I02 



NATURE 



[September 23, 1920 



ones, and what is wanted now is a voyage of, at 

 the very least, the duration and scope of that of 

 the Challenger. It is also true that all the recent 

 expeditions have been foreign, and that Great 

 Britain has, ever since 1872, lagged behind in this 

 respect. It is owing to our present condition of 

 naval superiority and commercial progress that 

 we should do our share in oceanographical 

 research. 



In many ways the outlook is now markedly 

 different from what it was in 1872, and so much 

 more evident is the need for renewed investigation. 

 The detailed study of the results obtained by the 

 Challenger herself, and the discussion which these 

 have now received, point to the need for renewed 

 investigation, both on more intensive and more 

 extensive scales. It cannot be said that the recent 

 expeditions afford data for the settlement of most 

 questions. One must never forget what a very 

 insignificant fraction of the whole area of the 

 ocean bottom has been touched by all the deep-sea 

 expeditions. There is an enormous tract, said 

 Mr. Tate Regan at the British Association discus- 

 sion, lying round the Falkland Islands and up as 

 far as Montevideo, which is almost unknown. All 

 this lies within the loo-fathom contour line, and it 

 may be the region of lucrative fisheries. Yet over 

 it all there are only some eight trawling records — 

 two by the Challenger and six by the Albatross. 

 In these days, when trawler-owners are seeking 

 new grounds, when the British fishery industry 

 looks like being world-wide in its scope, and when 

 steam fishing-vessels can cross the ocean and can 

 fish commercially at depths of 100 to 200 fathoms, 

 such a suggestion cannot be ignored. 



All such investigations carried out with the 

 object of discovering fishing-grounds, charting un- 

 known sea-bottoms, or investigating tides and cur- 

 rents from the point of view of the navigator are, 

 of course, utilitarian. But they employ scientific 

 methods and they obtain a great surplus of data 

 to be worked out from a purely scientific point of 

 view. We have not the space here to advert to 

 the enormous importance arjd theoretical interest 

 of a study of the ocean from the point of view of 

 meteorology. Nor can we insist, as we ought to 

 do, on the reflex value of an arousal of popular 

 interest in marine science. Immersed, as we are 

 at present, in the problems of commerce and indus- 

 trial production, one is apt to forget how curious 

 are all people connected with the sea in the results 

 of marine research. That popular curiosity and 

 interest is something that scientific organisation 

 ought legitimately to attempt to satisfy. 

 NO. 2656, VOL. 106] 



Philosophical Aspects of Nature. 



(i) The Concept of Nature: Turner Lectures 

 delivered in Trinity College, November, 1919. 

 By Prof. A. N. Whitehead. Pp. ix-i-202. (Cam- 

 bridge : At the University Press, 1920.) Price 

 14s. net. 



(2) Lectures on Modern Idealism. By Josiah 

 Royce. Pp. xii + 266. (New Haven : Yale Uni- 

 versity Press ; London : Humphrey Milford ; 

 Oxford University Press, 1919.) Price 

 i2s. 6d. net. 



IT may seem that in bringing together two such 

 widely divergent views and methods as those 

 represented by the present professor of pure 

 mathematics in the Imperial College of Science 

 and Technology, and by the late genial and kindly 

 Harvard professor and leader of modern idealism, 

 the problem with which each of these courses of 

 lectures deals is in danger of being prejudged. 

 Prof. Whitehead's method is severely practical, 

 that of Royce speculative and theoretical. It is, 

 however, in contrasts that the profounder meaning 

 of antithetical theories is revealed. These two 

 courses of lectures — very similar in form and in 

 aim — separated in time by an interval of thirteen 

 years, both deal with the same subject, the concept 

 of Nature, and both are conscious, despite a fun- 

 damental divergence, of an identical problem. 



(i) The Tarner Lectures of Prof. Whitehead con- 

 sist of a core of constructive work. Certain kinds 

 of entities are posited for knowledge in sense- 

 awareness. The classification of these, and the 

 investigation of the sorts of relations they can have 

 to one another, form the constructive work under- 

 taken. The most fundamental of these entities are 

 events, and the first kind of relation examined is 

 time. The factors in Nature represented by the 

 conception of space are next brought under review, 

 and the method by which they are analysed is 

 named "extensive abstraction." Space and motion 

 are then considered, and lead to the formulation of 

 a theory of congruence — that is, of measurement in 

 space and time. This plunges us into the relativity 

 controversy, and enables the author to define his 

 position in regard to the theory of Einstein. 

 Finally, we have a theory of "objects," which are 

 described as " the elements in Nature which do not 

 pass." Objects are "recognised," events happen; 

 an event occurs once and is unique, but objects 

 have the character that they can "be again." This 

 core of constructive work has a prologue and an 

 epilogue in the two Introductory and the two con- 

 cluding chapters. It is in these that the problem 

 underlying the concept of Nature is acknowledged, 

 the principle which must rule scientific inquiry dis- 

 cussed, and the issue between the divergent 



