1

Beyond Dogmatic Finality: Whitehead and the

Laws of Nature
Draft Paper
Jeremy Dunham
University of the West of England

The debate surrounding the laws of nature continues to be one of the most
important and interesting topics for metaphysics because, as Stephen
Mumford
1
has recently argued, scientists are no more certain about what the
laws of nature actually are than philosophers. It is the job of scientists to
discover natural laws, but the answer to the question which guides
Whiteheads enquiry - What exactly do we mean by the notion of the Laws of
Nature?
2
- remains unclear. In this paper I will focus on the discussion of the
laws of nature presented by Whitehead in Adventures of Ideas. An earlier
theory of natures laws can be collected from the scattered comments found in
both Science and the Modern World and Process and Reality. This earlier
theory owes much to the Cambridge Personal Idealist James Ward. However,
I will argue that that the discussion of natures laws in Adventures of Ideas
functions as an interesting development of this theory. The discussion
expands well beyond the laws discovered by science towards an important
discussion of philosophical methodology, a defence of metaphysics and,
perhaps most importantly, a defence of systematic thinking - on the condition
that such thinking never lapses into dogmatic finality. Whitehead therefore
does not offer us a finished theory of natures laws; rather, he introduces four
dominant doctrines all with distinctly different answers to the question: what
is a law of nature? First, the doctrine of law as imposed; Second, the doctrine
of law as observed succession; Third, the doctrine of law as immanent; and
forth and finally, the doctrine of law as conventional interpretation. His
critical discussion of the dominant doctrines of the laws of nature is aimed
towards showing how the first three doctrines should not be seen as working
in strict opposition. Each doctrine is what Whitehead calls a working

1
Mumford, S. (2004) Laws in Nature. London: Routledge
2
Whitehead, A.N. (1933:142) Adventures of Ideas. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hereafter
AI
2
hypothesis each with its own successes and its own failures. Whitehead then,
I will argue, attempts to reunite these theories so that they can grow together
producing a new working hypothesis with a wider sweep. This veritable
concrescence of theories in turn must not be seen as a final theory but one
which must be critiqued and developed on its own terms.
I will argue that it is not that Whitehead offers us a radically new theory
of laws in Adventures of Ideas but rather that he uses the laws of nature as an
example of how metaphysics must be done. Metaphysics must not be seen as
the battleground for mock combats between absolutely opposed armies but
rather the breeding ground in which discordances between theories can
produce new and improved theories. Metaphysics must always be a process of
development. Finally, I will conclude this paper, with an examination of
Whiteheads final recorded comments on natures laws, recorded by Lucien
Price in his Dialogues, in which he suggests that the analogy with laws should
perhaps be rejected altogether. These late dialogues show that this as a
question which Whitehead continued to think through and develop his
thoughts on well after the publication of Adventures of Ideas.

James Ward and Whiteheads Theory of Laws Before
Adventures of Ideas

Whiteheads theory of natures laws in both Science and the Modern World
and Process and Reality is a theory of evolving patterns. As Pierfrancesco
Basile
3
has pointed out, this theory seems to clearly echo the theory of natures
laws presented by the Cambridge personal Idealist James Ward. For Ward
4
,
the laws of nature are the global patterns which emerge from the egoistic
activities of a community of mutually creative monads, aiming towards a kind
of unreachable Platonic/Hegelian Idea of the Good. The unreachability of
this goal means that Wards monads are constantly evolving entities which,
through their mutual activities and creative syntheses form novel emergences.
The background independence of the monadological framework means that

