Whitehead

1. Reason has two primary functions:
   1. To develop methodologies and
   2. to provide an overview of life and the world.
2. The first function enlightens purpose, within limits, and renders it effective. But having achieved a specific purpose, it lulls one towards self-satisfaction because it has finished its task. Our symbol for this function of reason is the mythical character Ulysses.
3. Moral intuition suggests that speculative understanding is conducive to the good life. Our passionate demand for freedom of speech is based on just that. But the feeling is not widespread. It flickers throughout humanity with a feeble intensity. But thoughout the centuries it has been carried forward by outstanding individuals with unquestioning reverence as a supreme command. Hence the timeless struggle between reason and authority--and authority's bitterness towards the intrusion of this moral claim. Our symbol for this function of reason is the Greek philosopher Plato.
4. And here is a reference to Solomon's dream -- suggesting that the distinction between these two functions of reason is not as sharp as it might appear at first glance -- because accumulations of theoretical understanding do, from time to time, inspire adventures into new methodologies. And new discoveries in specific disciplines inspire new dimensions of speculative reason. But still the distinction remains.
5. Truthfulness, as an aspect of self-respect, issues from a reverence for reason in and of itself. But as a dodge in the lives of ordinary people, truthfulness is viewed as serving alien purposes. With that, one person's truth is often doing battle with another person's truth. And these two faces of truth bear witness to the function of reason.
6. To trace the history of practical reason, one must look to the animal forms from which human life has emerged. One must look especially for traces of the faint sporadic flashes of intelligence which have guided the slow elaboration of methods. But even when one discerns a breakthrough, custom and habit normally very soon supersede intelligence and, with that, initiative, intelligence, and progress stop.
7. The history of speculative reason is relatively short. It corresponds to the history of civilization -- covering a span of about six thousand years -- and the critical discovery which gave to speculative reason its supreme importance was made by the Greeks.
8. The discovery of mathematics and logic introduced method into speculation -- providing speculation with an objective test and a method of progress -- and freeing speculation from its dependence on mystic vision and fanciful suggestion. This method was derived from speculation itself -- as it ceased producing a mere series of dissociated judgments. And, arming itself with Greek methods, just a couple of thousand years ago -- provided a start to the replacement of fuzzy inspirations with consistently verifiable systems.
9. Giving all credit for this new phase of speculation to the ancient Greeks is certainly an exaggeration. The great Asiatic civilizations, Indian and Chinese, produced their own varieties of the same method. But their thinkers failed to perfect their techniques to the level of that of the Greeks. And that was probably because they were more concerned with religious and philosophical speculation than with natural science and mathematics.
10. But taking into account both the eastern and western contributions to this formulation of speculative reason as a practical method of investigation, one may say that it has been in use for about three thousand years.
11. These three thousand years represent the modern history of the human species. Within these three thousand years all of our major religions have been produced -- all of our great rational systems of ideas -- all of our major scientific disciplines. In these three thousand years we have created the inner worlds of our being -- and we have become transformed.
12. The past one hundred and fifty years of speculative reason has had very little effect on technology and art. The modern period has produced almost no progress in either technology or in the arts. And in many respects the technologies and the arts may be in a state of decline. We have not surpassed the artists and technicians of the one thousand years preceding the birth of Christ. We have not even reached to their level. We care less about art, and seem to have little interest in cultivating our esthetic impulses.
13. Eighteenth century Europe was hardly ahead of ancient Rome.
14. But now, in the last one hundred and fifty years, speculative reason and technology appear to have made some contact -- because speculative reason has lent technology theoretical strength. And practical reason has infused technology with more clarity in a wide variety of technology's fields of empirical observation and classification of data.
15. Are we on the threshold of a breakthrough in the realm of a refinement of human values? History suggests that such breakthroughs come only when humanity has descended to an extreme state of anarchy and chaos. Such regressions, seen in broad perspective, are positive and constructive because that is how practical reason protects itself from petty and promiscuous innovation and change. And this protective resistance to change has its root cause deep in the basic design of the human species.
