A biologist's view of whitehead's philosophy 



elaborates this at length.^ "The universe," he says, "achieves its 

 values by reason of its co-ordination into societies of societies, and 

 into societies of societies of societies. Thus an army is a society of 

 regiments, and regiments are societies of men, and men are societies 

 of cells, of blood, and of bones, together with the dominant society 

 of personal human experience; and cells are societies of smaller 

 physical entities such as protons, and so on. All of these societies 

 presuppose the circumambient space of social physical activity." 



So also with the successions. According to Whitehead, Nature 

 exhibits itself as exemplifying a philosophy of the evolution of 

 organisms subject to determinate conditions. Surveying the levels of 

 organisation, he writes:^ "One conclusion is the diverse modes of 

 functioning which are produced by diverse modes of organisation. 

 The second is the aspect of continuity between the different modes. 

 There are borderline cases, which bridge the gaps. Often these are 

 unstable and pass quickly, but span of existence is merely relative to 

 our habits of human life. For infra-molecular occurrences, a second 

 is a vast period of time. A third conclusion is the difference in the 

 aspects of Nature as we change the scale of observation. Each scale 

 of observation presents us with average effects proper to that scale." 



Here is how he speaks of the emergence of mind.^ "In so far as 

 conceptual mentality does not intervene, the grand patterns pervading 

 the environment are passed on with the inherited modes of adjustment. 

 Here we find the patterns of activity studied by the physicists and 

 chemists. Mentality is merely latent in all these occasions as thus 

 studied. In the case of inorganic Nature any sporadic flashes are 

 inoperative so far as our powers of discernment are concerned. The 

 lowest stages of effective mentality, controlled by the inheritance of 

 physical pattern, involve the faint direction of emphasis by uncon- 

 scious ideal aim. The various examples of the higher forms of life 

 exhibit the variety of grades of effectiveness of mentality. In the social 

 animals there is evidence of flashes of mentality in the past which have 

 degenerated into physical habits. Finally, in the higher mammals and 

 more particularly in mankind, we have clear evidence of mentality 

 habitually effective. In our own experience, our knowledge con- 

 sciously entertained and systematised can only mean such mentality, 

 directly observed." 



Turning to the borderline of metaphysics, it is interesting to note 



1 AOI, p. 264; P & R, pp. 115 ff.; MOT, pp. 31 ff. 



2 N & L, p. 73. 3 N & L, p. 94. 



193 N 