3
Basile, P. (2007) Rethinking Leibniz: Whitehead, Ward and the Idealistic Legacy, Process Studies
(2007) Vol. 35. No 2.
4
See Ward, J. (1903 [1915]) Naturalism and Agnosticism: 4
th
Edition. London: A & C Black, Limited
3
there can be no laws prior to the monads themselves. The only law
determining a monads behaviour is its individual appetition. The original
spontaneity of the monads is tamed and controlled by the mutual interaction
with every other monad and therefore temporary habits are formed. The laws
are the product of evolutionary processes and there is always the possibility of
the creation of new patterns and the potential for the evolution of new laws.
The laws of nature which the physicists search for, must merely be the
statistical averages of habits formed by monadic interactions. Ward claimed
that while the statist is aware of the deviations underneath his aggregates, the
physicist is blind to this fact and treats his abstractions as if they were
realities. Whiteheads theory of laws differs little from this explanation. Laws
are statistical, dominant at a certain level but ultimately glossing over the
lapses and deviancies underneath the particular observed level. The laws are
not outside forces controlling the social environment but on the contrary they
are the outcome of the social environment.

Adventures of Ideas: Four Doctrines

In Adventures of Ideas, the discussion of natures laws takes up a much more
important role. Whitehead opens up his discussion by emphasising the wide
scope of the notion of law. Such a discussion is not only of interest to scientists
but is also essentially important for technology, methodology, scholarship and
speculation. The question that guides Whiteheads enquiry is: What exactly is
meant by the notion of the Laws of Nature? In order to attempt to navigate
through all the various contours of this question he offers us four doctrines
which he believed to be the most dominant of his day: the doctrine of Law as
immanent, the doctrine of Law as imposed, and the doctrine of Law as
observed order of succession, in other words, Law as mere description, and
lastly the later doctrine of Law as conventional interpretation.
5
In this section
I will present an overview of these four doctrines exploring Whiteheads
analyses of this doctrines as important working hypotheses. First, I will start
with the doctrine of Law as observed order of succession.
Whitehead describes this first doctrine as defining law as little more

5
AI 142
4
than the observation of the persistence of patterns. At first sight this appears
to be very much in keeping with Whiteheads comments on laws in Process
and Reality; that laws are merely statistical facts. Whiteheads problem with
this doctrine is that it is necessarily limited in its focus. The theory is
associated with the positivist philosophers and the doctrine of law as observed
order tells us only about the individual observed facts which make up the
succession. Each observed fact is a contingently new moment. There is no
search for an underlying principle of reason or a principle of causation and
any attempt to undergo such a search is met with extreme scepticism. Faith in
induction meets a similar fate. However, Whitehead argues that this doctrine
is ultimately descriptive of the truth of scientific methodology: Observe and
observe, until finally you detect a regularity of sequence
6
.
In Modes of Thought Whitehead is uncompromising in his critique of
this doctrine: Suppose that a hundred thousand years ago our ancestors had
been wise positivists. They sought for no reasons. What they had observed was
sheer matter of fact. It was the development of no necessity. They would have
searched for no reasons underlying facts immediately observed. Civilization
would never have developed.
7
The problem with the rejection of metaphysical
speculation implicit in this doctrine is that its epistemological atomism
inspired by Hume's denial of necessary connections, unconsciously turns into
a dogmatic adherence to an unappealing metaphysical atomism. The
seductive appeal of this doctrine is that it eliminates the need for the
somewhat messy and difficult metaphysical doctrines of God and internal
relations, but this neatness comes at a high cost and is only possible at a
certain level of abstraction. One of the most important costs is that all faith in
induction must be abandoned. If epistemological atomism will not allow us to
see the next moment as conditioned by its prior moment then we can make no
sense of probability whatsoever. If probability is absolutely unlimited then the
notion of chance is almost meaningless. Statistics cannot help us unless we
make some illegitimate metaphysical claim for the permanence of statistical
form. All that is left is contingency in its most absolute form. Even expectation
then cannot answer Hotspurs question, But will they come, when you do call