16. Resistance to change is just as strong and deep in scientists and business people as it is in clergymen, university professors, and all other human creatures. All creatures are deeply conservative. We, all of us, refuse to speculate on the limitations of our methods.
17. Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century European culture inherited the results of about five centuries of intensive speculative activity.
18. The unrealistic expectation that a dogmatic finality might eventually surface in the realm of speculative principles had been an obstacle to progress in that arena of mental activity.
19. But preserved manuscripts of the speculations of ancient thinkers contributed significantly to the work of medieval thinkers. Not that it mattered much in the long run because medieval thinkers were excessively learned. They had their own closed system of evaluation relative to other people's speculations.
20. Their efforts were confined to framing systems out of a narrow round of ideas. Their achievements were brilliant products of genius. But the scope of the content of their speculations failed to account for too much of what must be addressed in an adequate philosophical system, and their advances were primarily due to the major refinements in the art of thinking that were developed in their times.
21. The power of going for the penetrating idea -- even when that idea has not yet been worked into a system -- is what makes for progress in speculative reason.
22. The ancient Greeks had that power. And the scholastics of the thirteenth century had it. But thinkers of the tenth century lacked it.
23. The three centuries following the tenth century represent a marvelous transition. The story of that period is told to perfection in Henry Osborn Taylor's, "The Mediaeval Mind" -- demonstrating how scholasticism gave European philosophy a new depth of penetration for the handling of abstract ideas.
24. All things work within limits, even within the realm of speculation. Understanding civilization is the understanding of limits. From the thirteenth to the seventeen centuries the limits in the realm of speculation were provided by scholasticism. What was happening in the realm of speculation during those centuries was more of a broadening of interests than any real intellectual growth.
25. Scholasticism's aim was to develop a comprehensive system of ideas together with a method for teaching and learning that system of ideas through a definite meditative practice.
26. But then new elements wormed their way into the scholastic agenda -- primarily Greek culture with its literature, mathematics, sciences, and arts -- bringing into play a new dimension of European culture which came to be called "The Renaissance."
27. But really, what changed? Attitudes, perspectives, and points of focus. Renaissance thinkers were able to wear their learning more lightly than did the earlier generations of scholastic thinkers. And individual idiosyncratic approaches to problem-solving became significantly more acceptable.
28. This liberalizing breakthrough illustrates another almost forgotten principle of ancient wisdom: The practice of permitting individuals the possibility to think for themselves; allowing one to do one's own observing -- and to formulate one's own interpretations.
29. Whitehead's Reason -- Princeton Lectures -- 1929 -- Part Three 1. Piercing into general reasons beyond the scope of limited reasons.
30. 2. Understanding which may be coordinated with the nature of things.
31. 3. Need for transcending all method.
32. 4. Nothing really valuable is achieved in the fields of bounded intelligence.
33. 5. One distinctly human characteristic: Quest for the unattainable -- the touch of infinity that goads human creatures onward -- often to their untimely destruction.
34. 6. The sun -- a beckoning light -- seeming to pass towards finality -- but then arising from its own origin.
35. 7. Reason, which is fundamentally methodic, is often content to limit itself within the bounds of a successful method -- where it is able to find itself working in the secure daylight of practical activity. •••
36. 8. Reason is the discipline of shrewdness. It questions methods -- never permitting them to rest.
37. 9. The passionate demand for freedom of thought is a tribute to the deep connection of speculative reason with our instinctive religious yearnings.
38. 10. The Stoics and their emphasis on the right of the human spirit to face the infinity of things -- with no more method than a simple striving to understand them.
39. 11. Speculative reason slowly emerging in the guise of sporadic inspirations.
40. 12. Seers and prophets -- human creatures with some new secret now and again surfacing -- bringing to humanity fire, hope, and even moral insight -- imaginative novelties transcending established tradition and custom.
41. 13. Greeks Big Gift to humanity: Discovery that speculative reason is subject to the confines of orderly method -- stripping away from it its anarchic aspects -- without destroying its capacity to reach beyond previously established limits. And that is how reason replaced wild inspiration.
