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While intelligence treats everything mechanically, instinct proceeds, so to speak, organically. If...we could ask and it could reply, it would give up to us the most intimate secrets of life. -from Chapter II Anticipating not only modern scientific theories of psychology but also those of cosmology, this astonishing book sets out a impressive goal for itself: to reconcile human biology with a theory of consciousness. First published in France in 1907, and translated into English in 1911, this work of wonder was esteemed at the time in scientific circles and in the popular culture alike for its profound explorations of perception and memory and its surprising conclusions about the nature and value of art. Contending that intuition is deeper than intellect and that the real consequence of evolution is a mental freedom to grow, to change, to seek and create novelty, Bergson reinvigorated the theory of evolution by refusing to see it as merely mechanistic. His expansion on Darwin remains one of the most original and important philosophical arguments for a scientific inquiry still under fire today. French philosopher HENRI BERGSON (1859-1941) was born in Paris. Among his works are Matter and Memory (1896), An Introduction to Metaphysics (1903), and The Two Sources of Morality and Religion (1932). He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1927.
331 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1907
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6,860 people want to read
About the author
Henri Bergson
418books770followersPopular and accessible works of French philosopher and writer Henri Louis Bergson include
Creative Evolution
(1907) and
The Creative Mind
(1934) and largely concern the importance of intuition as a means of attaining knowledge and the élan vital present in all living things; he won the Nobel Prize of 1927 for literature.
Although international fame and influence of this late 19th century-early 20th century man reached heights like cult during his lifetime, after the Second World War, his influence decreased notably. Whereas such thinkers as Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean Paul Sartre, and éԲ explicitly acknowledged his influence on their thought, Bergsonism of Gilles Deleuze in 1966 marked the reawakening of interest. Deleuze recognized his concept of multiplicity as his most enduring contribution to thinking. This concept attempts to unify heterogeneity and continuity, contradictory features, in a consistent way. This revolutionary multiplicity despite its difficulty opens the way to a re-conception of community, or so many today think.
Although international fame and influence of this late 19th century-early 20th century man reached heights like cult during his lifetime, after the Second World War, his influence decreased notably. Whereas such thinkers as Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean Paul Sartre, and éԲ explicitly acknowledged his influence on their thought, Bergsonism of Gilles Deleuze in 1966 marked the reawakening of interest. Deleuze recognized his concept of multiplicity as his most enduring contribution to thinking. This concept attempts to unify heterogeneity and continuity, contradictory features, in a consistent way. This revolutionary multiplicity despite its difficulty opens the way to a re-conception of community, or so many today think.
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March 1, 2025
A book that is a Rhapsody to LIFE!
BLOWN HAIR IS SWEET
BROWN HAIR OVER THE LIPS BLOWN -
DISTRACTION, MUSIC OF THE FLUTE - STOPS AND STEPS OF THE MIND
OVER THE THIRD STAIR...
T.S. Eliot, Ash Wednesday
When T.S. Eliot penned these pensive lines in the Thirties, he meant by ‘stair� The Stairway of Perfection, an amazing mystical book written by the great medieval author Walter Hilton.
The THIRD Stair evokes the infamously treacherous False Dawn one thinks one sees, as a believer, during what a few centuries later would be described by Juan de la Cruz as the Dark Night of the Soul.
There, one encounters the spiritual “distractions� that can so easily derail nascent Faith.
Creative Evolution was seen as just such a False Dawn to settled 19-century Christians.
But to young and depressive Jacques and Raissa Maritain, it marked the Dawn of insight that led to their induction into the Church.
(Though you have to factor in to that equation the anomalous fact that over in Ireland, George Bernard Shaw’s socialism and anticlericalism were nourished and strengthened by it!)
And many others, in their enthusiasm, rejected God altogether...
As Tolstoy might have said, all believers look much the same; but all agnostics look vastly different. Agnostics of the world, unite? I doubt it - they're just like your antsy neighbours and, in fact, the rest of us misfits!
The point, Bergson says, is not Christian unity but Christian inspiration.
At least Shaw identified the Prime Mover with the Life Force.
And wasn’t Nietzsche, who started all this haranguing apotheosis of Life ruling over mediocrity in Thus Spake Zarathustra, just trying to feed his disciples with his atheism -
Over the aging and feeble body of the nineteenth-century European Church?
Yikes. A poor way to skin the cat.
The only way, infers Bergson, that we can truly LIVE our life is by being open to it.
And though Husserl in phenomenology was soon to insist upon putting all judgments in brackets -
And Heisenberg in Quantum Physics was to posit his Uncertainty Principle -
Surely the most important lesson for us is Bergson’s Openness to Life, for that’s how WE evolve into real, honest-to-goodness Adults.
And THAT - by way of illustration - is why Creative Evolution can be, to us conforming believers, at first a misleading proposition.
Though taken further as sheer insight into the power of God rather than as a pretext for further proselytising - it is the Morning Dew of Healing Grace...
Yes, exactly.
And Grace is LIFE ITSELF! Endless and unbounded.
BLOWN HAIR IS SWEET
BROWN HAIR OVER THE LIPS BLOWN -
DISTRACTION, MUSIC OF THE FLUTE - STOPS AND STEPS OF THE MIND
OVER THE THIRD STAIR...
T.S. Eliot, Ash Wednesday
When T.S. Eliot penned these pensive lines in the Thirties, he meant by ‘stair� The Stairway of Perfection, an amazing mystical book written by the great medieval author Walter Hilton.
The THIRD Stair evokes the infamously treacherous False Dawn one thinks one sees, as a believer, during what a few centuries later would be described by Juan de la Cruz as the Dark Night of the Soul.
There, one encounters the spiritual “distractions� that can so easily derail nascent Faith.
Creative Evolution was seen as just such a False Dawn to settled 19-century Christians.
But to young and depressive Jacques and Raissa Maritain, it marked the Dawn of insight that led to their induction into the Church.
(Though you have to factor in to that equation the anomalous fact that over in Ireland, George Bernard Shaw’s socialism and anticlericalism were nourished and strengthened by it!)
And many others, in their enthusiasm, rejected God altogether...
As Tolstoy might have said, all believers look much the same; but all agnostics look vastly different. Agnostics of the world, unite? I doubt it - they're just like your antsy neighbours and, in fact, the rest of us misfits!
The point, Bergson says, is not Christian unity but Christian inspiration.
At least Shaw identified the Prime Mover with the Life Force.
And wasn’t Nietzsche, who started all this haranguing apotheosis of Life ruling over mediocrity in Thus Spake Zarathustra, just trying to feed his disciples with his atheism -
Over the aging and feeble body of the nineteenth-century European Church?
Yikes. A poor way to skin the cat.
The only way, infers Bergson, that we can truly LIVE our life is by being open to it.
And though Husserl in phenomenology was soon to insist upon putting all judgments in brackets -
And Heisenberg in Quantum Physics was to posit his Uncertainty Principle -
Surely the most important lesson for us is Bergson’s Openness to Life, for that’s how WE evolve into real, honest-to-goodness Adults.
And THAT - by way of illustration - is why Creative Evolution can be, to us conforming believers, at first a misleading proposition.
Though taken further as sheer insight into the power of God rather than as a pretext for further proselytising - it is the Morning Dew of Healing Grace...
Yes, exactly.
And Grace is LIFE ITSELF! Endless and unbounded.
August 18, 2009
This book must be read slowly and deliberately -- do so and it will give you an insight into the brilliance of one of the most revolutionary and extraordinarily perceptive philosopher scientists of the 20th Century, IMO.
Bergson changed the way scientists see the world by introducing his conception of an "original impetus", which began simply (if "intelligently") and evolved matter into living, increasingly complex lifeforms and concurrently evolved an increasingly complex consciousness within it -- as an "imperceptable thread" (my wording) ultimately called the elan vital.
In my case, after reading carefully and filling the book's margins with notes, Professor Bergson seems to be proving (showing) that all science up until his time (circa 1930's) was concerned with objects as they were at a particular moments, whereas in fact these objects were and are in a state of continual "being" (duration), making their actuality or essence unknowable.
He chronologically takes us through the writings of Plato and Aristotle (the natural trend of the intellect)-- Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz (becoming in modern science) -- and even through the Criticism of Kant and the evolutionism of Spencer. Bergson thoroughly critques each philosophy and shows us why they are not dealing the world as it really is.
Through this he weaves his own philosophical system based on Creation and Evolution by (quote):
". . . showing us in the intellect a local effect of evolution, a flame, perhaps accidental, which lights up the coming and going of living beings in the narrow passage open to their action: an lo! . . . (making) of this lantern glimmering in a tunnel a Sun which can illuminate the world.
"Boldly (Kantian and Spencerian science) proceeds with the powers of conceptual thought alone, to the ideal reconstruction of things, even of life. . . . But the essence of things escapes us, and will escape us always; WE MOVE AMONG RELATIONS; THE ABSOLUTE IS NOT IN OUR PROVINCE; WE ARE BROUGHT TO STAND BEFORE THE UNKNOWABLE.
" . . . BUT AN INTELLECT BENT UPON THE ACT TO BE PERFOMED AND THE REACTION TO FOLLOW . . . WOULD DIG TO THE VERY ROOT OF NATURE AND MIND."
In simpler words, the observation of any object changes reality for that object. It is only real as a moving "being", animated by an original impetus and kept real by an "elan vital" which cannot be known because "being" cannot be defined. What we call "real things" are illusions which beomce "real" to us only when we stop their duration. Heidegger spends thousands of pages unsuccessfully trying to define "being", which ultimately he can only label as "dasein". What we observe as the real world is matter and consciousness evolving concurrently from simple to complex as they move through space and time.
This means that the original impetus, the spark, the first flame, began neither in space nor time. Later quantum physics would support Bergson's insight, considering that an electron (as one example) cannot be seen without turning it into something else, or ever stranger, disappearing into what can only be other universes parallel to our own.
IMO, this means a creative force must exist that animates matter and consciousness; and that could only have originated in that Singularity outside time and space which I in my particular need call the thought of "God". You can call "it" what you will: the Tao, Bhudda, Nature, et al.
In my possession is a 1932 edition of "Creative Evolution" which had lingered on a library shelf over eighty years but had been checked out only three times after 1970. Sometimes I wonder where are my fellow philosophers and why I seem in my pained isolation to be the last of the 20th Century philosophers of mind. But that is because I am a crazed crackpot in the collective mind of those who measure men by their wealth. My contemporaries are in the universities, religious orders and lecture tours, where they belong. Yet even I am animated by the elan vital. Even I am part of the "God" finally perceived by Henri Bergson.
"Creative Evolution" was a sensation when it first appeared in 1932, the work of an already distinguished Professor Bergson of the College de France. It gave the world at last a new and scientific conception of the God long intuited by prophets, priests, poets, writers and grizzled, scarred, aging gray bearded philosophers like myself, dumb beasts of intellectual burdens, who desperately need a new physics to help us embrace an unknowable God created out of a Singularity and connecting our minds and bodies to what the Apostle Paul called Love.
Richard Lee Fulgham, Bel Air, 2009
Bergson changed the way scientists see the world by introducing his conception of an "original impetus", which began simply (if "intelligently") and evolved matter into living, increasingly complex lifeforms and concurrently evolved an increasingly complex consciousness within it -- as an "imperceptable thread" (my wording) ultimately called the elan vital.
In my case, after reading carefully and filling the book's margins with notes, Professor Bergson seems to be proving (showing) that all science up until his time (circa 1930's) was concerned with objects as they were at a particular moments, whereas in fact these objects were and are in a state of continual "being" (duration), making their actuality or essence unknowable.
He chronologically takes us through the writings of Plato and Aristotle (the natural trend of the intellect)-- Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz (becoming in modern science) -- and even through the Criticism of Kant and the evolutionism of Spencer. Bergson thoroughly critques each philosophy and shows us why they are not dealing the world as it really is.
