The Concept of Nature | Page 3

the sciences,
without abandoning the explicit reference to an ideal in the absence of
which philosophy must languish from lack of intrinsic interest. That
ideal is the attainment of some unifying concept which will set in
assigned relationships within itself all that there is for knowledge, for

feeling, and for emotion. That far off ideal is the motive power of
philosophic research; and claims allegiance even as you expel it. The
philosophic pluralist is a strict logician; the Hegelian thrives on
contradictions by the help of his absolute; the Mohammedan divine
bows before the creative will of Allah; and the pragmatist will swallow
anything so long as it 'works.'
The mention of these vast systems and of the age-long controversies
from which they spring, warns us to concentrate. Our task is the
simpler one of the philosophy of the sciences. Now a science has
already a certain unity which is the very reason why that body of
knowledge has been instinctively recognised as forming a science. The
philosophy of a science is the endeavour to express explicitly those
unifying characteristics which pervade that complex of thoughts and
make it to be a science. The philosophy of the sciences--conceived as
one subject--is the endeavour to exhibit all sciences as one science,
or--in case of defeat--the disproof of such a possibility.
Again I will make a further simplification, and confine attention to the
natural sciences, that is, to the sciences whose subject-matter is nature.
By postulating a common subject-matter for this group of sciences a
unifying philosophy of natural science has been thereby presupposed.
What do we mean by nature? We have to discuss the philosophy of
natural science. Natural science is the science of nature. But--What is
nature?
Nature is that which we observe in perception through the senses. In
this sense-perception we are aware of something which is not thought
and which is self-contained for thought. This property of being
self-contained for thought lies at the base of natural science. It means
that nature can be thought of as a closed system whose mutual relations
do not require the expression of the fact that they are thought about.
Thus in a sense nature is independent of thought. By this statement no
metaphysical pronouncement is intended. What I mean is that we can
think about nature without thinking about thought. I shall say that then
we are thinking 'homogeneously' about nature.

Of course it is possible to think of nature in conjunction with thought
about the fact that nature is thought about. In such a case I shall say that
we are thinking 'heterogeneously' about nature. In fact during the last
few minutes we have been thinking heterogeneously about nature.
Natural science is exclusively concerned with homogeneous thoughts
about nature.
But sense-perception has in it an element which is not thought. It is a
difficult psychological question whether sense-perception involves
thought; and if it does involve thought, what is the kind of thought
which it necessarily involves. Note that it has been stated above that
sense-perception is an awareness of something which is not thought.
Namely, nature is not thought. But this is a different question, namely
that the fact of sense-perception has a factor which is not thought. I call
this factor 'sense-awareness.' Accordingly the doctrine that natural
science is exclusively concerned with homogeneous thoughts about
nature does not immediately carry with it the conclusion that natural
science is not concerned with sense-awareness.
However, I do assert this further statement; namely, that though natural
science is concerned with nature which is the terminus of
sense-perception, it is not concerned with the sense-awareness itself.
I repeat the main line of this argument, and expand it in certain
directions.
Thought about nature is different from the sense-perception of nature.
Hence the fact of sense-perception has an ingredient or factor which is
not thought. I call this ingredient sense-awareness. It is indifferent to
my argument whether sense-perception has or has not thought as
another ingredient. If sense-perception does not involve thought, then
sense-awareness and sense-perception are identical. But the something
perceived is perceived as an entity which is the terminus of the
sense-awareness, something which for thought is beyond the fact of
that sense-awareness. Also the something perceived certainly does not
contain other sense-awarenesses which are different from the
sense-awareness which is an ingredient in that perception. Accordingly
nature as disclosed in sense-perception is self-contained as against

sense-awareness, in addition to being self-contained as against thought.
I will also express this self-containedness of nature by saying that
nature is closed to mind.
This closure of nature does not carry with it any metaphysical doctrine
of the disjunction of nature and mind. It means that in sense-perception
nature is disclosed as a complex of entities whose mutual relations are
expressible in thought without reference to mind, that