P.2
Science and the Modern World (Lowell Lectures 1925)
Relativity
"An event is the grasping into unity of a pattern of aspects. The effectiveness of an event beyond itself arises from the aspects of itself which go to form the prehended unities of other events. Except for the systematic aspects of geometrical shape, this effectiveness is trivial, if the mirrored pattern attaches merely to the event as one whole. If the pattern endures throughout the successive parts of the event, and also exhibits itself in the whole so that the event is the life history of the pattern, then in virtue of that enduring pattern the event gains in external effectiveness. For its own effectiveness is reinforced by the analogous aspects of all its successive parts. The event constitutes a patterned value with a permanence inherent throughout its own parts; and by reason of this inherent endurance the event is important for the modification of its environment." p121
re: Space-Time Systems
"In support of this assumption of definite serial processes, we appeal: 1) to the immediate presentation throught the senses of an extended universe beyond ourselves and simultaneous with ourselves. 2) to the intellectual apprehension of a meaning to the question which asks what is now immediately happening in regions beyond the cognisance of our senses, (3) to the analysis of what is involved in the endurance of emergent objects." p127
"Realisation is the becoming of time in the field of extension. Extension is the complex of events, qua their potentialities. In realisation the potentiality becomes actuality." p129
Quantum Theory
"Thus in organic theory, a pattern need not endure in undifferentiated sameness through time. The pattern may be esentially one of aesthetic contrasts requiring a lapse of time for its unfolding." p134
Science and Philosophy
(Leibniz)..."had therefore on his hands two distinct points of view. One was that the final real entity is an orgainising activity, fusing ingredients into a unity, so that this unity is the reality. The other point of view is that the final real entities are substances supporting qualities. The first point of view depends upon the acceptance of internal relations binding together all reality. The latter is inconsistent with the reality of such relations."p.156
God
"There are no single occasions, in the sense of isolated occasions. Actuality is through and through togetherness - togetherness of otherwise isolated eternal objects, and togetherness of all actual occasions."p.176
"God is the ultimate limitation, and His existence is the ultimate irrationality. For no reason can be given for that limitation which it stands in His nature to impose. God is not concrete, but He is the ground for concrete actuality. No reason can be given for the nature of God., because that nature is the ground of rationality."p.179