INTRODUCTION 



It has been suggested that some reference, of an 

 apologetic nature, to the title of this book may be 

 desirable, so I wish to point out that it can really be 

 justified. Science, says Driesch, is the attempt to 

 describe Givenness, and Philosophy is the attempt to 

 understand it. It is our task, as investigators of 

 nature, to describe what seems to us to happen there, 

 and the knowledge that we so attain — that is, our per- 

 ceptions, thinned out, so to speak, modified by our 

 mental organisation, related to each other, classified 

 and remembered — constitutes our Givenness. This is 

 only a description of what seems to us to be nature. 

 But few of us remain content with it, and the impulse 

 to go beyond our mere descriptions is at times an 

 irresistible one. Fettered by our habits of thought, 

 and by the limitations of sensation, we seem to look 

 out into the dark and to see only the shadows of things. 

 Then we attempt to turn round in order that we 

 might discover what it is that casts the shadows, and 

 what it is in ourselves that gives shape to them. We 

 seek for the Reality that we feel is behind the shadows. 

 That is Philosophy. 



The Physics of a generation earlier than our own 

 thought that it had discovered Reality in its conception 

 of an Universe consisting of atoms and molecules in 

 ceaseless motion. What it described were only motions 

 and transformations, but it understood these motions 

 and transformations as matter and energy. Yet more 



