Page:An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Natural Knowledge.djvu/209



64. Rhythms. 64.1 The theory of percipient objects is beyond the scope of this work of which the aim is to illustrate the principles of natural knowledge by an examination of the data and experiential laws fundamental for physical science. A percipient object is in some sense beyond nature.

But nature includes life; and the way of conceiving nature developed in the preceding chapter has its bearing on biological conceptions as to the sense in which life can be said to be thus included.

64.2 An object is a characteristic of an event. Such an object may be in fact a multiple relation between objects situated in various parts of the whole event. In this case the quality of the whole is the relationship between its parts, and the relation between the parts is the quality of the whole. The whole event being what it is, its parts have thereby certain defined relations; and the parts having all the relations which they do have, it follows that the whole event is what it is. The whole is explained by a full knowledge of the parts as situations of objects, and the parts by a full knowledge of the whole. Such an object is a pattern.

64.3 The discussion of life in nature has become canalised along certain conventional lines based upon the traditional concepts of science. We are aware of living objects. But the phrase ‘living objects’ is misleading; we should more accurately say, ‘objects expressing life,’ or ‘life-bearing objects.’ Namely, the