Page:Science and the Modern World.djvu/183

 very familiar form of apparatus. On the whole, it is better to concentrate attention on Michelson’s interferometer, and to leave Michelson's body and Michelson's mind out of the picture. The question is, why did the interferometer have black bands on its screen, and why did not these bands slightly shift as the instrument turned. The new relativity associates space and time with an intimacy not hitherto contemplated; and presupposes that their separation in concrete fact can be achieved by alternative modes of abstraction, yielding alternative meanings. But each mode of abstraction is directing attention to something which is in nature; and thereby is isolating it for the purpose of contemplation. The fact relevant to experiment, is the relevance of the interferometer to just one among the many alternative systems of these spatio-temporal relations which hold between natural entities.

What we must now ask of philosophy is to give us an interpretation of the status in nature of space and time, so that the possibility of alternative meanings is preserved. These lectures are not suited for the elaboration of details; but there is no difficulty in pointing out where to look for the origin of the discrimination between space and time. I am presupposing the organic theory of nature, which I have outlined as a basis for a thoroughgoing objectivism.

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