Understanding

Lecture III of Section I in Alfred North Whitehead’s book Modes of Thought

Notes:

• Understanding is based upon ‘self-evidence,’ self-evidence being the characteristic of something ‘explaining itself’.
• Point 3: “Proof” = based on abstraction
  • 48 - Philosophy: proof should be at minimum, as self-evidence is where it works. You do not prove something, you make it known how it is self evident, which then leads to understanding. Philosophy “cannot be proved”
• Point 4: “Disorder, Evil, Error”
  • 51 The Many vs The One
    • unity requires multiplicity, which requires unity
  • Patterns
  • the finite depends on exclusion of others, cutting out those comparable
• Point 5: Process = change + permanence (they require each other)
  • ‘and’ vs ‘together’
  • inconsistency and process
    • inconsistency - two things brought together which cannot be brought together. ‘not being is a type of being’
      • 54 - “P and Q” how the universe escapes from the exclusions of inconsistency
    • the ‘finitude of circumstance’
  • The universe is infinite and unconfined (55), can never be understood, only abstracted or ‘proved’
• Point 6: Specialization and Systematization of Knowledge
  • ‘narrowing blocks process’
  • patterns and progress
• Point 7: Understanding has 2 modes of advance - gathering of detail within an assigned pattern, and discovery of novel pattern/novel detail (58)
  • Progress/advance/penetration → is lost → completed knowledge (certainty) (58)
  • Composition is based on inconsistency, on excluding.
  • There are two types of inconsistency
    • logical - difference between different things, alternative factors in a composition
    • aesthetic - details and the whole
    • The degree of abstraction in logical is high, whereas aesthetic is low
  • enjoyment and creation - of abstract details permitting the abstract unity

Understanding

Whitehead’s philosophy emphasizes that understanding emerges from relational knowledge. The sound of the tree falling is not an isolated phenomenon but a relational event, involving the tree, the air, and potential listeners. Sound, in Whitehead’s framework, is not merely vibrations; it is the prehension (grasping) of those vibrations as meaningful by a perceiving entity.

If there is no perceiver, the physical vibrations exist as a potential for understanding rather than as a fully realized phenomenon. Whitehead might assert that understanding the tree’s fall requires integrating its relationships—its context within the forest ecosystem, its connection to other processes, and the potential perceptions of living beings.