Through this he weaves his own philosophical system based on Creation and Evolution by (quote):
". . . showing us in the intellect a local effect of evolution, a flame, perhaps accidental, which lights up the coming and going of living beings in the narrow passage open to their action: an lo! . . . (making) of this lantern glimmering in a tunnel a Sun which can illuminate the world.
"Boldly (Kantian and Spencerian science) proceeds with the powers of conceptual thought alone, to the ideal reconstruction of things, even of life. . . . But the essence of things escapes us, and will escape us always; WE MOVE AMONG RELATIONS; THE ABSOLUTE IS NOT IN OUR PROVINCE; WE ARE BROUGHT TO STAND BEFORE THE UNKNOWABLE.
" . . . BUT AN INTELLECT BENT UPON THE ACT TO BE PERFOMED AND THE REACTION TO FOLLOW . . . WOULD DIG TO THE VERY ROOT OF NATURE AND MIND."
In simpler words, the observation of any object changes reality for that object. It is only real as a moving "being", animated by an original impetus and kept real by an "elan vital" which cannot be known because "being" cannot be defined. What we call "real things" are illusions which beomce "real" to us only when we stop their duration. Heidegger spends thousands of pages unsuccessfully trying to define "being", which ultimately he can only label as "dasein". What we observe as the real world is matter and consciousness evolving concurrently from simple to complex as they move through space and time.
This means that the original impetus, the spark, the first flame, began neither in space nor time. Later quantum physics would support Bergson's insight, considering that an electron (as one example) cannot be seen without turning it into something else, or ever stranger, disappearing into what can only be other universes parallel to our own.
IMO, this means a creative force must exist that animates matter and consciousness; and that could only have originated in that Singularity outside time and space which I in my particular need call the thought of "God". You can call "it" what you will: the Tao, Bhudda, Nature, et al.
In my possession is a 1932 edition of "Creative Evolution" which had lingered on a library shelf over eighty years but had been checked out only three times after 1970. Sometimes I wonder where are my fellow philosophers and why I seem in my pained isolation to be the last of the 20th Century philosophers of mind. But that is because I am a crazed crackpot in the collective mind of those who measure men by their wealth. My contemporaries are in the universities, religious orders and lecture tours, where they belong. Yet even I am animated by the elan vital. Even I am part of the "God" finally perceived by Henri Bergson.
"Creative Evolution" was a sensation when it first appeared in 1932, the work of an already distinguished Professor Bergson of the College de France. It gave the world at last a new and scientific conception of the God long intuited by prophets, priests, poets, writers and grizzled, scarred, aging gray bearded philosophers like myself, dumb beasts of intellectual burdens, who desperately need a new physics to help us embrace an unknowable God created out of a Singularity and connecting our minds and bodies to what the Apostle Paul called Love.
Richard Lee Fulgham, Bel Air, 2009
June 28, 2024
if you like this review i now have website:
220312: after reading i now have greater appreciation for , indeed for all of his metaphysics, and just wish i could more fully express this. an entirely different conception of time and being than what i am familiar with in phenomenology. it is helpful that i have read so much phenomenology and, now, Indic philosophy. the arguments for essential freedom, for the effort required, that must creatively surpass obstacles and is encouraged by limits, are all reasons i might reread the texts in this collection, though it is through secondary literature, on rather than by, that i most understand bergson. and in fact, are these not limits that encourage me as well... i have definitely decided it is four...
240716: i do not know what to say about this work, i do not follow it all, it might be closer to a 3, but the writing is very good. the introduction hails bergson as the most serious philosopher of life of the 20th century..., and makes a good argument for his continuing relevance, his unique approach, all of it down to his approach to time- duree- and valourization of intuition. as i am not studying him but have read a few by and a few on bergson, i can see how difficult, how contrary, his way of understanding 'intellect' and thereby 'science', as beholden to physics/geometry, that has no sympathy for living creation- the 'impetus'(elan vital) that manifests itself through evolution, that leads from single-cells to the great division between plant and animal, then the effective, practical, development of nervous system and then brain, enabling/informing motion...
the early chapters, the philosophical take on evolution, i found difficult and opposing what little i do know about the theory- eventually i began to see bergson is working not on the matrices of usual 'evolutionary biology' but on the philosophical concept of 'life'. this is not simply organic forms diversifying, sustaining, surviving through environmental changes, 'adapting', but how 'life' is truly creative, always new, always responsive, though his contention humans are somehow an evolutionary 'peak' seems mistaken. this seems an introduction of telos, a religious idea, insistence that there is a 'direction' to evolution, that we adapt through generations often in a 'neo-lamarckian' manner, we are the final result... as if evolution is now halted. this probably loses most evolutionary biologists if not scientists in general...
i do like his latter chapters, particularly the cinematographical mechanism of thought..., though i do not know how accurate is his dismissal/inquiry on the concept of 'nothing', mainly these were ideas i had read before, encouraging to remember, and certainly all the other reading on bergson was very helpful. the summation is heartening, as he goes through some history of philosophy to get there (plato, aristotle, descartes, leibniz, spinoza, kant, spencer), to his central idea: scientific knowledge is not the only or best way to live in the world, despite its obvious practical efficacy, in for example science, that the ideal of freedom is not met through mechanistic/geometric/spatial views, the ideal is met through the intuition/duration/creativity of time...
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more
220312: after reading i now have greater appreciation for , indeed for all of his metaphysics, and just wish i could more fully express this. an entirely different conception of time and being than what i am familiar with in phenomenology. it is helpful that i have read so much phenomenology and, now, Indic philosophy. the arguments for essential freedom, for the effort required, that must creatively surpass obstacles and is encouraged by limits, are all reasons i might reread the texts in this collection, though it is through secondary literature, on rather than by, that i most understand bergson. and in fact, are these not limits that encourage me as well... i have definitely decided it is four...
240716: i do not know what to say about this work, i do not follow it all, it might be closer to a 3, but the writing is very good. the introduction hails bergson as the most serious philosopher of life of the 20th century..., and makes a good argument for his continuing relevance, his unique approach, all of it down to his approach to time- duree- and valourization of intuition. as i am not studying him but have read a few by and a few on bergson, i can see how difficult, how contrary, his way of understanding 'intellect' and thereby 'science', as beholden to physics/geometry, that has no sympathy for living creation- the 'impetus'(elan vital) that manifests itself through evolution, that leads from single-cells to the great division between plant and animal, then the effective, practical, development of nervous system and then brain, enabling/informing motion...
the early chapters, the philosophical take on evolution, i found difficult and opposing what little i do know about the theory- eventually i began to see bergson is working not on the matrices of usual 'evolutionary biology' but on the philosophical concept of 'life'. this is not simply organic forms diversifying, sustaining, surviving through environmental changes, 'adapting', but how 'life' is truly creative, always new, always responsive, though his contention humans are somehow an evolutionary 'peak' seems mistaken. this seems an introduction of telos, a religious idea, insistence that there is a 'direction' to evolution, that we adapt through generations often in a 'neo-lamarckian' manner, we are the final result... as if evolution is now halted. this probably loses most evolutionary biologists if not scientists in general...
i do like his latter chapters, particularly the cinematographical mechanism of thought..., though i do not know how accurate is his dismissal/inquiry on the concept of 'nothing', mainly these were ideas i had read before, encouraging to remember, and certainly all the other reading on bergson was very helpful. the summation is heartening, as he goes through some history of philosophy to get there (plato, aristotle, descartes, leibniz, spinoza, kant, spencer), to his central idea: scientific knowledge is not the only or best way to live in the world, despite its obvious practical efficacy, in for example science, that the ideal of freedom is not met through mechanistic/geometric/spatial views, the ideal is met through the intuition/duration/creativity of time...
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January 21, 2023
In this substantial volume, Bergson takes up the challenge of explaining the different forms that evolution has taken over time. Unlike many philosophers, he does not close his work to the reader. Instead, he involves this one with a book that, despite its requirement, remains understandable for the reader who is not necessarily a specialist in the field. We follow with the most significant interest his thought, the trajectory of this one. Above all, Bergson manages to communicate his subject with the reader. This subject is not a minor performance for a philosopher. Ultimately, we have a substantial work of undeniable richness here - to discover absolutely.
November 15, 2021
An Important Early Work Of Twentieth Century Philosophy
I wanted to reread Henri Bergson's "Creative Evolution" after reading William James. Although best known for his development of pragmatism, James had a highly speculative side late in his career, and he praised Bergson highly in his book, "A Pluralistic Universe." Although they have serious differences, both Bergson and James share an emphasis on a stream of consciousness view of the mind, and on the importance of freedom, chance, and indeterminacy.
Bergson wrote "Creative Evolution" in 1907. At James' urging it was translated into English in 1911 in the still standard translation of Arthur Mitchell. James died before he could write the introduction he contemplated to the book. The book is one of the relatively rare works of philosophy that received a large and enthusiastic popular reception. Bergson became internationally famous and highly sought out as a lecturer for some years following its publication. In 1927, Bergson received the Nobel Prize for literature, a rarity for a writer whose only publications were in philosophy. By the 1940's, however, the book had become little noticed by professional philosophers and lay readers alike. Of late, there have been scholarly efforts to look again at Bergson.
In one sense the early popularity of "Creative Evolution" is puzzling as sections of the book are notoriously difficult and obscure. The book left me cold when I first read it some years ago, but a second reading, after reading James, helped me understand where the book was going. Besides the lengthy technical discussions of matters ranging from biology to mathematics to the history of philosophy, Bergson was a master of allusion and analogy and of beautifully clear writing which pressed home his conclusions where his argumentation was dense and foggy. The writing is brilliant and poetic but makes use of loose metaphors and obscure thinking which lessens its value.
Part of the difficulty I and many modern readers have with the book lies in its approach to the nature of philosophy and its relationship to science. As the title indicates, "Creative Evolution" is in part about Darwinism and evolutionary theory. Bergson wants to show that there is more to human life and to human evolution that can be accounted for by what he terms mechanism. In the process of developing his position, Bergson spends a great deal of space with Darwinian theory and, in places, with his objections to it. Most of his objections, especially with further developments in biology, appear not well taken and outside the scope of how philosophy should be developing its questions and making its arguments. If philosophy is concerned with meaning and with reflections on science rather than with the substance of science, Bergson in many places steps over the line. Much of the book appears to be based on a willy-nilly combination of philosophical reflection with scientific issues which lessens its appeal and which contributed to the eclipse of the book after its early popular reception.
There remains much of interest in "Creative Evolution" to the extent that the book can be read as a reflection on the findings of science and on the possible limitations of science rather than as a critique of scientific findings. Bergson tries to find a way between a scientific philosophy of mechanism on the one hand and a teleological philosophy based upon ends and final causes on the other hand. Bergson develops a philosophy based upon duration and change -- the felt experience of the passage of time, which Bergson argues eloquently, cannot be explained either mechanistically or teleologically. Bergson argues that human endeavor and conduct cannot be fully explained by the methods of the natural sciences or, indeed, by any science as indeterminacy and freedom are at their core. He finds biological development for human beings was in the direction of freedom and intelligence. Intelligence, he argues, is basically pragmatic and related to physical, geometrical objects but does not exhaust human creativity. Bergson finds the source of creativity and change in time through a mysterious intuitive ability that tends to be covered over by practical intelligence. Here again, many modern readers, lay and philosophical, will demur to intuitionism. Bergson sees life as in its essential spiritual part as consisting in constant change and development in a direction that cannot be predicted in advance. In fact, every individual's development is unique.