6
AI 149
7
Whitehead, A.N. (1938) Modes of Thought. New York: The Free Press. Hereafter MT p149
5
for them?
8

The second dominant doctrine is the doctrine of imposed law. In
Process and Reality, it is this doctrine which suffers the most vicious critique.
This is because the doctrine of imposed law has more often than not been put
in place for the purpose of adding some order to a universe composed of
passive entities. When the notion of Aristotelian active substance was replaced
by Cartesian passive substance some extra entity was needed to make the
passive substances behave in an orderly fashion. It is therefore unsurprising
then, as Ruby has recently noted, that the notion of laws of nature really
began to talk hold at the same time as Cartesian substance. But it is clear that
Whitehead considers this a poor solution. He writes: those modern
empiricists who substitute law for causation fail even worse than Hume. For
law no more satisfies Humes test than does causation. There is no
impression of law, or of lawfulness.
9
The doctrine undergoes similarly severe
critique in Adventures of Ideas however, the working hypothesis gets a fairer
treatment and it successes are assessed as well as its failures.
As the doctrine suggests constituents which are ultimately passive,
these constituents must be connected solely by external relations; this
relationship between constituents is imposed by the laws of nature. The
unsavoury problem which this doctrine introduces is the problem of laws-
particulars dualism. The particulars can tell us nothing about the laws which
are imposed on them and the laws can tells us nothing about the particulars
which they govern. This doctrine, which is almost the common sense view of
laws, is unsatisfactory for the same reason that Cartesian dualism is so
unsatisfactory. Just as there is no satisfactory account of how a cogito entirely
separate from its body can govern it, there seems to be no satisfactory account
of how laws entirely separate from particulars can govern. Just as a mind-
matter dualism seems unappealing, so does a laws-particulars dualism. This
Cartesian dualistic theory of laws is suggestive of a transcendent imposing
Deity who must be obeyed. As Whitehead writes: When he said, Let there be
light there was light and not a mere imitation or a statistical average
10
.

8
AI 160
9
PR 167
10
AI 145
6
The success of the doctrine of imposed law is that it is very difficult to
understand how any kind of consistent pattern could exist without it.
Regardless of whether entities are the epistemological atoms of the law as
mere description or immanent powers, the question which remains is: how
does contingency develop into something resembling necessity? In addition,
the whole impetus for scientific research has been based around the discovery
of something resembling imposed order, even before Descartes. And as
Whitehead stated in the quote above from Modes of Thought, without this
impetus for the discovery of order or for the discovery of reason there would
be no science and no civilisation.
The third doctrine The doctrine of conventional interpretation
receives the least attention. It considers the laws of nature as arbitrary
systems of speculation formed without any reference to direct observation of
nature itself. The success of this doctrine is that it describes the process by
which speculation develops into an interpretation of Nature. Mathematics is a
particularly good example of such a discipline which has developed along
these lines. Subsequently, mathematics has provided the tools for an
interpretation of nature. The conclusion seems to be, Whitehead remarks,
that Nature is patient of interpretation in terms of Laws which happen to
interest us
11
.
Mathematics has attempted to show that there is an element of
arbitrary truth regarding our interpretations of the world. When interpreting
the geometrical character of nature, any region which exemplifies metrical
Euclidean geometry can also be interpreted in terms of metrical Elliptic
geometry and metrical Hyperbolic geometry. However, Whitehead argues that
this type of mathematical truth has no bearing whatsoever on the laws of
nature. For each geometry exemplifies a different form of distance. He jokes
that if this method of conventional interpretation could be used for natures
laws, we would have to ask our friend who had just motored for a hundred
miles to see us, which form of geometry he had used. Therefore, Whitehead
argues that, as it is fairly obvious that we all adopt the same system: the
appeal to geometry can be dismissed when we are discussing the question of

