抄録
Modern natural philosophy was often caught in the fallacy of bifurcation. In opposition to the bifurcation, Whitehead adopted Kant's assumption, ‘significance’ is an essential element in concrete experience. Significance is the relatedness of things. According to Whitehead, significance forms concrete experiences. By discussing significance, Whitehead attempted to overcome the bifurcation, and supposed that both our perceptual life and universal nature could be founded. The aim of this paper is to discuss ‘significance’ defined by Whitehead, and then to discuss cognisance by relatedness in the structure of signification. The first chapter discusses the structure of signification. The structure reveals a whole-and-part relation. This relation is discussed by the interaction between a percipient event and a duration. The percipient event defines the duration which is ‘all nature’, and the duration determines the percipient event which is a part. In Chapter 2, cognisance by relatedness is discussed in the structure of signification. For example, without knowing the qualities of the moon, we can know the moon in terms of temporal and spatial relations. We take cognisance of the nature beyond our direct perception. Such cognisance is the basis of scientific theories of externality. Thus, scientific theories are founded on significance.
