Fallacy of misplaced concreteness
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The fallacy of misplaced concreteness, described by philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, involves thinking something is a 'concrete' reality when in fact it is an abstract belief, opinion or concept about the way things are.
The fallacy refers to Whitehead's thoughts on the relationship of spatial and temporal location of objects. Whitehead rejects the notion that a real, concrete object in the universe can be described simply in spatial or temporal extension. Rather, the object must be described as a field that has both a location in space and a location in time.
This is analogous to lessons learned from Flatland; much like humans cannot perceive of a line that has width but no breadth, humans also cannot perceive an object that has spatial but not temporal position (or vice versa).
...among the primary elements of nature as apprehended in our immediate experience, there is no element whatever which possesses this character of simple location. ... [Instead,] I hold that by a process of constructive abstraction we can arrive at abstractions which are the simply located bits of material, and at other abstractions which are the minds included in the scientific scheme. Accordingly, the real error is an example of what I have termed: The Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness.
– Whitehead (1925), p. 58. also see Whitehead (1919), Part III.
[edit] References
- Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World (1925). 1997 Free Press (Simon & Schuster) paperback: ISBN 0-684-83639-4