Here is a lengthy paragraph from near the middle of Bergson's book that captures something of his thought, his writing, and his concept of philosophy as both individual and communal. Other passages could be cited as well. Bergson writes (pp 209-210)
"Human intelligence, as we represent it, is not at all what Plato taught in the allegory of the cave. Its function is not to look at passing shadows nor yet to turn itself round and contemplate the glaring sun. It has something else to do. Harnessed, like yoked oxen, to a heavy task, we feel the play of our muscles and joints, the weight of the plow and the resistance of the soil. To act and to know that we are acting, to come into touch with reality and even to live it, but only in the measure in which it concerns the work that is being accomplished and the furrow that is being plowed, such is the function of human intelligence. Yet a beneficent fluid bathes us, whence we draw the very force to labor and to live. From this ocean of life, in which we are immersed, we are continually drawing something, and we feel that our being, or at least the intellect that guides it, has been formed therein by a kind of local concentration. Philosophy can only be an attempt to dissolve again into the Whole. Intelligence, reabsorbed into its principle, may thus live back again its own genesis. But the enterprise cannot be achieved in one stroke: it is necessarily collective and progressive. It consists in an interchange of impressions which, correcting and adding to each other, will end by expanding the humanity in us and making us even transcend it."
In its approach, "Creative Evolution" is outside the mainstream of philosophy in the United States and in Europe and is something of a throw-back to German romanticism. The philosophical issues it raises, however, remain much alive. This is a frustrating, difficult book to read with valuable thought and insight intertwined with some unfathomable writing. It was a quirk that "Creative Evolution" became for a brief time a popular book. Readers who want to struggle with a difficult and in part outmoded work, may still find the effort worthwhile.
Robin Friedman
I wanted to reread Henri Bergson's "Creative Evolution" after reading William James. Although best known for his development of pragmatism, James had a highly speculative side late in his career, and he praised Bergson highly in his book, "A Pluralistic Universe." Although they have serious differences, both Bergson and James share an emphasis on a stream of consciousness view of the mind, and on the importance of freedom, chance, and indeterminacy.
Bergson wrote "Creative Evolution" in 1907. At James' urging it was translated into English in 1911 in the still standard translation of Arthur Mitchell. James died before he could write the introduction he contemplated to the book. The book is one of the relatively rare works of philosophy that received a large and enthusiastic popular reception. Bergson became internationally famous and highly sought out as a lecturer for some years following its publication. In 1927, Bergson received the Nobel Prize for literature, a rarity for a writer whose only publications were in philosophy. By the 1940's, however, the book had become little noticed by professional philosophers and lay readers alike. Of late, there have been scholarly efforts to look again at Bergson.
In one sense the early popularity of "Creative Evolution" is puzzling as sections of the book are notoriously difficult and obscure. The book left me cold when I first read it some years ago, but a second reading, after reading James, helped me understand where the book was going. Besides the lengthy technical discussions of matters ranging from biology to mathematics to the history of philosophy, Bergson was a master of allusion and analogy and of beautifully clear writing which pressed home his conclusions where his argumentation was dense and foggy. The writing is brilliant and poetic but makes use of loose metaphors and obscure thinking which lessens its value.
Part of the difficulty I and many modern readers have with the book lies in its approach to the nature of philosophy and its relationship to science. As the title indicates, "Creative Evolution" is in part about Darwinism and evolutionary theory. Bergson wants to show that there is more to human life and to human evolution that can be accounted for by what he terms mechanism. In the process of developing his position, Bergson spends a great deal of space with Darwinian theory and, in places, with his objections to it. Most of his objections, especially with further developments in biology, appear not well taken and outside the scope of how philosophy should be developing its questions and making its arguments. If philosophy is concerned with meaning and with reflections on science rather than with the substance of science, Bergson in many places steps over the line. Much of the book appears to be based on a willy-nilly combination of philosophical reflection with scientific issues which lessens its appeal and which contributed to the eclipse of the book after its early popular reception.
There remains much of interest in "Creative Evolution" to the extent that the book can be read as a reflection on the findings of science and on the possible limitations of science rather than as a critique of scientific findings. Bergson tries to find a way between a scientific philosophy of mechanism on the one hand and a teleological philosophy based upon ends and final causes on the other hand. Bergson develops a philosophy based upon duration and change -- the felt experience of the passage of time, which Bergson argues eloquently, cannot be explained either mechanistically or teleologically. Bergson argues that human endeavor and conduct cannot be fully explained by the methods of the natural sciences or, indeed, by any science as indeterminacy and freedom are at their core. He finds biological development for human beings was in the direction of freedom and intelligence. Intelligence, he argues, is basically pragmatic and related to physical, geometrical objects but does not exhaust human creativity. Bergson finds the source of creativity and change in time through a mysterious intuitive ability that tends to be covered over by practical intelligence. Here again, many modern readers, lay and philosophical, will demur to intuitionism. Bergson sees life as in its essential spiritual part as consisting in constant change and development in a direction that cannot be predicted in advance. In fact, every individual's development is unique.
Here is a lengthy paragraph from near the middle of Bergson's book that captures something of his thought, his writing, and his concept of philosophy as both individual and communal. Other passages could be cited as well. Bergson writes (pp 209-210)
"Human intelligence, as we represent it, is not at all what Plato taught in the allegory of the cave. Its function is not to look at passing shadows nor yet to turn itself round and contemplate the glaring sun. It has something else to do. Harnessed, like yoked oxen, to a heavy task, we feel the play of our muscles and joints, the weight of the plow and the resistance of the soil. To act and to know that we are acting, to come into touch with reality and even to live it, but only in the measure in which it concerns the work that is being accomplished and the furrow that is being plowed, such is the function of human intelligence. Yet a beneficent fluid bathes us, whence we draw the very force to labor and to live. From this ocean of life, in which we are immersed, we are continually drawing something, and we feel that our being, or at least the intellect that guides it, has been formed therein by a kind of local concentration. Philosophy can only be an attempt to dissolve again into the Whole. Intelligence, reabsorbed into its principle, may thus live back again its own genesis. But the enterprise cannot be achieved in one stroke: it is necessarily collective and progressive. It consists in an interchange of impressions which, correcting and adding to each other, will end by expanding the humanity in us and making us even transcend it."
In its approach, "Creative Evolution" is outside the mainstream of philosophy in the United States and in Europe and is something of a throw-back to German romanticism. The philosophical issues it raises, however, remain much alive. This is a frustrating, difficult book to read with valuable thought and insight intertwined with some unfathomable writing. It was a quirk that "Creative Evolution" became for a brief time a popular book. Readers who want to struggle with a difficult and in part outmoded work, may still find the effort worthwhile.
Robin Friedman
January 19, 2010
Evolution, Bergson argues, is characterized by the progressive development of freedom, which culminates in human consciousness and the capacity for choice about how interaction with the environment will occur. Bergson's second theme is that the impulse that underlies evolution's movement toward freedom is energy. All life is energy. Energy is activity and mobility. Energy is the push behind how that activity will occur. Energy and freedom come together. Energy matches up with instinct and intelligence that are the twin poles of how life organizes its movement. But these are not pure states, and intelligence as consciousness exists in some limited degree within instinctive beings. Bergson writes that the humblest organism is conscious to the degree that it has the power to choose how it will move. This choice is freedom. Consciousness holds the capacity and power for choice, which reaches its most expansive expression in humans.
Evolution's march toward freedom is evolution's creativity. Bergson's stance here stands in contrast to the mechanistic (deterministic) themes then emerging in Darwinian thinking, but it also stands in contrast to predestined ends that others hold for human kind. Evolution is not the realization of a plan, Bergson says. In contrast to both, Bergson believes that this development of freedom resulted from life forms attempting to find new ways to survive in a demanding or hostile world. In this way, Bergson's theory is not different than the essence of Darwinian theory.
Bergson's own creative contribution to evolutionary theory is his emphasis on "becoming." Life is never a static state, but is continually changing. Static states are but moments in time that have been isolated by thought. Here he takes on Greek thought that would relegate ceaseless motion to an illusory material world that is secondary to the world of eternal forms. Uncomfortable with change, predominant Greek philosophy (Plato and after) addressed their dilemma with their own sleight of hand by positing logical truths as eternal forms as there can be no dispute that, for example, "A equals A." But Bergson says in reality there is no such Form. Bergson is equally critical of modern scientific theory that isolates as it analyzes, looking at parts as opposed to parts of wholes that transform through time. Science misses the whole that provides a simple unity of function, despite its dependence on a multiplicity of parts (sub-actions). In his emphasis on wholes and transformation, Bergson is notably similar to the structuralist thought of Jean Piaget who was to write later in the century.
In our free choices, Bergson says we create ourselves and this, along with innate character, makes us individual. But this self is not a thing. It is continually re-made, yet variability here is premised on deeper reality to our soul. What is the permanent core to our life is our impulsive force, which is ourselves as self-organizing entities. The self, in effect, goes through life not as solid matter, but as a wave. In this way, Bergson's theory seems to back into modern quantum theory about the ultimate nature of reality, suggesting that perhaps there is more similarity between organic and non-organic matter than once supposed.
Yet, there is a difference and this constitutes Bergson's essential underlying focus. Bergson traces his theory back to the beginning of life itself, to that transition point between life and non-life where the former draws energy from the latter and converts inert matter into life. The role of life is to place indeterminacy into matter. Life is a current of energy sent through matter, he writes, and draws from it whatever it can. In this way, life "spiritualizes matter." Heredity transmits more than character and physical traits. It transmits vitality, a single, powerful unity of impulse, a genetic energy that fights against disorder. This life force takes solar energy, stores it, and then uses it ("explosively") to survive. As the embodiment of this energy, we are a unity that then converts energy into a multiplicity of actions that enable our bodies, and ourselves, to survive.
Taking some liberty with Bergson, this unity - this self-organizing capacity directed toward survival - is our core Self, as it is the continuous entity that survives throughout all of its transformations. It is this life force that constitutes our essence and innermost soul. As with Schopenhauer's Will, Bergson's "elan vital" may be dismissed as overly obscure or mystical by many, but this is the terminology that captures the essence of life's drive to survive, to seek its well-being, and to reproduce itself. What this life force might be in more specific terms continues to be illusive to this day, and Bergson should not be faulted for not providing greater definition.
As a final comment, and as a criticism, humans have freedom of choice. This is not in doubt. But Bergson does not make it clear that such freedom is not pure. Humans are free to choose, but to do what? To what ends do they direct their (free) choice? Ultimately, action is directed toward evolution's twin goals, which are really the same thing: survival and reproduction. These goals are the fixed essences of life itself. In this sense we are not so free after all (even though we can commit suicide). As with all life forms, we seek to be free to achieve our life-given natures (ends) and to preserve ourselves as self-organizing entities, fighting to maintain order amid the pressures of disorder. The capacity to do this with maximum flexibility manifests itself in the free will of humans, but this capacity - remarkable as it is - is nevertheless directed toward the same ends we share with all life forms. Like them, we seek to be free to survive, to achieve well being, and to achieve evolution's "purpose," which is to reproduce ourselves. In this way, we share the same essence as all of life.
Evolution's march toward freedom is evolution's creativity. Bergson's stance here stands in contrast to the mechanistic (deterministic) themes then emerging in Darwinian thinking, but it also stands in contrast to predestined ends that others hold for human kind. Evolution is not the realization of a plan, Bergson says. In contrast to both, Bergson believes that this development of freedom resulted from life forms attempting to find new ways to survive in a demanding or hostile world. In this way, Bergson's theory is not different than the essence of Darwinian theory.
Bergson's own creative contribution to evolutionary theory is his emphasis on "becoming." Life is never a static state, but is continually changing. Static states are but moments in time that have been isolated by thought. Here he takes on Greek thought that would relegate ceaseless motion to an illusory material world that is secondary to the world of eternal forms. Uncomfortable with change, predominant Greek philosophy (Plato and after) addressed their dilemma with their own sleight of hand by positing logical truths as eternal forms as there can be no dispute that, for example, "A equals A." But Bergson says in reality there is no such Form. Bergson is equally critical of modern scientific theory that isolates as it analyzes, looking at parts as opposed to parts of wholes that transform through time. Science misses the whole that provides a simple unity of function, despite its dependence on a multiplicity of parts (sub-actions). In his emphasis on wholes and transformation, Bergson is notably similar to the structuralist thought of Jean Piaget who was to write later in the century.
