to make the big drum look larger, we also move so as to make it sound louder. In this way we construct a space containing both percipients and physical objects; but percepts have a twofold location in this space, namely that of the percipient and that of the physical object. Keeping one half of this location fixed, we obtain the view of the world from a given place; keeping the other half fixed, we obtain the views of a given physical object from different places. The first of these is a percipient, the second is a physical object. But the first half of this statement is to be taken with a grain of salt.

The physical world, I suggest, considered as perceptible, consists of occurrences having this twofold location. For the moment I am concerned to assign the place of perception in such a scheme.

Consider a spherical light-wave proceeding from a momentary flash. In vacuo, it advances in accordance with Maxwell's equations, but when it encounters matter it becomes transformed in one way or another according to circumstances. What do I mean by saying that it "encounters matter"? The answer is quite straightforward. Connected with each electron or proton there is a gravitational field and an electromagnetic field; these are displayed by laws modifying the "undisturbed" distribution about other centres of such things as light-waves. In fact, the fields may be said actually to consist of the formulæ of such modification. Therefore when I say that a light-wave "encounters matter," I mean that it is near the centre of some such systematic modification. The eye is a collection of such centres, and after traversing it the process which was a light-wave obeys a different set of laws. The percept is a term of this process, characterized by the fact that it occurs after traversing a region of a certain sort—to wit, an eye, an optic nerve, and part of a brain. Owing to its causal continuity with other parts of the process, it has, as its twofold location, on the one hand the source of light, on the other hand the brain. If it is said that a percept is "obviously" not in the brain, that is because we are thinking of its location in the physical object, and comparing this with the location of the brain as a physical object.

Certain explanations are called for, chiefly in virtue of Dr Broad's criticisms.[57] In the first place, it is suggested that the above theory takes a common-sense view of the percipient's body, and derives from this an undue plausibility for the view which it suggests as to external objects. This is not the case, but in order to dispel the appearance of such an error it is necessary to explain the twofold character of a physical object. On the one hand, it is a group of "appearances"—i.e. of connected events—differing, from next to next, approximately according to the laws of perspective. On the other hand, a physical object has an influence upon the appearances of other objects, especially appearances in its neighbourhood, causing these to depart, in a greater or less degree, from what they would be if they followed the laws of perspective strictly. The sense organs have only this second function to perform in the theory of perception, while the object perceived has the first function. It is this difference of function, in the theory of perception, which makes it seem as if we were treating the percipient's body more realistically than external objects. But this is only a matter of degree. The appearance of an external object is modified also by other external objects— e.g. by blue spectacles or by a microscope. I conceive the part played by the eye as essentially analogous to that played by a microscope; and I take the same view as to the part played by the optic nerve.

Another objection urged by Dr Broad is that the above theory is at best only suitable to visual objects, not to objects known by other senses. Now I certainly hold that vision is much the most important and least misleading of the senses, when considered as a source of the fundamental notions of physics. But I do not admit that the view which I have suggested is in any way inapplicable to the other senses. This subject, however, demands some discussion.

Let us take first the sense of touch. This sense is complicated by the fact that it has no special organ, such as the eye, but is diffused throughout the surface of the body. In order to avoid complications, let us assume that only the tip of the forefinger of the right hand is being used. I do not know what, exactly, is supposed to be the physical process in touch, but we may suppose that it is somewhat as follows: the electrons and protons of a certain part of the skin come into such close proximity to those of an external body that electrical disturbances are set up, which travel along the afferent nerves to the proper part of the brain, and produce corresponding disturbances there. It does not matter for our purposes if this view is not quite right, since the exact nature of the process is irrelevant. But there is one point of some importance, and that is, that the change or lack of change in a sensation of touch has more importance than in the case of sight. A printed letter, and even a printed word, can be seen at a glance; but to read "Braille" it is necessary to let the finger travel round the contours of the letters. Thus shape, in the case of touch, is, in the main, inferred by means of movement; the momentary datum is much simpler than many visual data. The inference to shape depends, of course, upon the assumption that the object touched has not changed its shape meanwhile; it would be difficult for a blind man to acquire correct views as to the shape of an eel. But when there is doubt the finger can be allowed to travel repeatedly round the contours of the object; if the result is similar on each occasion, it may be assumed that the object has kept an approximately unchanging shape.