42. 14. Reason appeals to the orderliness of what is reasonable. •••
43. 15. Speculation strives to transcend the limitations of any particular method.
44. 16. The genius of the Greek thinkers was their way of binding themselves to method while striving to transcend method's limitations. And they hardly understood the value of their own discovery. But we now have had the advantage of observing the operations of speculative reason for more than two thousand years.
45. 17. Beware of professed prophets. Their influence is uniformly destructive.
46. 18. The Greeks invented the logic of discovery: the criteria to which the content of a belief should be subjected. The elements of which are: a) conformity to intuitive experience, b) clarity of propositional content, c) internal logical consistency, d) external logical consistency, e) status of a logical scheme with relation to, 1) widespread conformity to experience, 2) no discordance with experience, 3) coherence among its categorical notions, 4) methodological consequences.
47. 19. Beware of assuming, as so many have done throughout history, that these criteria are easy to apply.
48. 20. Greek and medieval thinkers imagined that they could easily obtain clear and distinct premises conforming to experience. But they were rather careless about subjecting their premises to rigorous criticism -- as they went on entertaining themselves elaborating their deductive systems.
49. 21. Most modern thinkers are no less guilty of assuming that it is easy to express propositions in clear formulations with exactitude -- and that the scrutiny of experience is a straightforward operation. •••
50. 22. Modern thinkers stress deduction.
51. 23. One must beware of the temptation to assume that real thinking can ever be easy.
52. 24. Real thinking demands hard scrutiny of any particular proposition -- ferreting out all implications and presuppositions -- together with an analysis of all composite factors.
53. 25. It is no easy task to analyze the elements of one's sensory experience w ithout infusing into one's analysis interpretative elements -- which are bound to be faulty.
54. 26. With that, it is almost impossible to come to decisive conclusions without considerable elements of doubt.
55. 27. And then, there is always some doubt about the self-consistency of any particular proposition. Initial attempts to formulate a proposition must be vague. Subsequent attempts to reformulate usually reveal flaws.
56. 28. External consistency can be challenging because it requires that the proposition in question be compared to other relatively well accepted propositions. Trusting the validity of such comparisons can be risky. •••
57. 29. To adequately judge the validity of a proposition one must have recourse to a system of ideas whose mutual relevance lend to each other clarity -- which ideas hang together so that the verification of some reflects upon the verification of others.
58. 30. And when such a system has the character of suggesting methodologies, of which it is explanatory, it begins to develop new dimensions of capability by generating new ideas which are coherently harmonious with its theme and purpose, while providing continuous verification of all of the propositions it produces.
59. 31. And, of course, the overall purpose of the enterprise is to produce a broader deeper understanding of the world in which we live. There comes with such a task more definition and clarity of ideas -- as well as deeper more d irect analysis of surfacing data.
60. 32. Ancient Greek thinkers founded their various sciences on the basis of their concept of "schemes of thought." And those Greek sciences have reformed and revitalized civilization.
61. 33. There is, however, a down side to the success of the schemes -- because a proposition that surfaces within the framework of one of a particular scheme tends to be accepted by professional schemers, as well as the general population, with little or no verification. Nothing fails like success! The value of a newly surfacing proposition ought properly to be tested by striving to imagine some occurrence which does not fall within its scheme. Beware of assuming that because you see one man standing on his head that every man in the world is standing on his head.
62. 34. Defining schemes is a major task of speculative reason. It involves imagination outreaching direct observation.
63. 35. The interwoven categorical notions constituting a particular scheme must be subjected to deductive logic. •••
64. 35. Some propositions relating to interrelations of some forms may be compared to direct experience -- others may not be so compared. Schemes which cannot be compared to direct experience tend to be useless.
65. 36. An abstract scheme developed by the abstract methodology of logic may prove to become very valuable. Such schemes have sometimes enabled fantastic dreams to become realities. Such schemes amplify life's quest for growth, meaning and understanding. They represent the treasure chest of ideas that one generation passes on to succeeding generations -- the reserve of potential development.
