Re: SUO: Ballot Comment - 3D versus 4D.
Pat, Graham, and Matthew,
I agree with Pat on the general issues, but I have a somewhat
different way of expressing them. As I have said in some previous
notes (and my KR book), I prefer Whitehead's 4D representation,
which accommodates many different ways of describing physical
entities:
1. W's basic physical entities are processes (which he calls
actual occasions or actualities). Each such entity has a
very short duration (not a zero-lenth instant, but a short
interval that depends on granularity).
2. Enduring physical objects are extended processes that are
characterized by various "forms of definiteness", such as the
geometrical shape of a crystal or the DNA of a plant or animal.
3. You can talk about variations over time or over space by looking
at the first derivatives with respect to time coordinates or space
coordinates. A slow change has a small continuous derivative,
and a so-called discrete change has a very large derivative,
which may be considered a discontinuity.
4. For both the en- and per- methods of description, the processes
characterized by "forms of definiteness" are important. They are
called "physical objects", and they can be described as "changing"
through time, if one wants to use that way of talking. But the
underlying actual occasions are identical from every viewpoint,
and they form the basis for relating one description to another.
5. I agree with Pat that the per- descriptions are often more prolix
than the en- descriptions for many common ways of talking about
the world. That is partly because people have developed a large
vocabulary of common expressions that would require very extended
translations if mapped into the primitives of the per- perspective.
6. Whitehead is often criticized for inventing his own highly technical
vocabulary, but to a large extent, that criticism misses the point.
W. was trying to develop a way of talking that could express
the concepts that were significant for both the en- and per-
vocabularies. Therefore, he had to coin many new words to express
the highly general concepts that were missing from both.
For an introduction to Whitehead's point of view, you can start with
his 1920 book, _Concept of Nature_, which is available on the web:
http://paradigm.soci.brocku.ca/~lward/Whitehead/White1_pref.html
His vocabulary in this book isn't as technical, since he was just
getting started in developing this point of view. (He had already
written his book _Principles of Relativity_, in which he presented
his own formalism as an alternative to Einstein's. For all results
that were observable at that time, Whitehead's method and Einstein's
gave equivalent results, but there are some newer results which
agree better with Einstein's version than with Whitehead's. But
in any case, W. certainly knew how to represent 4D.)
For his later work, see the following books (all available in
paperback):
Science and the modern world (1925)
Process and Reality (1929)
Adventueres of Ideas (1933)
Modes of Thought (1938)
Process and Reality is the most technical, but also the most complete
presentation of his ontology. If you find it hard to read, don't worry.
That is what happens to most people, including professional
philosophers.
But the other books are more accessible, and after going back to PR
from time to time, you begin to see the need for a level of concepts
that can relate the en- and per- terminologies to each other.
Whitehead is noted for making statements that are widely quoted out
of context -- not incorrectly, but without the underlying philosophical
issues he was trying to make. But they still make good reading anyway.
Following is a list of some of them:
http://www-groups.dcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/~history/Quotations/Whitehead.html
John Sowa