11
AI 174
7
the conventionality of the laws of nature.
12
The doctrine of conventional
interpretation does express an important truth of scientific laws - that the
laws we are currently aware of are the laws as interpreted in terms of the
currently available mathematics and physics. There is no doubt in
Whiteheads mind that there are a huge number of abstract sciences still to be
developed, all of which will guide our search for laws. The truth of
conventional interpretation is that laws can only be interpreted by those
methods we have so far discovered. The error of conventional interpretation is
to twist this doctrine and to assume that the facts of nature can be used to
illustrate any kind of law we may wish to attempt to apply.
The forth and final doctrine 'the doctrine of law as immanent' is
certainly the doctrine that Whitehead discusses with the clearest approval. He
suggests a starting point for this doctrine which could be read as the absolute
antithesis of the epistemological atomism used to start the doctrine of law as
mere description. For this starting point he turns to Platos Sophist in which
the Eleatic Stranger offers to Theatetus a definition of reality as simply power:
My suggestion would be, that anything which possesses any sort of power to
affect another, or to be affected by another even for a moment, however
trifling the cause and however slight and momentary the effect, has real
existence; and I hold that the definition of being is simply power.
13
This
definition makes the ability to cause an effect, to produce a difference or to be
effected the very definition of reality. The very test which anything must go
through in order to prove its existence is that it must be able to cause an
effect. The very essence of being is power. If Whitehead's philosophy is the
inversion of the neo-Humeanism of the positivists, as he claims in Modes of
Thought, it is because Plato's reality test is his starting point for metaphysics
not epistemological atomism which must only be regarded as a secondary
conjecture. Starting from this reality test requires a return to the doctrine of
internal relations expelled by Hume and his followers.
The individual patterns characteristic of a constituents internal
denominations combine to create higher order patterns through their mutual
relations with other natural things. The combinatory emergent patterns are

12
AI 175
13
Sophist 247E, Jowetts translation In. AI 153
8
the laws of nature. Absolute being and absolute laws are abandoned in favour
of interdependence. As these individual constituents change so will the laws of
nature. Therefore, one important consequence of this doctrine is that we
cannot expect exact conformation to any law, but that does not mean that we
must abandon all faith in induction as we must with the doctrine of
observation. Of all the doctrines discussed by Whitehead, this is the only one
which considers nature as intrinsically powerful and alive; therefore the
creative urge of nature gives us some reason to have some limited faith in
induction. We are not brought towards necessity but rather Platonic
persuasion. In Modes of Thought Whitehead defines the essence of power as
the drive towards aesthetic worth. It is responsible for both efficient and final
causation. It is efficient cause, maintaining its power of survival. It is final
cause, maintaining in the creature its appetition for creation
14
.
Perhaps controversially Whitehead states that the doctrine of the law as
immanent is the one now defended by physicists for the majority of nature's
laws. Presumably Whitehead believed that this was the implicit assumption of
his contemporary physicians rather than a view they overtly announced. This
would make sense in the context of his claim from 'Nature Lifeless' in which
he argues that: 'The presuppositions of yesterday's physics remains in the
mind of physicists, although their expert doctrines taken in detail deny them'
15


A Concrescence of Theories

Whitehead not only finds in Plato the first doctrine of the law as immanent,
but also the first attempt to unite this doctrine with the doctrine of law as
imposed. This is the first important concresence of theories. It is through
Plato that we find the reconciliation of the nature of individual temporal
constituents with Eternal Being. Imposed law is not found in a transcendent
creator but rather Whitehead finds in his modification of Plato's receptacle a
way to combine the two doctrines without falling into impossible
heterogeneous dualism. The Receptacle of becoming is introduced into Platos
cosmology in order to explain how a realm of pure becoming can have any sort

14
MT 119
15
MT 131
9
of thisness. To think of things as material substances is a mistake, the pure
becomings of powers form combinations which are only a unity through the
permanent being of the Receptacle. Plato claims that the Receptacle is a
nature invisible and characterless, all-receiving, partaking in some very
puzzling way of the intelligible and very hard to apprehend.
16
Whiteheads
own use of the Receptacle is an adjustment of Platos original model. While for
Plato things move in and out the Receptacle, Whiteheads Receptacle is the
receiver of all actual occasions, the matrix of their interconnections and
objective immortality. While the Receptacle is permanent, its form is always in
flux due to the processual nature of Whiteheads metaphysics. It is the form of
the unity of the multiplicity to which all future occasions must conform.
Whitehead argues that the Receptacle should be the model for our conception
of space-time, not an exterior background but rather the general
interconnectedness of all actual entities, a single community of connected yet
individual actual entities advancing towards novelty. The real point is that the
essential connectedness of things can never be safely omitted. This is the
doctrine of a thoroughgoing relativity which infects the universe and which
makes the totality of things as it were a Receptacle uniting all that happens.
17

