Fallacy of misplaced concreteness

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In the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, one commits the fallacy of misplaced concreteness when one mistakes an abstract belief, opinion or concept about the way things are for a physical or 'concrete' reality.

Whitehead proposed the fallacy in a discussion of the relation of spatial and temporal location of objects. Whitehead rejects the notion that a concrete physical object in the universe can be described simply in spatial or temporal extension. Rather, the object must be described as a field located in both space and time.

"...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 (1997), p. 58.

"[The Fallacy] is merely the accidental error of mistaking the abstract for the concrete... This fallacy is the occasion of great confusion in philosophy." Whitehead (1997), p. 52.

Also Whitehead (1925), Part III.

The Victorian fantasy Flatland makes an analogous point; just as humans cannot perceive of a line that has width but no breadth, they also cannot perceive an object that has spatial but not temporal position (or vice versa).

[edit] References

Alfred North Whitehead 1925 (1919). An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Natural Knowledge 2nd ed. Cambridge University Press.
--------, 1997 (1925). Science and the Modern World. Free Press (Simon & Schuster). ISBN 0-684-83639-4