In our free choices, Bergson says we create ourselves and this, along with innate character, makes us individual. But this self is not a thing. It is continually re-made, yet variability here is premised on deeper reality to our soul. What is the permanent core to our life is our impulsive force, which is ourselves as self-organizing entities. The self, in effect, goes through life not as solid matter, but as a wave. In this way, Bergson's theory seems to back into modern quantum theory about the ultimate nature of reality, suggesting that perhaps there is more similarity between organic and non-organic matter than once supposed.
Yet, there is a difference and this constitutes Bergson's essential underlying focus. Bergson traces his theory back to the beginning of life itself, to that transition point between life and non-life where the former draws energy from the latter and converts inert matter into life. The role of life is to place indeterminacy into matter. Life is a current of energy sent through matter, he writes, and draws from it whatever it can. In this way, life "spiritualizes matter." Heredity transmits more than character and physical traits. It transmits vitality, a single, powerful unity of impulse, a genetic energy that fights against disorder. This life force takes solar energy, stores it, and then uses it ("explosively") to survive. As the embodiment of this energy, we are a unity that then converts energy into a multiplicity of actions that enable our bodies, and ourselves, to survive.
Taking some liberty with Bergson, this unity - this self-organizing capacity directed toward survival - is our core Self, as it is the continuous entity that survives throughout all of its transformations. It is this life force that constitutes our essence and innermost soul. As with Schopenhauer's Will, Bergson's "elan vital" may be dismissed as overly obscure or mystical by many, but this is the terminology that captures the essence of life's drive to survive, to seek its well-being, and to reproduce itself. What this life force might be in more specific terms continues to be illusive to this day, and Bergson should not be faulted for not providing greater definition.
As a final comment, and as a criticism, humans have freedom of choice. This is not in doubt. But Bergson does not make it clear that such freedom is not pure. Humans are free to choose, but to do what? To what ends do they direct their (free) choice? Ultimately, action is directed toward evolution's twin goals, which are really the same thing: survival and reproduction. These goals are the fixed essences of life itself. In this sense we are not so free after all (even though we can commit suicide). As with all life forms, we seek to be free to achieve our life-given natures (ends) and to preserve ourselves as self-organizing entities, fighting to maintain order amid the pressures of disorder. The capacity to do this with maximum flexibility manifests itself in the free will of humans, but this capacity - remarkable as it is - is nevertheless directed toward the same ends we share with all life forms. Like them, we seek to be free to survive, to achieve well being, and to achieve evolution's "purpose," which is to reproduce ourselves. In this way, we share the same essence as all of life.
November 24, 2016
من أجمل الكتب التى قرأتها، وبصرف النظر عن نتائج برجسون وصياغات أفكاره النهائية، فجماله فى دقته ولغته، وفى صفحات من الكتاب وصلت لذروة ممتعة لانى وجدتُ نفسى أمام لاعب يلعب بالفلسفة، أذكر منها صفحات التفريق من العقل والغريزة. خفة ودقة هذا اللعب ربما يخففان من الأصوات المزعجة لتصميم برجسون الملح حول اعتقاداته. لذلك فقراءة هذا الكتاب كانت أمتع مئة مرة مما توقعت بعد ما تصورته من قراءتى عن فلسفة برجسون فى كتب الذين لخصوا فلسفته. أما كتابتى عن مضمون فلسفة برجسون فشىء لا يستوفيه مقال قصير، وإنما يتوغل وينشر أثره فى عمر كامل من حياة أفكار من قرأه
December 31, 2018
What’s that space that floats between each of your thoughts, you know the similar thing that exists between the essence of you and that of the outside world? I’m going to call it the ‘ontological difference�. Bergson explains it as a process of creative evolution.
Instinct is using the order that already exists. Intelligence is using the unordered. The intuition closes the gap between the essential and the accident and of the form without matter. There is a difference of kind as well as levels in consciousness; humans are special; according to Bergson and who says all of these things and argues that within all life processes both within a life and life as a whole across a species there is a final purpose (Spinoza, who is mentioned frequently by Bergson, said for all things there is ‘conatus�, a striving. Bergson doesn’t mention that precisely but he will speak about Spinoza and Leibniz’s monads). Bergson mentions the unordered is only understood relative to the ordered and does tie that back to the second law of thermodynamics.
Science separates us from reality (Bergson will say). There is a lived time with duration, and the objective time outside of us and how we process the world. Proust believes similarly and writes about it (I’m up to volume three of ‘In Search of Lost Time� (about 1915 - 1920) and I definitely see Bergson’s influence). Bergson makes this fundamental for his system. Intuition is his starting point.
Bergson (in this book from 1907) will say the world is not things and that facts are part of the world. For example, a sentence is made up of words and each word only makes sense when the sentence is understood, the world needs all of its parts for understanding and facts in isolation are lonely. Our intellect is such that what we know about the world is how we understand the world because that is how the world reveals itself to us. Heidegger (in 1927) makes the world about things and gives a world structure such that ‘being is time and time is finite�, and that the world consists of ‘present-at-hand� and ‘ready-at-hand� and ‘dasein�, and being-in-the-world requires a world outside of us. Wittgenstein (in 1921) in his first line of his Tractacus says ‘the world is made up of facts� and concludes that ‘Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.� Heidegger footnotes Einstein’s concept of Time out of ‘Being and Time� and explicitly appeals to Bergson’s duration. Hannah Arendt in ‘Life of the Mind� (from 1971) latched onto Bergson and lived time (duration).
Bergson writes an incredibly intelligent book. He gets that Descartes assumes away a world outside of us in order to get certainty, while Bergson knows that we must be part of the world in order to have self-awareness. Bergson definitely follows Plotinus and thinks our intelligibility comes from more than the things that make up the world. Bergson will give life an ‘elan vital�, a protoplasm of sorts. Bergson thinks that there can be form without matter, essence without substance, or thatness without whatness, the creative evolution through intuition gives us our world according to Bergson.
There is a depth to this book that I seldom come across today. I understand why Bergson won the Nobel Prize in Literature and I would think this book, ‘Creative Evolution� was his signature book. Kant, Spinoza, Aristotle, Plato, and Plotinus each play a major role in this book and the unfolding of the story of the world ‘becoming� rather than a world as ‘being�.
Instinct is using the order that already exists. Intelligence is using the unordered. The intuition closes the gap between the essential and the accident and of the form without matter. There is a difference of kind as well as levels in consciousness; humans are special; according to Bergson and who says all of these things and argues that within all life processes both within a life and life as a whole across a species there is a final purpose (Spinoza, who is mentioned frequently by Bergson, said for all things there is ‘conatus�, a striving. Bergson doesn’t mention that precisely but he will speak about Spinoza and Leibniz’s monads). Bergson mentions the unordered is only understood relative to the ordered and does tie that back to the second law of thermodynamics.
Science separates us from reality (Bergson will say). There is a lived time with duration, and the objective time outside of us and how we process the world. Proust believes similarly and writes about it (I’m up to volume three of ‘In Search of Lost Time� (about 1915 - 1920) and I definitely see Bergson’s influence). Bergson makes this fundamental for his system. Intuition is his starting point.
Bergson (in this book from 1907) will say the world is not things and that facts are part of the world. For example, a sentence is made up of words and each word only makes sense when the sentence is understood, the world needs all of its parts for understanding and facts in isolation are lonely. Our intellect is such that what we know about the world is how we understand the world because that is how the world reveals itself to us. Heidegger (in 1927) makes the world about things and gives a world structure such that ‘being is time and time is finite�, and that the world consists of ‘present-at-hand� and ‘ready-at-hand� and ‘dasein�, and being-in-the-world requires a world outside of us. Wittgenstein (in 1921) in his first line of his Tractacus says ‘the world is made up of facts� and concludes that ‘Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.� Heidegger footnotes Einstein’s concept of Time out of ‘Being and Time� and explicitly appeals to Bergson’s duration. Hannah Arendt in ‘Life of the Mind� (from 1971) latched onto Bergson and lived time (duration).
Bergson writes an incredibly intelligent book. He gets that Descartes assumes away a world outside of us in order to get certainty, while Bergson knows that we must be part of the world in order to have self-awareness. Bergson definitely follows Plotinus and thinks our intelligibility comes from more than the things that make up the world. Bergson will give life an ‘elan vital�, a protoplasm of sorts. Bergson thinks that there can be form without matter, essence without substance, or thatness without whatness, the creative evolution through intuition gives us our world according to Bergson.
There is a depth to this book that I seldom come across today. I understand why Bergson won the Nobel Prize in Literature and I would think this book, ‘Creative Evolution� was his signature book. Kant, Spinoza, Aristotle, Plato, and Plotinus each play a major role in this book and the unfolding of the story of the world ‘becoming� rather than a world as ‘being�.
December 9, 2022
In Bergson we find life in its freest and purest movement
It would not be a mistake if we consider Creative Evolution as one of the greatest philosophy books ever written. Bergson not only anticipated modern scientific theories of psychology, he literally covers the whole tradition of phenomenology and cosmology . What Heidegger or Sartre said some years later Bergson formulated those all by himself. No wonder that Deleuze found his solace in Bergson. More than anybody Deleuze took a lot from Bergson. And personally i think Bergson belong to that giant club of philosophers like Spinoza, Kant and Hegel. But unfortunately people know very little about him nowadays.
So what Bergson does in Creative Evolution that can be considered as groundbreaking? What Bergson really does in this book is really systematic, easy to understand(at least for me) and beautiful at the same time(how can we forget his great sense for prose). Throughout the half of the book Bergson refuted those mechanistic and teleological understanding of evolution. And he was convincing of course. The evolution of life on this planet doesn’t evolve according to some laws or concepts. Rather life—corresponding with whole of the cosmos—is an ongoing process of creation. As someone says,life goes on. But in human realm there is a twist. We have a very refined and weird kind of intellect unlike any other animals. And our intellect is always concerned with material world,the feild of our actions. We always anticipate a future,we always learn from a past mistake, the present is always a void ground making way for the future. Just beacuse our ancestors developed this way of coping with the world. They had to measure distance, time,matters and shape them in a certain way to survive. And that made them stronger as well. Thus we are even now going on with this intellectual way of cutting down,measuring, utilizing. But along this line to refine our intellect more and more we somehow suppressed our life of intuition. And intuition is that truest form of life,Bergson says. Intuition is that very movement of life itself. Of which we can find a glimpse of in art.
Bergson then introduces ‘intuition�. Intuition is conscious instinct reflecting on and enlarging itself. It is not just whatever your gut tells you. Art shows that intuition is possible. Bergson calls for an organized effort towards intuition, which relates to instinct and art the way science relates to intelligence and observation. Both intuition and science should continually inform and strengthen each other.
The evolution of life is a broad current of consciousness with an enormous multiplicity of interwoven potentialities. Each branch focuses more on its own particular goals rather than the work of the whole. Instinct at first seems to be the more effective strategy, since it remains focused on itself, but it is limited. Intelligence first concentrates on external matter, then gains the ability adapt to many objects, and so can awaken the potentialities of intuition. Gaining mastery by invention is more useful than the material invention itself. Humans are unique not just because we are more intelligent than animals, but because our intelligence has set consciousness free.
It would not be a mistake if we consider Creative Evolution as one of the greatest philosophy books ever written. Bergson not only anticipated modern scientific theories of psychology, he literally covers the whole tradition of phenomenology and cosmology . What Heidegger or Sartre said some years later Bergson formulated those all by himself. No wonder that Deleuze found his solace in Bergson. More than anybody Deleuze took a lot from Bergson. And personally i think Bergson belong to that giant club of philosophers like Spinoza, Kant and Hegel. But unfortunately people know very little about him nowadays.
