The Concept of Nature | Page 6

of the
proposition which it helps to express.
Again the expositor might be standing in Green Park--where there are
no college buildings--and say,
'This college building is commodious.'
Probably no proposition will be received by the recipient because the
demonstrative phrase,
'This college building'
has failed to demonstrate owing to the absence of the background of
sense-awareness which it presupposes.
But if the expositor had said,
'A college building in Green Park is commodious,'
the recipient would have received a proposition, but a false one.

Language is usually ambiguous and it is rash to make general
assertions as to its meanings. But phrases which commence with 'this'
or 'that' are usually demonstrative, whereas phrases which commence
with 'the' or 'a' are often descriptive. In studying the theory of
propositional expression it is important to remember the wide
difference between the analogous modest words 'this' and 'that' on the
one hand and 'a' and 'the' on the other hand. The sentence
'The college building in Regent's Park is commodious'
means, according to the analysis first made by Bertrand Russell, the
proposition,
'There is an entity which (i) is a college building in Regent's Park and
(ii) is commodious and (iii) is such that any college building in
Regent's Park is identical with it.'
The descriptive character of the phrase 'The college building in
Regent's Park' is thus evident. Also the proposition is denied by the
denial of any one of its three component clauses or by the denial of any
combination of the component clauses. If we had substituted 'Green
Park' for 'Regent's Park' a false proposition would have resulted. Also
the erection of a second college in Regent's Park would make the
proposition false, though in ordinary life common sense would politely
treat it as merely ambiguous.
'The Iliad' for a classical scholar is usually a demonstrative phrase; for
it demonstrates to him a well-known poem. But for the majority of
mankind the phrase is descriptive, namely, it is synonymous with 'The
poem named "the Iliad".'
Names may be either demonstrative or descriptive phrases. For
example 'Homer' is for us a descriptive phrase, namely, the word with
some slight difference in suggestiveness means 'The man who wrote
the Iliad.'
This discussion illustrates that thought places before itself bare
objectives, entities as we call them, which the thinking clothes by

expressing their mutual relations. Sense-awareness discloses fact with
factors which are the entities for thought. The separate distinction of an
entity in thought is not a metaphysical assertion, but a method of
procedure necessary for the finite expression of individual propositions.
Apart from entities there could be no finite truths; they are the means
by which the infinitude of irrelevance is kept out of thought.
To sum up: the termini for thought are entities, primarily with bare
individuality, secondarily with properties and relations ascribed to them
in the procedure of thought; the termini for sense-awareness are factors
in the fact of nature, primarily relata and only secondarily discriminated
as distinct individualities.
No characteristic of nature which is immediately posited for knowledge
by sense-awareness can be explained. It is impenetrable by thought, in
the sense that its peculiar essential character which enters into
experience by sense-awareness is for thought merely the guardian of its
individuality as a bare entity. Thus for thought 'red' is merely a definite
entity, though for awareness 'red' has the content of its individuality.
The transition from the 'red' of awareness to the 'red' of thought is
accompanied by a definite loss of content, namely by the transition
from the factor 'red' to the entity 'red.' This loss in the transition to
thought is compensated by the fact that thought is communicable
whereas sense-awareness is incommunicable.
Thus there are three components in our knowledge of nature, namely,
fact, factors, and entities. Fact is the undifferentiated terminus of
sense-awareness; factors are termini of sense-awareness, differentiated
as elements of fact; entities are factors in their function as the termini of
thought. The entities thus spoken of are natural entities. Thought is
wider than nature, so that there are entities for thought which are not
natural entities.
When we speak of nature as a complex of related entities, the 'complex'
is fact as an entity for thought, to whose bare individuality is ascribed
the property of embracing in its complexity the natural entities. It is our
business to analyse this conception and in the course of the analysis
space and time should appear. Evidently the relations holding between

natural entities are themselves natural entities, namely they are also
factors of fact, there for sense-awareness. Accordingly the structure of
the natural complex can never be completed in thought, just as the
factors of fact can never be exhausted in sense-awareness.
Unexhaustiveness is an essential character of our knowledge of nature.
Also nature does not exhaust