There is another respect in which touch is inferior to sight, and that is, that the spatial relation of the physical object to the percipient's body is much more restricted. The physical object must be very close to the part of the percipient's body which is said to be touching it. This means that its location is confined within a certain small region. Within that region touch can locate it rather well, provided a sensitive part of the skin is used; we know the position of our hand by means of feelings connected with the muscles, and thence we know the position of anything in contact with the hand. The intervening medium, in the case of touch, is always a part of the percipient's body; but its influence is shown in the difference between the touch sensations when a physical object touches one part of the body and when it touches another. Thus our theory applies to touch just as well as to sight.

Sound is, in many ways, very analogous to light. It is a disturbance having a centre, and is greatest near the centre. What we hear is loudest when we are near the centre. The direction of the sound can be gauged roughly, though not with anything approaching the precision with which we can gauge the direction of a visual object. Here, also, we have a certain physical process, which obeys certain laws in air, but obeys somewhat different laws in the ear and nerves and brain. These differences, however, may be conceived to be of the same kind, essentially, as those normally produced in physical processes by the presence of matter. I cannot see, therefore, that sound offers any difficulty.

The other senses are much less important as sources of physical knowledge, and it seems unnecessary to discuss them in detail. Physiology, however, tends to show that any abnormal condition of the sense organs or of the afferent nerves tends to modify percepts in such a way as requires, for its explanation, some such theory as ours. It is a fallacy to argue, as is sometimes done, that, if we cannot trust our senses, we cannot know that we have sense organs, or that there is any truth in physiology. If We find that several people, looking at Jones, see him just as usual, while one person sees him looking queer; if the several see nothing queer in each other's eyes, while they all see something queer in the eyes of the one; in such circumstances, I say, it is natural and proper to correlate the two queernesses. The man who sees Jones differently from usual sees him through a medium which has an unusual effect; there is no more ground for scepticism than is to be derived from the effect of opera glasses. The sceptical argument is only valid as against naive realism, and derives its rhetorical force from our tendency to relapse into naive realism whenever we are not on our guard.

The cognitive efficacy of perception depends upon two factors, one physical and one psychological (and physiological). The psychological factor is memory and the whole effect of experience upon mind and body. This is a large subject, which I mention only to dismiss. The physical factor, however, may be pointed out once more. It is, the fact that physical occurrences tend to be grouped about centres, the members of one group being approximately related according to laws which we have called the laws of perspective. This enables us to infer from a percept other percepts which we should have if we moved, or which other percipients have now. When one astronomer sees an eclipse of the moon, he can be pretty sure that others see it too if they are looking in the right direction. When one man sees the Derby, he can be pretty sure that the other spectators are also seeing it—i.e. that they have percepts which can be inferred approximately from his by the laws of perspective. As to what is happening where there is no percipient, we can, on certain assumptions, infer a good deal as to its mathematical structure, but nothing as to its intrinsic quality. In a word, the inferential power of perception depends upon the fact that physical events occur in connected groups, and is limited by the fact that this is only true to a certain degree of approximation.

There remains one matter of considerable importance to be discussed in this connection—I mean, the prima facie difference between a percept and a physical process. At first sight, a light-wave seems very different from a visual percept, and a sound-wave from an auditory percept. But this apparent gulf is due to comparison of events of different orders. A physical disturbance, such as a light-wave, must be regarded as much more complex in reality than in mathematics. Events in the physical world are correlated according to certain laws, and we can, for mathematical purposes, treat a whole group of correlated events as if it were one event. There is no theoretical reason why a light-wave should not consist of groups of occurrences, each containing a member more or less analogous to a minute part of a visual percept. We cannot perceive a light-wave, since the interposition of an eye and brain stops it. We know, therefore, only its abstract mathematical properties. Such properties may belong to groups composed of any kind of material. To assert that the material must be very different from percepts is to assume that we know a great deal more than we do in fact know of the intrinsic character of physical events. If there is any advantage in supposing that the light-wave, the process in the eye, and the process in the optic nerve, contain events qualitatively continuous with the final visual percept, nothing that we know of the physical world can be used to disprove the supposition.

The gulf between percepts and physics is not a gulf as regards intrinsic quality, for we know nothing of the intrinsic quality of the physical world, and therefore do not know whether it is, or is not, very different from that of percepts. The gulf is as to what we know about the two realms. We know the quality of percepts, but we do not know their laws so well as we could wish. We know the laws of the physical world, in so far as these are mathematical, pretty well, but we know nothing else about it. If there is any intellectual difficulty in supposing that the physical world is intrinsically quite unlike that of percepts, this is a reason for supposing that there is not this complete unlikeness. And there is a certain ground for such a view, in the fact that percepts are part of the physical world, and are the only part that we can know without the help of rather elaborate and difficult inferences.