So what Bergson does in Creative Evolution that can be considered as groundbreaking? What Bergson really does in this book is really systematic, easy to understand(at least for me) and beautiful at the same time(how can we forget his great sense for prose). Throughout the half of the book Bergson refuted those mechanistic and teleological understanding of evolution. And he was convincing of course. The evolution of life on this planet doesn’t evolve according to some laws or concepts. Rather life—corresponding with whole of the cosmos—is an ongoing process of creation. As someone says,life goes on. But in human realm there is a twist. We have a very refined and weird kind of intellect unlike any other animals. And our intellect is always concerned with material world,the feild of our actions. We always anticipate a future,we always learn from a past mistake, the present is always a void ground making way for the future. Just beacuse our ancestors developed this way of coping with the world. They had to measure distance, time,matters and shape them in a certain way to survive. And that made them stronger as well. Thus we are even now going on with this intellectual way of cutting down,measuring, utilizing. But along this line to refine our intellect more and more we somehow suppressed our life of intuition. And intuition is that truest form of life,Bergson says. Intuition is that very movement of life itself. Of which we can find a glimpse of in art.
Bergson then introduces ‘intuition�. Intuition is conscious instinct reflecting on and enlarging itself. It is not just whatever your gut tells you. Art shows that intuition is possible. Bergson calls for an organized effort towards intuition, which relates to instinct and art the way science relates to intelligence and observation. Both intuition and science should continually inform and strengthen each other.
The evolution of life is a broad current of consciousness with an enormous multiplicity of interwoven potentialities. Each branch focuses more on its own particular goals rather than the work of the whole. Instinct at first seems to be the more effective strategy, since it remains focused on itself, but it is limited. Intelligence first concentrates on external matter, then gains the ability adapt to many objects, and so can awaken the potentialities of intuition. Gaining mastery by invention is more useful than the material invention itself. Humans are unique not just because we are more intelligent than animals, but because our intelligence has set consciousness free.
April 11, 2020
Bergson's most famous book is mesmerizing and visionary. It is also partially unscientific, unverifiable, and mystical. It looks at how time, consciousness, and evolution can be rethought beyond the formal confines of post-Kantian philosophy and positivism in science. The central idea is that the universe is shaped by an original impetus, an élan vital, that underlies creative evolution and that leads to the birth of novelty and differentiation in cosmic history. This creative evolution cannot be fully studied by the means of positivistic mechanical science because you need to develop your intuition to have access to the internal sense of time, i.e. what Bergson calls "duration". However, through appropriate philosophy and self-reflection people can come to grasp how their own consciousness derives its freedom of action and creative impulse from this cosmic force.
Bergson claims that the visions of Darwinian evolution and materialistic determinism - the most daring and rational offspring of modern science - are only useful metaphors and approximations that leave out something essential of the cosmic process. They do not capture, claims Bergson, the internal force that gushes forth from the primordial impetus of the universe. They do not capture the creative impulse that makes up the internal (intuitive) counterpart to the external (scientific) view of evolution. The fault of science is that it mistakes the external "snapshot" image of this cosmic process for the process itself. Science privileges the scientifically measurable and calculable emergence of ever new structures and lifeforms for the very simple reason that the human mind and science have evolved to see everything in terms of geometry and material relations.
Bergson utilizes clear metaphors and sharp figures of speech that leave a strong impression, evoke new perspectives, and suggest visions of life. They persuade the reader even if they don't fully convince her. The clarity of his style helps to explain and bring down to earth an otherwise obtuse metaphysical theory. In fact, I would rank Bergson as one of the finest stylists in modern philosophy. (He is sort of an anti-Hegel in this regard.) His prose is artful and logical.
Bergson's argument is, in many ways, a continuation of Kant's phenomenology, the insights of Spinoza and Leibniz, and the evolutionary theories of Spencer and Darwin. He overstates the uniqueness of his insights in relation to these earlier thinkers. Furthermore, his arguments against materialistic determinism are not very convincing because they violate the very division of labour that Bergson rightfully sees separating the scientific method from the intuitive method. The scientific method must pursue its own course that inevitably leads to Darwinism and determinism and there is nothing the intuitive method can do about that. Bergson oversteps the boundaries of the powers of the intuitive method when he doubts the possibility of purely material emergence because he smuggles in creative evolution as a scientific concept and not merely as an intuitive concept. To assume that the intuitive method can override the methodology of science is absurd since the intuitive method cannot touch the material world. Nothing in the intuitive method suggests that life and creativity could not have emerged spontaneously. The "unguided" Darwinian picture of creative evolution might still represent an accurate scientific picture of reality.
Bergson's project is exceedingly original and lyrical. It can best be understood as "spiritualized phenomenology" - which is more of an art than a science. Although his criticism of Kant, Spinoza, and Spencer are uncharitable, he provides some useful exegetical analysis of their work. And even though he contrasts his intuitive method with the scientific method and claims that it is superior in understanding evolution, it would be unfair to paint Bergson as a wholly unscientific or anti-scientific thinker. In many ways his understanding of natural science and evolutionary theory was top notch and ahead of its time. Despite his proclivities, Bergson was willing to give credence to science as a useful and worthy exercise (for the most part) as long as it understands its own limitations and sticks to its own epistemic domain. Bertrand Russell was wrong to denounce Bergson as essentially worthless drivel. Bergson is a very rigorous and rich thinker. His insights can be studied for the ample ammunition that they provide for rethinking the nature of nature.
Bergson claims that the visions of Darwinian evolution and materialistic determinism - the most daring and rational offspring of modern science - are only useful metaphors and approximations that leave out something essential of the cosmic process. They do not capture, claims Bergson, the internal force that gushes forth from the primordial impetus of the universe. They do not capture the creative impulse that makes up the internal (intuitive) counterpart to the external (scientific) view of evolution. The fault of science is that it mistakes the external "snapshot" image of this cosmic process for the process itself. Science privileges the scientifically measurable and calculable emergence of ever new structures and lifeforms for the very simple reason that the human mind and science have evolved to see everything in terms of geometry and material relations.
Bergson utilizes clear metaphors and sharp figures of speech that leave a strong impression, evoke new perspectives, and suggest visions of life. They persuade the reader even if they don't fully convince her. The clarity of his style helps to explain and bring down to earth an otherwise obtuse metaphysical theory. In fact, I would rank Bergson as one of the finest stylists in modern philosophy. (He is sort of an anti-Hegel in this regard.) His prose is artful and logical.
Bergson's argument is, in many ways, a continuation of Kant's phenomenology, the insights of Spinoza and Leibniz, and the evolutionary theories of Spencer and Darwin. He overstates the uniqueness of his insights in relation to these earlier thinkers. Furthermore, his arguments against materialistic determinism are not very convincing because they violate the very division of labour that Bergson rightfully sees separating the scientific method from the intuitive method. The scientific method must pursue its own course that inevitably leads to Darwinism and determinism and there is nothing the intuitive method can do about that. Bergson oversteps the boundaries of the powers of the intuitive method when he doubts the possibility of purely material emergence because he smuggles in creative evolution as a scientific concept and not merely as an intuitive concept. To assume that the intuitive method can override the methodology of science is absurd since the intuitive method cannot touch the material world. Nothing in the intuitive method suggests that life and creativity could not have emerged spontaneously. The "unguided" Darwinian picture of creative evolution might still represent an accurate scientific picture of reality.
Bergson's project is exceedingly original and lyrical. It can best be understood as "spiritualized phenomenology" - which is more of an art than a science. Although his criticism of Kant, Spinoza, and Spencer are uncharitable, he provides some useful exegetical analysis of their work. And even though he contrasts his intuitive method with the scientific method and claims that it is superior in understanding evolution, it would be unfair to paint Bergson as a wholly unscientific or anti-scientific thinker. In many ways his understanding of natural science and evolutionary theory was top notch and ahead of its time. Despite his proclivities, Bergson was willing to give credence to science as a useful and worthy exercise (for the most part) as long as it understands its own limitations and sticks to its own epistemic domain. Bertrand Russell was wrong to denounce Bergson as essentially worthless drivel. Bergson is a very rigorous and rich thinker. His insights can be studied for the ample ammunition that they provide for rethinking the nature of nature.
September 5, 2019
التطور المبدع /هنري برغسون
كتاب يقع في 385 صفحة
مقسم إلى أربع فصول
في الفصل الأول يناقش الفيلسوف برغسون حركة تطوّر الحياة - الآلية والغائية - وهما حالتان يجدهما العقل في متناوله.
مبيناً انهما لا تصلحان لتعليل حركة التطور وان بدت احداهما في حالة صياغتها بصورة جديدة تصبح أوفق من الأخرى ويستهل الفصل بالحديث عن مذهب الديمومة عنده بوصفها زمن واحد ممتد من البداية للنهاية ولا توجد به فواصل يعني يعتبره مثل السيمفونية أو اللحن الموسيقي يبدأ من بداية الحياة إلى نهايتها .
" ما من انفعال أو تصور أو فعل إرادي إلا كان متغيراً في كل لحظة وأن الحالة النفسية إذا توقفت عن التغيّر توقفت" ديمومتها " عن الجريان .
" والحق أن المرء يتغير دون انقطاع وإن الحالة النفسية ذاتها ليست سوى تغيّر.
بالتالي فحسب برغسون الديمومة هي أصل المادة والزمن والحركة والديمومة شيء لا مادي ولا يمكن أن ندركها الا بالـ" حدس "
ويشرح برغسون الحدس بمقولة رائعة
الحدس هو أن يوجد يوجد هو أن يتغير، يتغير هو أن ينضج، ينضج هو أن يخلق نفسه بنفسه باستم��ار
في الفصل الثاني يناقش الاتجاهات المتباينة لتطور الحياة : الخمود، العقل، الغريزة
حسب فلسفة برغسون يوجد في كل أجزاء هذا الوجود -مهما تنوعت أشكالها ومهما اختلفت - قوة كامنة متشابهة عند الجميع يسميها " الدافع الحيوي " " الحياة"
الدافع الحيوي داخل الموجودات هو أكثر من الأجسام المادية هو القوة النامية التي تستطيع أن تسترد نفسها هو الحياة / الحافز الذي يولد هذا العالم عكس المادة وضد الجمود ضد الصدفة .
فكان يرى انه يوجد هناك تصميم / قصد للأشياء بداخلها وليس في خارجها فقط " الانتخاب الطبيعي الذي تحدث عنه دارون " اي الآلية التي تحدث في تطور الكائن الحي وهي أربع أمور
الوراثة، تغيير المناخ/ تغيير مناخ الطبيعة، قابلية التأقلم، الانجاب، الصراع من أجل البقاء .
وبهذا الكلام عن الدافع الحيوي برغسون تحدى كل أصحاب النظرية المادية من توماس هوبز ، ديفيد هيوم، الباروخ سبينوزا، كارل ماركس، فيرباخ ، سبنسر وغيرهم لأنزكل هؤلاء عجزوا حسب برغسون عن تفسير ولادة الحياة في المادة الجامدة .
في الفصلين الأخيرين من الكتاب يحاول برغسون أن يرد العالم بأسره لمبدأ واحد هو نظرية التطور عند دارون مع التأكيد على محاولة تهذيب هذا التطور وليس تغيير جوهره فهو يؤمن بنظرية التطور لكن الإختلاف بينه وبين دارون إن الأخير نظريته عبارة عن حلقة متصلة بحلقة، حلقات صلبة كل عنصر يؤدي إلى العنصر الذي بعده فتطور الكائنات حسب هذه النظرية يأتي حسب قوانين خارجية صارمة هي قوانين الانتخاب الطبيعي الأربعة آنفة الذكر . بالتالي فهو عالم حسب برغسون مصمت / ميت
فحاول أن يبث فيه الحياة .
فالعالم الدارويني مغلق جامد .
يمكن أن الخص فلسفة برغسون بجملة بسيطة هي
" محاولة إحياء عالم ميت " وتأكيد للحرية في عالم المادة الصلب .
وهنا مكمن اختلاف فلسفة برغسون انه أوجد عالم فيه حياة وفيه روح فيه سيولة فيه تماوج وتمازج
بين للعالم المادي ثنائيات تختلف عنه عارض فيها الفلسفة المادية .