66. 37. Progress is based on the rule that thought normally precedes observation. It may not decide detail but it does suggest type.
67. 38. No one can count without the idea of numbers. No one can direct attention without an image of what one expects to see.
68. 39. Novel observations coming spontaneously by chance are rare accidents -- and are usually wasted. Without a sense of scheme, nothing has significance. Thoughtless nature's name is waste. A million seeds to produce one tree. A million eggs to produce one fish. A million observations to produce one useful insight.
69. 40. One must have large schemes of abstract ideas in place as a base on which to evaluate and utilize new experience.
70. 41. Beware of letting speculation flow away from reason.
71. 42. Newton had in his mind the mathematical scheme of dynamic relations. Galileo had in his mind the same mathematical scheme. Darwin as well. The secret of progress is the speculative interest in abstract schemes of morphology. •••
72. 43. The story of the development of mathematical physics has been told and retold -- and deserves another retelling: A few technological dodges in Egypt -- 2000 BC -- a minor element in a great civilization. Solomon's Dream -- 1000 BC -- greatest of all prophesies.
73. 44. The Greeks -- 500 BC -- theoretical development of mathematical principles -- mostly inspired by their love of theory. But they also seemed to understand that mathematics was essential for a productive study of nature.
74. 45. Abstract morphology is illustrated by the state of geometry at the start of the sixteenth century -- a discipline that had been elaborated in great detail and had been in practice at that time for about two thousand years -- but nothing much had come of it aside from the pleasure of the study.
75. 46. But then Kepler -- provides the first important utilization of conic sections. Descartes and Desargues revolutionize the methods of science. Newton publishes his Principia. And modern civilization is born -- as the accumulative result of a 2000 year collection of concepts and techniques. There is no magic here -- but rather an example of the evolution of the science of abstract forms.
76. 47. The abstract theory of music is another such science. Political economy another. The abstract theory of currency another.
77. 48. Abstract theory must preceed understanding of facts.
78. 49. But there remains the necessity of transcending the given morphological scheme. The scheme clarifies thinking, suggests lines of observation, and interprets data. But there is a strict limit to the utility of any finite scheme -- and failing to observe this limitation often leads to grave error. The art of Speculative Reason demands the transcendence of schemes as well as their practical utilization. •••
79. 50. Mathematical physics suggests another reflection -- because of the extreme abstractness of the mathematical propositions involved. With such extreme abstractness, it is amazing that mathematical physics could have acquired so much importance in contemporary speculation.
80. 51. Imagine an Egyptian country gentleman at the beginning of the Greek period tolerating the technical devices of his land surveyors but having no time or patience with the tenuous other-than-practical speculative games of then distant Greek barbarians.
81. 52. There have been such doubters in every age. Common sense is everything for them. But the history of speculative reason stands against them. Abstract speculation is the savior of civilization. It creates it systems -- and then transcends them. Always moving towards the furthest limits of abstraction.
82. 53. But because speculative reason must follow a zigzag course, its weaving must be infused with discipline. It must be kept in line with reasonably well-established facts.
83. 54. Cosmology strives to frame a scheme of the general character of the present stage of the universe -- which, in its turn, provides the basis of the special sciences which are its species.
84. 55. Cosmology strives to restrain the aberrations of undisciplined imagination -- by demanding that each new discovery fit into its general scheme -- or else to suggest that the general scheme be appropriately modified to accommodate certain new requirements.
85. 56. The schemes of the cosmologies and of the various sciences must be kept mutually critical of each other. •••
86. 57. The limited morphology of any specific science cannot be capable of expressing in its own categorical notions all forms manifest in the greater world. But it must be adequate for the task of coordinating and integrating all surfacing data within its own clearly defined field of activity.
87. 58. The dim recesses of experience present immense difficulties for analysis.
88. 59. Analytic power vanishes with direct scrutiny.
89. 60. Our investigative tools include memory, consensus, language and language analysis (semantics, etymology, syntax, etc.) -- and relatively stable social institutions.
