time: the refreshing river 



Now there is a certain fundamental affinity between organicism 

 and the dialectic. As Mortimer Adler has pointed out,^ entities in 

 opposition to one another are parts of a whole which stands on the 

 level of their ultimate synthesis. The syntheses at all the successive 

 levels of being, resolving the successive contradictions, form a series 

 of envelopes, for they each include the elements of the contradictions 

 on the levels below them as a series of parts. Like so many things 

 in nature, the successive syntheses form a dendritic continuum or 

 hierarchy of wholes.^ 



Whitehead as the Philosopher of Evolution. 



And so we come to consider Whitehead's own contributions from 

 the biologist's point of view. Unlike so many philosophers he has 

 always appreciated the structure of our world in its succession and its 

 envelopes. Perhaps one of his most famous and influential passages was 

 that in which he said: ''Science is taking on a new aspect which is 

 neither purely physical nor purely biological. It is becoming the study 

 of organisms. Biology is the study of the larger organisms, whereas 

 physics is the study of the smaller organisms."^ And so, regarding 

 envelopes: "In surveying nature, we must remember that there are 

 not only basic organisms whose ingredients are merely aspects of 

 eternal objects [i.e. the ultimate particles of physics, each of which 

 is related to everything else in the universe by its bare co-existence]. 

 There are also organisms of organisms. Suppose for the moment 

 and for the sake of simplicity, we assume, without any evidence, that 

 electrons and hydrogen nuclei are such basic organisms. Then the 

 atoms and the molecules are organisms of a higher type, which also 

 represent a compact definite organic unity. When we come to the 

 larger aggregations of matter, the organic unity fades into the back- 

 ground. It appears to be but faint and elementary, it is there, but the 

 pattern is vague and indecisive. It is a mere aggregation of effects. 

 When we come to living beings, the definiteness of pattern is recovered 

 and the organic again rises into prominence."* Elsewhere, Whitehead 



■^ M. J. Adler, Dialectics (London, 1927), pp. 164 ff; cf. also Stalin, loc. cit., p. 6, 

 "Dialectics regards Nature as a connected and integral whole, in which phenomena 

 are organically connected with, dependent on, and determined by, each other" (italics 

 mine). 



^ Cf. the work of J. H. Woodger, "The Concept of Organism, etc.," in Quart. Rev, 

 Biol, 1930, 5, I, 438 and 1931, 6, 178. 



3S&MW, p. 150. 



^ S & MW, p. 161. 



192 ^ 