فمثلاً
المادية عندها العقل المحض برغسون عنده الحدس
المادية عندها التحليل عنده الإدراك عند ها العلم المجرد عنده العالم المتعين
عند المادية الامتداد المكاني عنده التمازج، الإمتداد الزماني
المادية عندها الكم عنده الكيف
المادية عندها الصلب عنده السائل
المادية عنها الموجود عنده الصائر الذي يكون
المادية عندها المتقطع عنده المستمر
المادية عندها البراغماتي " الشيء الذي يقدر على التعامل الخارجي " عنده الحدس أو الصوفي أي يستخدم الحدس فيتعامل مع الإنسان مع الأزلية مع الجوهر الداخلي للأشياء وليس تعامل خارجي .
المادية عندها مجتمع مغلق عنده مجتمع مفتوح
عند المادية الإمتثال للقوانين والأعراف هي تحدد كل شيء . عنده تجاوز الأعراف والقوانين
عند المادية قانون الضرورة الخارجي للبشر العاديين . عنده قانون الحدس الداخلي للنخبة .
ختاماً
اللافت في فلسفة برغسون انه كان على عكس التطويريين بالكامل بدأ يؤول التطور تأويل روحي في وقت كان أنصار نظرية التطور عندهم تفاسير ميكانيكية آلية مادية صلبة
بينما كان هو يقول ان أصل التطور هو � اندفاعة حيوية" هذه الإندفاعة انطلقت من شعور معين أو بالأحرى من ما فوق الشعور
والشعور عنده هو روح لكنه لا يستخدم كلمة روح أبداً .
يقول ان هذا التطور " الاندفاعة الحيوية" يأتي بشكل مباغت في عالم مغامر يخترع ويعاد اختراعه دون هوادة ،
برغسون يقر بوجود " قوّة خلّاقة"
-قوى الله ، التصميم الذكي- لكن هو لا يقول الله
يفول هناك قوّة خلّاقة أنشأت الكون حتى تكون ذات فعل حاسم بتطور الكائنات الحية ويؤكد في الوقت نفسه انه ثمة في هذا الكون ما هو أعلى من العقل ف اعتبر العقل مجرد آلك للفعل لا أكثر ولا أقل وبنفس الوقت كان يعتبر الوجدان/ الحدس هو القادر وحده على فهم الحياة وعلى إدراك الأشياء المتغييرة وهذا ما أسماه " الديمومة الزمنية"
وهنا يقترب برغسون من كانت الذي بنقده العلمي كان يقول أنا أؤمن بالله بوجداني /بالحدس لا بالعقل .
كتاب يقع في 385 صفحة
مقسم إلى أربع فصول
في الفصل الأول يناقش الفيلسوف برغسون حركة تطوّر الحياة - الآلية والغائية - وهما حالتان يجدهما العقل في متناوله.
مبيناً انهما لا تصلحان لتعليل حركة التطور وان بدت احداهما في حالة صياغتها بصورة جديدة تصبح أوفق من الأخرى ويستهل الفصل بالحديث عن مذهب الديمومة عنده بوصفها زمن واحد ممتد من البداية للنهاية ولا توجد به فواصل يعني يعتبره مثل السيمفونية أو اللحن الموسيقي يبدأ من بداية الحياة إلى نهايتها .
" ما من انفعال أو تصور أو فعل إرادي إلا كان متغيراً في كل لحظة وأن الحالة النفسية إذا توقفت عن التغيّر توقفت" ديمومتها " عن الجريان .
" والحق أن المرء يتغير دون انقطاع وإن الحالة النفسية ذاتها ليست سوى تغيّر.
بالتالي فحسب برغسون الديمومة هي أصل المادة والزمن والحركة والديمومة شيء لا مادي ولا يمكن أن ندركها الا بالـ" حدس "
ويشرح برغسون الحدس بمقولة رائعة
الحدس هو أن يوجد يوجد هو أن يتغير، يتغير هو أن ينضج، ينضج هو أن يخلق نفسه بنفسه باستم��ار
في الفصل الثاني يناقش الاتجاهات المتباينة لتطور الحياة : الخمود، العقل، الغريزة
حسب فلسفة برغسون يوجد في كل أجزاء هذا الوجود -مهما تنوعت أشكالها ومهما اختلفت - قوة كامنة متشابهة عند الجميع يسميها " الدافع الحيوي " " الحياة"
الدافع الحيوي داخل الموجودات هو أكثر من الأجسام المادية هو القوة النامية التي تستطيع أن تسترد نفسها هو الحياة / الحافز الذي يولد هذا العالم عكس المادة وضد الجمود ضد الصدفة .
فكان يرى انه يوجد هناك تصميم / قصد للأشياء بداخلها وليس في خارجها فقط " الانتخاب الطبيعي الذي تحدث عنه دارون " اي الآلية التي تحدث في تطور الكائن الحي وهي أربع أمور
الوراثة، تغيير المناخ/ تغيير مناخ الطبيعة، قابلية التأقلم، الانجاب، الصراع من أجل البقاء .
وبهذا الكلام عن الدافع الحيوي برغسون تحدى كل أصحاب النظرية المادية من توماس هوبز ، ديفيد هيوم، الباروخ سبينوزا، كارل ماركس، فيرباخ ، سبنسر وغيرهم لأنزكل هؤلاء عجزوا حسب برغسون عن تفسير ولادة الحياة في المادة الجامدة .
في الفصلين الأخيرين من الكتاب يحاول برغسون أن يرد العالم بأسره لمبدأ واحد هو نظرية التطور عند دارون مع التأكيد على محاولة تهذيب هذا التطور وليس تغيير جوهره فهو يؤمن بنظرية التطور لكن الإختلاف بينه وبين دارون إن الأخير نظريته عبارة عن حلقة متصلة بحلقة، حلقات صلبة كل عنصر يؤدي إلى العنصر الذي بعده فتطور الكائنات حسب هذه النظرية يأتي حسب قوانين خارجية صارمة هي قوانين الانتخاب الطبيعي الأربعة آنفة الذكر . بالتالي فهو عالم حسب برغسون مصمت / ميت
فحاول أن يبث فيه الحياة .
فالعالم الدارويني مغلق جامد .
يمكن أن الخص فلسفة برغسون بجملة بسيطة هي
" محاولة إحياء عالم ميت " وتأكيد للحرية في عالم المادة الصلب .
وهنا مكمن اختلاف فلسفة برغسون انه أوجد عالم فيه حياة وفيه روح فيه سيولة فيه تماوج وتمازج
بين للعالم المادي ثنائيات تختلف عنه عارض فيها الفلسفة المادية .
فمثلاً
المادية عندها العقل المحض برغسون عنده الحدس
المادية عندها التحليل عنده الإدراك عند ها العلم المجرد عنده العالم المتعين
عند المادية الامتداد المكاني عنده التمازج، الإمتداد الزماني
المادية عندها الكم عنده الكيف
المادية عندها الصلب عنده السائل
المادية عنها الموجود عنده الصائر الذي يكون
المادية عندها المتقطع عنده المستمر
المادية عندها البراغماتي " الشيء الذي يقدر على التعامل الخارجي " عنده الحدس أو الصوفي أي يستخدم الحدس فيتعامل مع الإنسان مع الأزلية مع الجوهر الداخلي للأشياء وليس تعامل خارجي .
المادية عندها مجتمع مغلق عنده مجتمع مفتوح
عند المادية الإمتثال للقوانين والأعراف هي تحدد كل شيء . عنده تجاوز الأعراف والقوانين
عند المادية قانون الضرورة الخارجي للبشر العاديين . عنده قانون الحدس الداخلي للنخبة .
ختاماً
اللافت في فلسفة برغسون انه كان على عكس التطويريين بالكامل بدأ يؤول التطور تأويل روحي في وقت كان أنصار نظرية التطور عندهم تفاسير ميكانيكية آلية مادية صلبة
بينما كان هو يقول ان أصل التطور هو � اندفاعة حيوية" هذه الإندفاعة انطلقت من شعور معين أو بالأحرى من ما فوق الشعور
والشعور عنده هو روح لكنه لا يستخدم كلمة روح أبداً .
يقول ان هذا التطور " الاندفاعة الحيوية" يأتي بشكل مباغت في عالم مغامر يخترع ويعاد اختراعه دون هوادة ،
برغسون يقر بوجود " قوّة خلّاقة"
-قوى الله ، التصميم الذكي- لكن هو لا يقول الله
يفول هناك قوّة خلّاقة أنشأت الكون حتى تكون ذات فعل حاسم بتطور الكائنات الحية ويؤكد في الوقت نفسه انه ثمة في هذا الكون ما هو أعلى من العقل ف اعتبر العقل مجرد آلك للفعل لا أكثر ولا أقل وبنفس الوقت كان يعتبر الوجدان/ الحدس هو القادر وحده على فهم الحياة وعلى إدراك الأشياء المتغييرة وهذا ما أسماه " الديمومة الزمنية"
وهنا يقترب برغسون من كانت الذي بنقده العلمي كان يقول أنا أؤمن بالله بوجداني /بالحدس لا بالعقل .
August 8, 2007
Bergson's thesis is that Darwinian and Lamarkian evolution are only half the story and that there is a creative urge inherent in life that defines the direction of evolution. It is distinguished from Creationism in that his system does not posit and eschaton or final perfect form, nor an external agent (God).
It has some similarity with biologist Rupert Sheldrake's theory of morphic fields. In his theory, there is an energy field (as yet undetected by modern physics) that controls the shape of organic molecules, i.e., one protein is shaped one way and the same collection of atoms gets shaped another way under the same pH and temperature.
Aldous Huxley mentions Bergson's theory of consciousness several times in his writings. Bergson thinks that consciousness pervades everything, and that intellect serves as a filter that presents only what is comprehensible to mental categories. This has several implications. One is the possibility for a monistic metaphysic. The other is that it leaves open the possibility of perceiving an alternate reality (what excited Huxley).
Chapter 3 is about his metaphysics, which are not very clearly expressed. There appear to be avenues unexplored by him. What are the consequences of matter being infused with consciousness? Magic? Why is it that intellect and geometrical thinking is what produces objects in perception? What is the mechanism.
What does have value is his theory that chaos is not the absence of repeatability, but is a stochastic process that can be understood as an aggregate of individual "wills." This is used to support his vital theory of evolution. That each organism "wills" its variation in seemingly random fashion, but at a higher order, it produces the regularity of genera.
Chapter 4 is a critique of various philosophic systems after establishing his "cinematographic" theory of perception. His basic point is that matter is in continual flux, yet we are only able to perceive it as a sequence of discrete states, hence the illusion of permanence.
It has some similarity with biologist Rupert Sheldrake's theory of morphic fields. In his theory, there is an energy field (as yet undetected by modern physics) that controls the shape of organic molecules, i.e., one protein is shaped one way and the same collection of atoms gets shaped another way under the same pH and temperature.
Aldous Huxley mentions Bergson's theory of consciousness several times in his writings. Bergson thinks that consciousness pervades everything, and that intellect serves as a filter that presents only what is comprehensible to mental categories. This has several implications. One is the possibility for a monistic metaphysic. The other is that it leaves open the possibility of perceiving an alternate reality (what excited Huxley).
Chapter 3 is about his metaphysics, which are not very clearly expressed. There appear to be avenues unexplored by him. What are the consequences of matter being infused with consciousness? Magic? Why is it that intellect and geometrical thinking is what produces objects in perception? What is the mechanism.
What does have value is his theory that chaos is not the absence of repeatability, but is a stochastic process that can be understood as an aggregate of individual "wills." This is used to support his vital theory of evolution. That each organism "wills" its variation in seemingly random fashion, but at a higher order, it produces the regularity of genera.
Chapter 4 is a critique of various philosophic systems after establishing his "cinematographic" theory of perception. His basic point is that matter is in continual flux, yet we are only able to perceive it as a sequence of discrete states, hence the illusion of permanence.