While the receptacle imposes a common relationship, it has no power to
impose the particular form of that relationship. The law of imposition is not
imposed by the receptacle but rather it is the very interconnectedness and the
objective immortality of all passing occasions which imposes the future law to
which all following actual occasions must obey.
The discussion between the Eleatic stranger and Theaetetus in The
Sophist unearths a third type of reality, eidola, an intermediary between
absolute reality and the totally unreal. This region must exist otherwise it
would not be possible to talk about the false. The stranger argues that we must
part with Parmenides and agree that what is not, in some respect has being,
and conversely that what is, in a way is not.
18
Whitehead heralds this as one of
Platos greatest discoveries. However, Platos use of the doctrine of not-being
extends only as far as the Ideas and Whitehead argues that Plato should have

16
Timaeus 51A. While Whitehead uses the A.E. Taylor translation and commentary, all quotes in this
essay are form Cornford, F.M. (1935) Platos Cosmology: The Timaeus of Plato. Cambridge: Hackett
17
AI 197
18
Sophist 241D
10
extended this doctrine further. He should have also applied it to perishing
occasions. When they perish, he claims occasions pass from the immediacy
of being into the not-being of immediacy. But that does not mean that they are
nothing. They remain stubborn fact.
19
The doctrine of the being of not-being
allows Whitehead to produce a conception of both the immortality of the past
and the lure of potential Ideas as de re rather than ante re, that is, part of the
unity of nature rather than external to nature. It is this doctrine of the being of
not-being which allows the receptacle imposing and uniting power. The
process and creation of the future must always obey the objective immortality
of the past. Not only is the universe a Receptacle but also our own personal
unity can be seen as Receptacle, invisible, formless, and all receptive. It is a
locus which persists, and provides an emplacement for all the occasions of
experience.
20
This is not Platos doctrine of the soul, Whitehead tells us, but it
provides a much more satisfactory account of personal unity.
If in Plato we find a concrescence of imposed law and immanent law,
in Epicurus we find the first concrescence of imposed law and law as mere
description. And it could be argued that in Whitehead we find a concrescence
of Plato and Epicurus. Lucretius' Nature of the Universe is the epic of the
atomic theory in which the world is an interminable shower of atomic
particles, streaming through space, swerving, intermingling, disentangling
their paths, recombining them.
21
The problem with the atomistic theory is that
it fails to go far enough and to reach the intrinsic nature of the atoms.
However, it does seem to supply Platos missing text. Whitehead argues that
Plato should have written a companion book for the Symposium in order to
highlight that Eros can never be thought adequately without also paying
attention to the Furies - the horrors of imperfect realisation. And who better
to supply this book than the Epicureans. Whitehead further expands on this
confrontation between Eros and the Furies in his discussion of Beauty and
Evil when he claims that this intermingling is the result of the finitude of
actualisation and the necessary exclusion of alternative possibility which
results from this finitude. In Epicurean terms we can say that: Even the

19
AI 305
20
AI 241
21
AI 155
11
sunbeam, falling on shady places, is an image of this eternal war.
22

Such a concrescence of theory can also be seen as necessary from the
discussion of Leibniz and Lucretius. If both thinkers obtained such different
answers from their enquiry into atoms, it is because they asked such different
questions. Lucretius, Whitehead claims, can tell us what an atom might look
like to others, but Leibniz's phenomenology of the atom is an answer to
another question: 'how an atom is feeling about itself' Leibniz extends the
experiential intuitions of philosophy all the way down to the ultimate
constituents and therefore discovers experience all the way down. Lucretius
examines the objective while Leibniz investigates the subjective but neither
side can be ignored. Leibniz takes us towards the doctrine of immanence, but
Leibniz is still too trapped by determinism, too trapped by Plato's Eros and
therefore fails to recognise the necessity of the companion text the Furies. As a
result Leibniz ends up endorsing one of the most extreme doctrines of
imposed law in the history of philosophy.
If the doctrine of law as immanent is the most important doctrine for
Whitehead, it is because the doctrine of law as imposed and the doctrine of
mere description make no sense without it. They lead us into absurdities and
false dilemmas. These problems can only be overcome if our working
hypotheses can be developed together. This requires a sensitive openness to
our philosophical intuitions and careful examination of the various methods
of philosophical enquiry which must not be seen in strict opposition but rather
evaluated in terms of what their discordances can offer. The doctrine of law as
imposed and the doctrine of observed succession present theories which are
clear and distinct, but this clarity must not be seen as originative but rather
arsing from the vagueness of the background of power.