90. 61. One must always be aware of our human tendency to assume that our sensory experience provides clear-cut knowledge of clear-cut items with clear-cut connections -- in tidy, trim, and uniformly illuminating packages. Experience and Clarity of Knowledge are rarely, if ever, commensurate.
91. 62. Focal attention may produce a moment of clarity -- which quickly becomes vaguely and inconsistently interconnected with clusters of items in dim apprehension -- shading off imperceptibly into puddles of indiscriminate feeling.
92. 63. It is very difficult to distinguish clarity from vagueness -- to inject analytic intuition into our experience. •••
93. 64. The whole of our perceptions, of our experience, forms a system. But when one attempts to describe the system, intuition distorts one's perceptions. Attention flits and fluctuates. Penetration is shallow. And there is excessive expectation creating even more distortion -- less and less clarity.
94. 65. One may be alert, drowsy, excited, contemplative, asleep, dreamy, intently expecting, or devoid of any concentrated expectation. The variety of relatively distinct mental states is infinite.
95. 66. Considering the range and variety of types of living creatures, considering their average states of sensitivity and awareness, and noting the higher states accessible by certain species, one observes in the lower levels, as one descends the scales, a certain dimness and less than conscious drowsiness.
96. 67. Lower types doubtlessly have little sense of definite forms -- and little sense of what differentiates one form from another form -- because they simply float in puddles of feeling.
97. 68. Authority is the supremacy of fact over thought and feeling -- in conditions in which facts are perceived with relatively little distortion. And then thought is itself a fact. Truths must be relative, fluid, and amorphous. Even fanciful thinking contains great truths, like the truth of art. Observation and interpretation must be subjected to standards of value and meaningful practicality.
98. 69. Satisfaction comes with elucidation -- and elucidation create power.
99. 70. Verification is the practical technique for establishing well-attested conclusions. With verification comes steady progress from thought to practice -- and from practice back to thought. And in this way the tendency to charlatanism is restrained.
100. 71. Professional institutions tend to guarantee that techniques will be practical as they take the forms of professional associations, scientific associations, business associations, universities, churches, governments, etc. But all that is often still not enough because evidence tends to be so confused, ambiguous and contradictory. When any conclusion is considered to be final, all progress stops.
101. 72. Only a disciplined self-transcending Speculative Reason can create (rather than be victimized by) future events. Speculative Reason's vision of systems of ideas comprise our faith -- because Speculative Reason extracts principles and defines practices. •••
102. 73. The object of discipline is not stability but progress. And there is no absolute stability. But one sometimes perceives the ghost of stability in the processes of atrophied decay. True stability constantly slips away from under us -- which is most desirable because our aim must be upward.
103. 74. The Greek thinkers made speculation effective. The methods they introduced into the conduct of thought made progressive European civilization possible.
104. 75. What were their Methods? a) They were unboundedly curious -- probing into and questioning everything -- seeking to understand everything. b) They were rigidly systematic in their pursuit of clear definitions and logical consistencies. They invented logic to give structure and consistency to their speculations. c) Their interests were omnivorous: natural science, ethics, mathematics, politics, metaphysics, theology, esthetics, et al. d) And they did not keep those subjects rigidly separate. Instead, they deliberately attempted to combine all subjects into just one coherent system. e) They sought truths of the highest generality -- while seeking to relate their findings to the whole body of their varied interests. f) They had actively practical interests.
105. 76. Plato went to Sicily to assist in a political experiment -- and all his life he studied mathematics. And his observations doubtlessly contained applications of mathematical theory -- because in those days mathematics and its applications were not so separated as they are in our times.
106. 77. Plato appreciated the difference between the exactness of abstract thinking and the vague ambiguity that haunts all observation. •••
107. 78. In fact, Plato had a keener sense of this difference than did our modern philosopher John Stuart Mill who was essentially an inductive thinker -- who never seemed to understand that no particular observation can adequately verify the principle it is presumed to support. Mill's concept of determinism can never be proved with the methods the English empiricists.