March 4, 2020
Creative Evolution (1907) is arguably Henri Bergson’s most matured and comprehensive account of reality. In it, he draws heavily from his earlier works Time and Free Will (1889) and Matter and Memory (1896), and intertwines his views on time, space, matter and mind with the (then new) evolutionary biology. The result is a very original framework with which to view the world.
Bergson won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1927, and this is a very important landmark. It shows Bergson’s artistic talents and his philosophical genius. But it is important in another sense: Bergson was no real philosopher � at least in the sense philosophy is usually understood � but more of an artist. Perhaps, some might even call him a secular theologian. Anyway, if you have to compare Bergson to some predecessor, Plotinus comes to mind. Why? Plotinus drew from Plato, Neo-Platonism, Stoicism and a myriad other source, and drew up a total worldview in which the concept of ‘immanence� was all-important.
Likewise, Bergson draws up a whole philosophy, borrowing ideas of Descartes, Kant, modern physics and modern biology to synthesize a grand worldview, ultimately based on the notion of ‘intuition�. Both Plotinus and Bergson place a high value on the immanence of the world � reality is that which immediately shows itself to us � intuitively, so to speak. All attempts to describe, explain or conceptualize reality leads to distorted, disfigured views of the world.
There are major differences between Plotinus and Bergson, though. The most important being that Plotinus � steeped as he was in Ancient philosophy � recognized the gradualness of reality. The Whole of reality � i.e. God � is perfectly immanent, but all of its parts partake in this whole, leading to a ladder of reality, on which mankind is placed somewhere between dead matter and God. We are gifted with mind, yet we also are partly material.
For Bergson, this gradualness of reality is the product of a habitual illusion. Most of the history of philosophy (and certainly all of the old debates) is riddled with this illusion of gradualness. Plato’s theory of Forms and Aristotle’s First Mover are postulates, necessary because reality is conceived to be immutable. Greek philosophy, as modern science, saw itself confronted with a world that is composed of moments, states and forms. These are simply parts � the mind immediately leads us to the concept of a whole � a series of moments, a sequence of states, an order of forms. It is these series that were (and are) conceptualized as eternal Forms, Prime Movers or mathematical equations.
All of the old philosophical debates are then reduced to mere pseudo-problems, as products of the habits of our mind. Understanding our mind properly would then lead to dissolving of all these problems. It is this that Bergson attempts in all of his works. Or rather: it is his main aim. It is in this domain that Bergson’s philosophy is truly unique, impressive and baffling.
With the risk of oversimplifying Bergson’s theories, this is Bergson’s account of the world.
Drawing on Descartes� dualism, Bergson claims there is matter and mind. Matter is the objective world that confronts us during our conscious life. Mind is our intuitive sense of reality. Usually, philosophers would attempt to place perception and/or intellect in the sphere of the mind. Not for Bergson. He claims perception is simply the prolongation of material movements � tendencies. Tendencies of what? Of our bodies. Our bodies are peculiar, in the sense that they are material objects, yet also are intrinsically connected to our inner consciousness. This is what distinguishes us from dead matter, plants, and animals.
Seeing as there are consciousness and physical bodies, our lives come with two aspects. Normally, most of the time, we are simply physical bodies, solely occupied with practical life. We perceive, we act. Scientists study the human body and can describe how physical movements transmit energies to our sense apparatus, which relates these impulses to our brains. Our brains then send out transmissions as a result of these movements. In short: our brain is the centre, receiving and sending messages to our peripheral bodily locations. For Bergson, the human body � as indeed the bodies of all living organisms � is nothing but a sensory-motor system.
But, as said, human beings have consciousness. That is, we are not simply machines operating on the principle of stimulus-response. And so it is with most ‘higher� animals. Apart from perception, we have intellect. This is the ability to deduce and induce new data from given data. Ultimately, these rest on geometrical and logical principles, which themselves are the foundation of both our common sense grasp of reality and our scientific theories (like the conceptions of space and time in physics). With Bergson, intellect is placed firmly in the bodily organism.
To explain both perception and intellect, Bergson draws on evolutionary biology � these faculties are adaptations of organisms that allow for goal-directed behaviour. In short, he uses a functionalist approach when explain both our perception and intellect.
So how does it answer the above mentioned philosophical problems? Well it doesn’t � yet. These philosophical debates and problems (mostly metaphysical) are the results of this biological way of thinking. We are animals, living social lives. We use language to communicate with others; language uses symbols that refer to particular objecting and things in the world; and this mechanism forces a particular, physical way of thinking on us. We conceptualize reality as a collection of parts (objects, things) and their relations, and express it to others. While this worldview has obvious evolutionary value � otherwise we wouldn’t think this way and hadn’t changed the world so profoundly � it is a distorted view of the world. It tricks us into believing we have perceived reality, yet the metaphysical implications of this worldview should warn us (or have warned us) about the illusoriness of this approach.
For Bergson, this material world is simply a natural product of evolution.
The task of the philosopher is to deconstruct it, and to unravel the true way of the world. When we talk about consciousness, or life, we are moving in a totally different region. We should un-learn the intellectual way of viewing the world � of chopping it up into infinite collections of moments, states, and forms. In Time and Free Will (1889), Bergson attempted to show that psychologists look at human consciousness as a collection of quantitative states, while it truly is a continuous flow of qualitative states. Measuring, or even conceptualizing any state artificially destroys the continuity, movement and quality of the very thing the psychologist tries to study. Consciousness is duration � a totally different region from the objective space-time in which the scientist (as well as the common sense person) operates. Or rather, all spatial and temporal ideas are intellectual constructs, attempts at intellectually grasping un-graspable intuitions. E.g. we imagine duration as moments, which can be pictured to ourselves as (an infinite collection of) points on a line. Yet this picture is a geometrical representation of an intuition � it quantifies a qualitative state.
Likewise, in Matter and Memory (1896), Bergson attempted to show that picturing the world as (infinite) collections of moments, states and forms, is simply the product of the correlation of our consciousness and the material world (including our brains). Scientists and philosophers have debated for ages (and still do) how physical brain states relate to conscious states. There seems to be an unbridgeable chasm between the objects of neuroscience and psychology. Bergson’s theory is that this is a pseudo-problem, the result of our intellectual way of viewing the world (including ourselves). Intuitively, we experience our body in the here and now. We are (paraphrasing him) a personal entity continuously eating our way into the future. We literally our only here and now, and our whole notion of past and future comes from our memory. That is, we are built to learn from past experiences. This means we adapt ourselves to our current situation based on prior events. Physically, this is simply the formation of tendencies in the brain.
Psychologically, this past does not exist. All we are, is our current (qualitative) state, which itself is a continuously moving intuition. Pure duration. That is, prior states are selected � based mostly on practical needs, sometimes on speculative desires � and are immediately fused with our present state. Even this way of putting it stunts the meaning of Bergson: he literally means there is no conscious past. All selected memories are not memories of events as they happened � they are intrinsically part of the present. The past never comes back, what we believe to be memories of the past, are our present states fusing (selectively) past states with current states, leading to totally new states. In short: consciousness continuously creates states out of current and past experiences.
Similarly, there is no future. Due to the workings of our memory, we form notions of a past, as distinguished from the present. Now, this seems to lead us also towards a future. If I was, and now am, during those past moments, the current ‘I� was part of the (‘my�) future. But this is an illusion. Just like there is no (conscious) past, there is no (conscious) future. There is simply me, as pure consciousness, experiencing a continuous flow of ever-changing states.
(I am aware of my creaky description of this mechanism � Bergson is already struggling to express it in a 300 page book, and given my very limited way of expression this only greatens the problem. Once you grasp it, is easy to see who he means�)
And now we have hit upon Bergson’s deepest insight. There is a dualism between inner consciousness and external materiality. The first is the real of pure duration, continuity, movement; the second is the realm of our brain, physical body, all of Nature. Due to language and social life, we express the second realm in terms of objects and their relations in space-time. Our intellect, so used in viewing the world in this way, internalizes this worldview and intellectualizes our intuitions, so to speak. We quantify qualitative states of consciousness; we transform movement into immobility; we represent time and movement as (infinite collections of) points in space-time.
So far, all we have dealt with are Bergson’s main theories from Time and Free Will (1889) and Matter and Memory (1896). What does this have to do with Creative Evolution (1907)? Well, like I mentioned at the beginning of this review: it is his magnum opus. He takes all of his earlier ideas and synthesizes them with evolutionary biology.
The biologist � assuming the unprovable notion that he has the same intellectual and perceptive faculties as his fellow human beings � falls into the same trap as the physicist, psychologist and common sense person. He studies living organisms. Life is a central concept here: What distinguishes living organisms from dead matter? He will explain this in terms of biochemical processes, and trace this line of development back into the remote past. Really, life is nothing but the active collection of energy to transform it into something new.
The plant collects energy from the sun, carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and water from the soil, in order to produce carbohydrates. It is nothing but a transformation (with an emphasis on form) of energies. This type of living is rather basic. In the past, certain organisms developed ways to outsource this type of living (to plants) and to eat the organisms (plants) that transform energies. So animals eat plants to collect energy, in order to produce movement (to collect energy, etc.). Now, this leads to organisms competing for resources � plants for sunlight and water, animals for plants or other animals � so an arms race of protective apparatus. And this leads to better weaponry to best these protections. Etc.
In short, we see life developing from stationary plant life to moving animal life. Sensory-motor systems become a necessity for animals, guided under the principle of natural selection. Now it starts to pay to interfere with goal-setting, flexibility becomes a premium, resulting ever higher specialization of intellectual capabilities. In short: life branches out, organisms find unique ways of adapting themselves to their ever-changing environment, and intellect becomes one of these adaptations. An ever expanding intellect, due to ever expanding cortical specialization, leads, ultimately, to man.
Bergson claims that man is unique, of a different kind, compared to all other organisms. While instinct, perception and intellect are gradual properties, possessed by many organisms in some way or other, it is only in man that life manifests itself, to itself. That is, man is himself a state of this ever-flowing, continuous line of development � a state of life � but at the same time he is able to grasp this way of being intuitively. Other animals, supposedly, lack this capacity. The horse might be intelligent in remembering his care taker and the times it is fed, but it doesn’t intuitively grasp that it’s alive. Man does.
Now, we can wrap up all of Bergson’s theories rather easily. Just like (pure) consciousness is a totally different region from the material world, so life is a totally different region from the natural world. For Bergson, life is a primordial impulsion, given to dead matter � enlivening matter, so to speak � which then sets of a continuous ever-flowing chain of explosions, moving endlessly in all directions. This leads to the endless tree of life, of which we are simply one state.
The biologist � still driven by the same sort of essentialist thinking of Aristotle or formalistic thinking of Plato � artificially chops up this tree of life in his pursuit of distinct varieties and species. He looks for essences and static forms in qualitative, ever-moving forms of life. What is a Siberian tiger? When does an organism qualify to be a Siberian tiger? What are the essential traits an organism has to have to qualify as a Siberian tiger? These questions, ultimately, are unanswerable, since they simply depend on our own linguistic conventions. Just like the quip that ‘IQ is what the IQ test measures� we can say ‘A Siberian tiger is what the biologist decides to measure�.
------------------------------------------------
(final paragraphs continue in comment section.)
Bergson won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1927, and this is a very important landmark. It shows Bergson’s artistic talents and his philosophical genius. But it is important in another sense: Bergson was no real philosopher � at least in the sense philosophy is usually understood � but more of an artist. Perhaps, some might even call him a secular theologian. Anyway, if you have to compare Bergson to some predecessor, Plotinus comes to mind. Why? Plotinus drew from Plato, Neo-Platonism, Stoicism and a myriad other source, and drew up a total worldview in which the concept of ‘immanence� was all-important.