Methodology

Whiteheads discussion of the laws of nature is not only a development of a
theory only sketched in its briefest outline in Process and Reality but it also
serves as a discussion of the importance of the constant development of

22
Marx, K. (1839 [1927]) Marxs Notebooks on Epicurean Philosophy: Fourth Notebook. [online]
available at: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1839/notebook/index.htm Accessed on:
23.08.2008
12
metaphysics. It serves as an argument for working hypotheses under scrutiny
rather than dogmatic finalities. It is not only the theory of laws which is
important but also the very method of speculation itself through which we
theorise. Both sides of this debate are as important as each other. This is made
clear when Whitehead remarks that: it is interesting to notice that, according
to Plato, the distinguishing mark of the philosopher in contrast to the Sophist
is his resolute attempt to reconcile conflicting doctrines, each with its own
solid ground of support. In the history of ideas the doctrine of Speculation is
at least as important as the doctrines for Speculation
23
. It is for this reason
that the discussion of nature's laws extends past the various doctrines and all
the way to philosophical methodology. It could be argued that Whiteheads
discussion of the laws of nature essentially fulfils a similar role in his
Adventures of Ideas as Kants Amphiboly of the Concepts of Reflection fulfils
in the Critique of Pure Reason. For Kant, a philosopher commits an
amphibolous fallacy when he conflates the understanding and sensibility a
fallacy of treating two very different faculties as if they were one. The two
philosophers guilty of committing the amphibolous fallacy were Locke and
Leibniz. Leibnizs error, Kant claimed was to intellectualise appearances and
thus underestimate the importance of sensibility. Locke committed the
opposite error and underestimated the importance of the understanding
whilst claiming that everything comes from the senses. The bulk of the
amphiboly is taken up by Kants critique of Leibniz and aimed to show that
any attempt at using formal logic in order to discover truths about the
appearances of sensibility is destined to fail. While Kant distinguishes
between two faculties, Whitehead puts forward three types of knowledge.
First, direct intuitions unspoiled by verbal expression. Second, literary modes
of expression and the dialectic deductions which we perform through these
modes and third, the purely deductive sciences. It is Whiteheads aim in his
discussion of natural laws to argue that an adequate metaphysics of laws must
be able to recognise the importance of this first kind of knowledge the
intuitions - and not let the abstractions formed by the second and third drown
it out. If the slogan of Kants amphiboly was: we must not underestimate the
importance of intuitions for our metaphysics of experience. Then the slogan

23
AI 153
13
of Whiteheads discussion regarding natures laws can be: we must not
underestimate the importance of intuition for our metaphysics of science.
Whitehead's second form of knowledge our literary training - has
benefited us in that we can now consider the past and the future in terms of
decades and centuries but it has blinded us to our immediate past and
immediate future the past of half a second ago or even a tenth of a second
ago. It is only through a sensitive training of our philosophical intuitions to
this immanent past and future that we can recognise the truth of the doctrine
of immanent law and Plato's reality test. Without such intuitions we will
always be trapped in the false dilemma between necessity and absolute
contingency and induction will be useless. Whitehead's three kinds of
knowledge are not three completely heterogeneous faculties, like Kant's
sensibility and understanding, they are in constant interaction and our
intuitions must affect our construction of categories. As we critique and
develop our working hypotheses regarding the laws of nature, we must
constantly pay attention to our methods of philosophical enquiry and attempt
to ensure that we do not ignore one form of knowledge due to the
development and successes of another.

