ilya_prigogine_isabelle_stengers_alvin_tofflerbookfi-org

93 THE TWO CULTURES
ence at its apotheosis, and thus identified problems which are
indeed still our problems. But, like the post-Kantian critics,
he identified the science of his time with science in general.
He thus attributed to science de jure limitations that were only
de facto. As a consequence he tried to define once and for all a
statu quo for the respective domains of science and other intellectual
activities. Thus the only perspective remaining open
for him was to introduce a way in which antagonistic approaches
could at best merely coexist.
In conclusion, even if the way in which Bergson sums up the
achievement of classical science is still to some extent acceptable,
we can no longer accept it as a statement of the eternal
limits of the scientific enterprise. We conceive of it more as a
program that is beginning to be implemented by the metamorphosis
science is now undergoing. In particular, we know
that time linked with motion does not exhaust the meaning of
time in physics. Thus the limitations Bergson criticized are
beginning to be overcome, not by abandoning the scientific
approach or abstract thinking but by perceiving the limitations
of the concepts of classical dynamics and by discovering new
formulations valid in more general situations.
Process and Reality: Whitehead
As we have emphasized, the element common to Kant, Hegel,
and Bergson is the search for an approach to reality that is
different from the approach of classical science. This is also
the fundamental aim of Whitehead's philosophy, which is resolutely
pre-Kantian. In his most important book, Process and
Reality, he puts us back in touch with the great philosophies of
the Classical Age and their quest for rigorous conceptual experimentation.
Whitehead sought to understand human experience as a pro
cess belonging to nature, as physical existence. This challenge
led him, on the one hand, to reject the philosophic tradition
that defined subjective experience in terms of consciousness,
thought, and sense perception, and, on the other, to conceive
of all physical existence in terms of enjoyment, feeling, urge,
appetite, and yearning-that is, to cross swords with what he