The Concept of Nature Quotes

“The aim of science is to seek the simplest explanations of complex facts. We are apt to fall into the error of thinking that the facts are simple because simplicity is the goal of our quest. The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be, 'Seek simplicity and distrust it.”
― Alfred North Whitehead, The Concept of Nature: The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, 11/1919

“A duration is a concrete slab of nature limited by simultaneity which is an essential factor disclosed in sense-awareness.”
― Alfred North Whitehead, The Concept of Nature: The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College 11/1919

“These are the events which share the immediacy of the immediately present discerned events. These are the events whose characters together with those of the discerned events comprise all nature present for discernment. They form the complete general fact which is all nature now present as disclosed in that sense-awareness. It is in this second classification of events that the differentiation of space from time takes its origin. The germ of space is to be found in the mutual relations of events within the immediate general fact which is all nature now discernible, namely within the one event which is the totality of present nature. The relations of other events to this totality of nature form the texture of time.”
― Alfred North Whitehead, The Concept of Nature: The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College 11/1919