Final Remarks

I want to finish this paper with a discussion of one of the conversations
recorded by Lucien Price from September 11
th
1945
24
. This conversation or
dialogue is particularly interesting because it can be read as a reprise of the
discussion of nature's laws found in Adventures of Ideas and it shows that
Whitehead continued to mull over and develop these ideas over ten years
later. The themes outlined in my paper are all found interweaved in this
dialogue. Starting from Plato's philosophy Whitehead makes the familiar
claim that we should never attempt to systematise or create a final Plato. The
very beauty of his dialogues is that they resist such attempts. The conversation
is clearly motivated by the immense change which had been apparent in the
previous fifty years. Whitehead discusses his education in the 1880s in which
he had been taught that Physics was nearing completion. However, by the

24
Price, L (1954) Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead. London: Max Reinhardt Hereafter D
14
1900s such closure had been demolished. Newtonian physics, he claimed, was
done for. Here we are treated to an important insight regarding the impetus
behind his thought. This historical example is raised to show that we must
consider the era of finality of thought as over. 'I've been fooled once,'
Whitehead writes, 'and I'll be damned if I'll be fooled again'. Plato is so
important for Whitehead because he symbolises the unlimited possibilities of
thought and the unending potentiality of change. If the ancient Greeks were to
return today, he speculates, Plato would have been the one man who would
not have been absolutely shocked, because he was the one philosopher who
was always taking account of the unpredictable. This is why Whitehead refers
to himself as a thorough going evolutionist. The conversation is ended by a
remarkable comment in which Whitehead asks 'Why talk about the laws of
nature when what we mean is the characteristic behaviour of phenomena
within certain limits at a given stage of development in a given epoch?'
25

This
is clearly a serious suggestion and Price records an even more forceful
repetition of the same point from the 11
th
November 1947 where Whitehead
states that: 'People make the mistake of talking about natural laws. There
are no natural laws. There are only temporal habits of nature.'
26
One important
claim that Whitehead follows this with is that the laws of nature follow from
the discrimination of detail obtained from the particular proportion of our
own human standpoint. But the absolute vastness of existence is beyond
comprehension. Price records that Whitehead touched his mahogany stand
and claimed that inside it may be civilisations as complex and diversified in
scale as our own; and up there, the heavens with all their vastness, may be
only a minute strand of tissue in the body of a being in the scale of which all
our universes are as a trifle. Man has only just begun to understand, not this
vastness, for we cannot grasp it, but that such vastness exists, and that it
throws out all his previous calculations.
27

It is from these final quotes, that we receive the last ingredient
necessary to form Whitehead's new synthesis of a doctrine of laws. A doctrine
in which the analogy with laws is rejected altogether. Such an analogy not only
suggests transcendence, but also eternal obedience and an arbitrary human-

25
D 342
26
D 363
27
ibid
15
centred scale. Like the doctrine of mere description Whitehead's metaphysics
is really a theory of lawlessness, yet unlike the docrtrine of mere description it
is a theory capable of accounting for regualrity through an adequate doctrine
of internal relations. As a result, Whitehead's synthesis of doctrines would be
better off without law in its title at all. Perhaps it would better suit the name:
'the doctrine of thorough going evolutionism'. Such a doctrine would allow
that 'our notions of physical dimension are absolutely arbitrary'
28
. It would
allow for development to work in jumps and that our current cosmic epoch
must not be considered as the be all and end all of existence, but is rather
merely a bubble in infinity. It would be a doctrine that accepts that science is
always engaged in metaphysics no matter how unconscious its metaphysical
doctrines may be. Such metaphysical enquiry can then never be avoided and
that without metaphysical speculation there can be no civilisation. The
doctrine would accept that the juridical analogy may have some explanatory
power at a certain level of abstraction, but would believe that it is ultimately
misleading. Finally, this doctrine would only be a working hypothesis - a
hypothesis that would undoubtedly have both successes and failures it
would merely be, and could only be, a bubble in the ongoing process of
speculative thought.

28
ibid