108. 79. Aristotle kept himself so busy, one wonders how he had any time left for thinking. a) He analyzed the constitutions of the principle Greek states. b) He dissected the great dramatic literature of his age, as well as the construction of its sentences and paragraphs. c) He dissected fishes and other species of creatures. d) He tutored Alexander, The Great.
109. 80. Considering the speculation the Greek philosophers as a whole, one marvels at the universality of their interests together with the systematic exactness of their thinking.
110. 81. Speculative reason must submit to the authority of facts -- while striving to transcend existing approaches to the analysis of facts -- while striving to reform and recast the categorical ideas within the limits of any particular topic -- while striving always to build and rebuild a cosmology ever more adequately expressing the general nature of the world as it is disclosed to our human interests -- while appealing to the widespread effective elements in the overall experience of humanity -- while relating to the massive fact of some kind of ultimate authority.
111. 82. Yes, there are discordancies in the mass of beliefs and purposes of human creatures. But superficial details of those differences do stand out -- and a concordance of general notions stands out as well.
112. 83. Unquestioned beliefs often shape the actualization of goals. Discordance over moral codes witness the fact of moral experience. Underlying every discord is the fact of common experience.
113. 84. In order to be adequate, a cosmology must never confine itself to just one science -- or even just one cluster of sciences. One must beware of the temptation to explain away things that do not fit in. One must instead strive to find the most general interpretive system. One must beware of the mere juxapositioning of the various sciences. One must strive to discern interconnections. Cosmology, in its rôle as the harmonizer and integrator, must be the judge of all specialized inferior disciplines. •••
114. 85. But cosmology shares the imperfections of all efforts within the realm of finite intelligence. Special sciences fall short of achieving their aims, and cosmologies fall short of achieving their aims as well.
115. 86. Speculation must strive to verify its findings with the help of three checkpoints: specialized sciences, cosmologies, and its own inner logic. Thusly providing a consequential modification as well as a shock which may transmit itself all through the sociological structure of all technical methods and institutions.
116. 87. Every construction of human intelligence is more special, more limited than was its original aim.
117. 88. Ideally, there would be just one cosmology presiding over all subordinate sciences. But in fact that is hardly the case. The sciences are often battling one another, and all philosophy for that reason suffers from lack of common respect.
118. 89. One must encourage a striving to erect a cosmology upon clear and distinct ideas. With that, all discord among thinkers might progressively diminish.
119. 90. Vague cosmologies encourage fuzzy sciences -- as they severely limit the scope of their practical application.
120. 91. Descartes is correct in saying that human creatures have bodies and minds, and that their bodies and minds can be studied separately. We all do that in our practical life. With that, Decartes's proposition has enormous validity. But when one transforms Descartes' proposition into a final cosmology, enormous errors creep in. And what is true of Descartes is true of all philosophical and scientific propositions. •••
121. 92. Surveying our perceptions as manifestations of a physical system -- determined by its antecedent states -- presents to us the spectacle of a finite system steadily running down -- losing its activities and varieties.
122. 93. The various evolutionary formulae provide no hint of a contrary tendency.
123. 94. Our struggle for existence gives no hint why there should be cities.
124. 95. The crowding of houses gives no hint why houses should be beautiful.
125. 96. Facts suggesting that in our nature there is some tendency upward -- contrary to the physical decay.
126. 97. One finds in one's experience an appetite for things beyond the realm of what is merely physical -- like thirst for water in a desert where everything sucks all that is physical into a whirlpool of dryness. One's craving for beauty transcends the physical as well.
127. 98. But blind appetite is the product of chance -- which leads nowhere. In our experience we find both reason and speculative imagination -- as well as discrimination according to a rule of fitness.
128. 99. Reason may vacillate, and express itself in dim and fuzzy terms. But, reason is reason and reason points to a contrary upward thrust. Reason creates knowledge in specialized aptitudes and specialized forms that tend to transform the decay of a dying order into a new birth of unimaginable possibilities.
     ••• First draft completed April 13, 2002.
     Second draft completed January 19, 2003.
     Third draft completed February 4, 2003.