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