[The Concept of Nature by Alfred North Whitehead]@TWC D-Link bookThe Concept of Nature CHAPTER IV 16/46
The arbitrarily large event with which the series starts has no importance at all.
We can arbitrarily exclude any set of events at the big end of an abstractive set without the loss of any important property to the set as thus modified. I call the limiting character of natural relations which is indicated by an abstractive set, the 'intrinsic character' of the set; also the properties, connected with the relation of whole and part as concerning its members, by which an abstractive set is defined together form what I call its 'extrinsic character.' The fact that the extrinsic character of an abstractive set determines a definite intrinsic character is the reason of the importance of the precise concepts of space and time.
This emergence of a definite intrinsic character from an abstractive set is the precise meaning of the law of convergence. For example, we see a train approaching during a minute.
The event which is the life of nature within that train during the minute is of great complexity and the expression of its relations and of the ingredients of its character baffles us.
If we take one second of that minute, the more limited event which is thus obtained is simpler in respect to its ingredients, and shorter and shorter times such as a tenth of that second, or a hundredth, or a thousandth--so long as we have a definite rule giving a definite succession of diminishing events--give events whose ingredient characters converge to the ideal simplicity of the character of the train at a definite instant.
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