---
slug: paper-whitehead-a-n-1920-the-concept-of-nature
title: Whitehead, A.N. (1920). The Concept of Nature
canonical: https://miscsubjects.com/a/paper-whitehead-a-n-1920-the-concept-of-nature
---

## What the work establishes

Alfred North Whitehead delivered the Tarner Lectures at Trinity College in November 1919. He published them as The Concept of Nature in 1920. The book rejects the bifurcation of nature. It replaces substance-attribute views with an event ontology.

Nature is what appears in sense-awareness. It forms one connected system. Time and space arise as abstractions from events.

## Core results and primary passages

Whitehead states the main protest directly. "What I am essentially protesting against is the bifurcation of nature into two systems of reality, which, in so far as they are real, are real in different senses." (Chapter 2, p. 30 in standard editions; Brocku Mead Project text).

He continues: "One reality would be the entities such as electrons which are the study of speculative physics. This would be the reality which is there for knowledge; although on this theory it is never known. For what is known is the other sort of reality, which is the byplay of the mind. Thus there would be two natures, one is the conjecture and the other is the dream." (Chapter 2).

On events: "the ultimate fact for sense-awareness is an event." (Chapter 1). "This whole event is discriminated by us into partial events." (Chapter 1).

Whitehead defines the task of natural philosophy: "The primary task of a philosophy of natural science is to elucidate the concept of nature, considered as one complex fact for knowledge." (Chapter 2).

He insists on unity: "For natural philosophy everything perceived is in nature. We may not pick and choose. For us the red glow of the sunset should be as much part of nature as are the molecules and electric waves by which men of science would explain the phenomenon." (Chapter 2).

## Convergence patterns evidenced

The work supports the grain of the universe. Energy flows and structural patterns appear across scales when nature stays one process. Event ontology supplies the unit for branching, waves, flow networks, and memory without splitting observer from observed.

It aligns with the Ladder. Difference appears in sense-awareness. Flow follows as relations among events. Structure emerges as durations and objects. The Mirror Layer follows because the reader stands inside the events disclosed.

Self-organizing patterns gain a foundation. Thermodynamic regularity and bounded chaos fit one relational field of events.

## Distance from the full synthesis

Whitehead reaches event-process ontology. He stops short of explicit thermodynamic or biological scaling laws. The Ladder from difference through life to mind receives no direct treatment. The synthesis adds later empirical mappings of patterns across scales.

## Honest limits and disconfirming edges

The argument rests on textual analysis and conceptual critique. No new measurements or experiments appear. Later physics retained particle and field descriptions with success. Reductionist accounts continue to separate measurable causes from perceptual qualities in practice. The event ontology remains interpretive. It offers no formal proof that all laws reduce to event relations.

Whitehead acknowledges the difficulty: "Unless we produce the all-embracing relations, we are faced with a bifurcated nature." (Chapter 2). The book leaves the construction of those relations as future work.

## Relation to OIP loop

OIP treats the work object as the unit. Whitehead supplies the same unit in nature as event. Invocation maps to relations disclosed in sense-awareness. Ledger and receipt follow as coherent accounts of those relations. Repair occurs when bifurcation reappears and must be rejected again.

The Mirror Layer receives direct support. The knower and known stay inside the same field of events.

## Further textual anchors

Whitehead links time and space to events: "I shall endeavour to show that they are abstractions from more concrete elements of nature, namely, from events." (Chapter 2).

He closes the door on psychic additions: "This means a refusal to countenance any theory of psychic additions to the object known in perception." (Chapter 2).

These passages fix the ontology that later process thought extended. They remain available for any account that treats nature as unified process.
