Christian Thomas Kohl The Metaphysical Foundations of Buddhism and Modern Science

F.H. Bradley for instance, fall into this pitfall. It must be remembered
that just as the relations modify the natures of the relata, so the relata
modify the nature of the relation. The relationship is not a universal. It
is a concrete fact with the same concreteness as the relata. The notion
of the immanence of the cause in the effect illustrates this truth. We
have to discover a doctrine of nature which expresses the concrete
relatedness of physical functionings and mental functionings, of the past
with the present, and also expresses the concrete composition of
physical realities which are individually diverse.
Modern physics has abandoned the doctrine of Simple Location. The
physical things which we term stars, planets, lumps of matter, molecules,
electrons, protons, quanta of energy are each to be conceived as
modifications of conditions within space-time, extending throughout its
whole range. There is a focal region, which in common speech is where
the thing is. But its influence streams away from it with finite velocity
throughout the utmost recesses of space and time. Of course, it is
natural, and for certain purposes entirely proper, to speak of the focal
region, thus modified, as the thing itself situated there. But difficulties
arise if we press this way of thought to far. For physics, the thing itself
is what is does, and what it does is this divergent stream of influence.
Again the focal region cannot be separated from the external stream. It
obstinately refuses to be conceived as an instantaneous fact. It is a
state of agitation, only differing from the so-called external stream by