Likewise, Bergson draws up a whole philosophy, borrowing ideas of Descartes, Kant, modern physics and modern biology to synthesize a grand worldview, ultimately based on the notion of ‘intuition�. Both Plotinus and Bergson place a high value on the immanence of the world � reality is that which immediately shows itself to us � intuitively, so to speak. All attempts to describe, explain or conceptualize reality leads to distorted, disfigured views of the world.
There are major differences between Plotinus and Bergson, though. The most important being that Plotinus � steeped as he was in Ancient philosophy � recognized the gradualness of reality. The Whole of reality � i.e. God � is perfectly immanent, but all of its parts partake in this whole, leading to a ladder of reality, on which mankind is placed somewhere between dead matter and God. We are gifted with mind, yet we also are partly material.
For Bergson, this gradualness of reality is the product of a habitual illusion. Most of the history of philosophy (and certainly all of the old debates) is riddled with this illusion of gradualness. Plato’s theory of Forms and Aristotle’s First Mover are postulates, necessary because reality is conceived to be immutable. Greek philosophy, as modern science, saw itself confronted with a world that is composed of moments, states and forms. These are simply parts � the mind immediately leads us to the concept of a whole � a series of moments, a sequence of states, an order of forms. It is these series that were (and are) conceptualized as eternal Forms, Prime Movers or mathematical equations.
All of the old philosophical debates are then reduced to mere pseudo-problems, as products of the habits of our mind. Understanding our mind properly would then lead to dissolving of all these problems. It is this that Bergson attempts in all of his works. Or rather: it is his main aim. It is in this domain that Bergson’s philosophy is truly unique, impressive and baffling.
With the risk of oversimplifying Bergson’s theories, this is Bergson’s account of the world.
Drawing on Descartes� dualism, Bergson claims there is matter and mind. Matter is the objective world that confronts us during our conscious life. Mind is our intuitive sense of reality. Usually, philosophers would attempt to place perception and/or intellect in the sphere of the mind. Not for Bergson. He claims perception is simply the prolongation of material movements � tendencies. Tendencies of what? Of our bodies. Our bodies are peculiar, in the sense that they are material objects, yet also are intrinsically connected to our inner consciousness. This is what distinguishes us from dead matter, plants, and animals.
Seeing as there are consciousness and physical bodies, our lives come with two aspects. Normally, most of the time, we are simply physical bodies, solely occupied with practical life. We perceive, we act. Scientists study the human body and can describe how physical movements transmit energies to our sense apparatus, which relates these impulses to our brains. Our brains then send out transmissions as a result of these movements. In short: our brain is the centre, receiving and sending messages to our peripheral bodily locations. For Bergson, the human body � as indeed the bodies of all living organisms � is nothing but a sensory-motor system.
But, as said, human beings have consciousness. That is, we are not simply machines operating on the principle of stimulus-response. And so it is with most ‘higher� animals. Apart from perception, we have intellect. This is the ability to deduce and induce new data from given data. Ultimately, these rest on geometrical and logical principles, which themselves are the foundation of both our common sense grasp of reality and our scientific theories (like the conceptions of space and time in physics). With Bergson, intellect is placed firmly in the bodily organism.
To explain both perception and intellect, Bergson draws on evolutionary biology � these faculties are adaptations of organisms that allow for goal-directed behaviour. In short, he uses a functionalist approach when explain both our perception and intellect.
So how does it answer the above mentioned philosophical problems? Well it doesn’t � yet. These philosophical debates and problems (mostly metaphysical) are the results of this biological way of thinking. We are animals, living social lives. We use language to communicate with others; language uses symbols that refer to particular objecting and things in the world; and this mechanism forces a particular, physical way of thinking on us. We conceptualize reality as a collection of parts (objects, things) and their relations, and express it to others. While this worldview has obvious evolutionary value � otherwise we wouldn’t think this way and hadn’t changed the world so profoundly � it is a distorted view of the world. It tricks us into believing we have perceived reality, yet the metaphysical implications of this worldview should warn us (or have warned us) about the illusoriness of this approach.
For Bergson, this material world is simply a natural product of evolution.
The task of the philosopher is to deconstruct it, and to unravel the true way of the world. When we talk about consciousness, or life, we are moving in a totally different region. We should un-learn the intellectual way of viewing the world � of chopping it up into infinite collections of moments, states, and forms. In Time and Free Will (1889), Bergson attempted to show that psychologists look at human consciousness as a collection of quantitative states, while it truly is a continuous flow of qualitative states. Measuring, or even conceptualizing any state artificially destroys the continuity, movement and quality of the very thing the psychologist tries to study. Consciousness is duration � a totally different region from the objective space-time in which the scientist (as well as the common sense person) operates. Or rather, all spatial and temporal ideas are intellectual constructs, attempts at intellectually grasping un-graspable intuitions. E.g. we imagine duration as moments, which can be pictured to ourselves as (an infinite collection of) points on a line. Yet this picture is a geometrical representation of an intuition � it quantifies a qualitative state.
Likewise, in Matter and Memory (1896), Bergson attempted to show that picturing the world as (infinite) collections of moments, states and forms, is simply the product of the correlation of our consciousness and the material world (including our brains). Scientists and philosophers have debated for ages (and still do) how physical brain states relate to conscious states. There seems to be an unbridgeable chasm between the objects of neuroscience and psychology. Bergson’s theory is that this is a pseudo-problem, the result of our intellectual way of viewing the world (including ourselves). Intuitively, we experience our body in the here and now. We are (paraphrasing him) a personal entity continuously eating our way into the future. We literally our only here and now, and our whole notion of past and future comes from our memory. That is, we are built to learn from past experiences. This means we adapt ourselves to our current situation based on prior events. Physically, this is simply the formation of tendencies in the brain.
Psychologically, this past does not exist. All we are, is our current (qualitative) state, which itself is a continuously moving intuition. Pure duration. That is, prior states are selected � based mostly on practical needs, sometimes on speculative desires � and are immediately fused with our present state. Even this way of putting it stunts the meaning of Bergson: he literally means there is no conscious past. All selected memories are not memories of events as they happened � they are intrinsically part of the present. The past never comes back, what we believe to be memories of the past, are our present states fusing (selectively) past states with current states, leading to totally new states. In short: consciousness continuously creates states out of current and past experiences.
Similarly, there is no future. Due to the workings of our memory, we form notions of a past, as distinguished from the present. Now, this seems to lead us also towards a future. If I was, and now am, during those past moments, the current ‘I� was part of the (‘my�) future. But this is an illusion. Just like there is no (conscious) past, there is no (conscious) future. There is simply me, as pure consciousness, experiencing a continuous flow of ever-changing states.
(I am aware of my creaky description of this mechanism � Bergson is already struggling to express it in a 300 page book, and given my very limited way of expression this only greatens the problem. Once you grasp it, is easy to see who he means�)
And now we have hit upon Bergson’s deepest insight. There is a dualism between inner consciousness and external materiality. The first is the real of pure duration, continuity, movement; the second is the realm of our brain, physical body, all of Nature. Due to language and social life, we express the second realm in terms of objects and their relations in space-time. Our intellect, so used in viewing the world in this way, internalizes this worldview and intellectualizes our intuitions, so to speak. We quantify qualitative states of consciousness; we transform movement into immobility; we represent time and movement as (infinite collections of) points in space-time.
So far, all we have dealt with are Bergson’s main theories from Time and Free Will (1889) and Matter and Memory (1896). What does this have to do with Creative Evolution (1907)? Well, like I mentioned at the beginning of this review: it is his magnum opus. He takes all of his earlier ideas and synthesizes them with evolutionary biology.
The biologist � assuming the unprovable notion that he has the same intellectual and perceptive faculties as his fellow human beings � falls into the same trap as the physicist, psychologist and common sense person. He studies living organisms. Life is a central concept here: What distinguishes living organisms from dead matter? He will explain this in terms of biochemical processes, and trace this line of development back into the remote past. Really, life is nothing but the active collection of energy to transform it into something new.
The plant collects energy from the sun, carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and water from the soil, in order to produce carbohydrates. It is nothing but a transformation (with an emphasis on form) of energies. This type of living is rather basic. In the past, certain organisms developed ways to outsource this type of living (to plants) and to eat the organisms (plants) that transform energies. So animals eat plants to collect energy, in order to produce movement (to collect energy, etc.). Now, this leads to organisms competing for resources � plants for sunlight and water, animals for plants or other animals � so an arms race of protective apparatus. And this leads to better weaponry to best these protections. Etc.
In short, we see life developing from stationary plant life to moving animal life. Sensory-motor systems become a necessity for animals, guided under the principle of natural selection. Now it starts to pay to interfere with goal-setting, flexibility becomes a premium, resulting ever higher specialization of intellectual capabilities. In short: life branches out, organisms find unique ways of adapting themselves to their ever-changing environment, and intellect becomes one of these adaptations. An ever expanding intellect, due to ever expanding cortical specialization, leads, ultimately, to man.
Bergson claims that man is unique, of a different kind, compared to all other organisms. While instinct, perception and intellect are gradual properties, possessed by many organisms in some way or other, it is only in man that life manifests itself, to itself. That is, man is himself a state of this ever-flowing, continuous line of development � a state of life � but at the same time he is able to grasp this way of being intuitively. Other animals, supposedly, lack this capacity. The horse might be intelligent in remembering his care taker and the times it is fed, but it doesn’t intuitively grasp that it’s alive. Man does.
Now, we can wrap up all of Bergson’s theories rather easily. Just like (pure) consciousness is a totally different region from the material world, so life is a totally different region from the natural world. For Bergson, life is a primordial impulsion, given to dead matter � enlivening matter, so to speak � which then sets of a continuous ever-flowing chain of explosions, moving endlessly in all directions. This leads to the endless tree of life, of which we are simply one state.
The biologist � still driven by the same sort of essentialist thinking of Aristotle or formalistic thinking of Plato � artificially chops up this tree of life in his pursuit of distinct varieties and species. He looks for essences and static forms in qualitative, ever-moving forms of life. What is a Siberian tiger? When does an organism qualify to be a Siberian tiger? What are the essential traits an organism has to have to qualify as a Siberian tiger? These questions, ultimately, are unanswerable, since they simply depend on our own linguistic conventions. Just like the quip that ‘IQ is what the IQ test measures� we can say ‘A Siberian tiger is what the biologist decides to measure�.
------------------------------------------------
(final paragraphs continue in comment section.)
Read
April 25, 2019Henri Bergson is perhaps the most famous of the philosophers who fall under the label of vitalism, whose most basic tenet is that the procedures of science, dealing with material objects, is inappropriate to living organisms and especially that aspect of life called consciousness. Since most of the academics in the Western tradition think otherwise, it is fitting, I think, that much of Creative Evolution should be taken up with why they do so. I cannot sum up Bergson's premise better than this pivotal paragraph from CE:
'Originally, we think only in order to act. Our intellect has been cast in the mold of action. Speculation is a luxury, while action is necessary. Now, in order to act, we begin by proposing an end; we make a plan, then we go on to the detail of the mechanism which will bring it to pass. This latter operation is possible only if we know what we can reckon on. We must therefore have managed to extract resemblances from nature, which enable us to anticipate the future. Thus we must, consciously or unconsciously, have made of the use of the law of causality. Moreover, the more sharply the idea of efficient causality is defined in our minds, the more it takes the form of mechanical causality. And this scheme, in its turn, is the more mathematical according as it expresses a more rigorous necessity. That it why we have only to follow the bent of our mind to become mathematicians.' (p. 36)
In other words, we just think that way. Humans need to be efficient in obtaining the deer and avoiding the lion, and those same patterns lead to the mechanistic, scientific viewpoint.
However, Bergson points out that this method, that of the intellect and science, is not the only method of coping with the overabundance of stimuli that is our world. Within the evolution of life, instinct is the other path, one that as far as efficiency is concerned matches the intellectual faculty. Bergson contradicts the somewhat easy to accept notion that intellect builds on instinct, the more advanced building upon the more primitive. Instead Bergson sees these two paths as parallel but diverging extremely early in the history of animal life. One, instinct, pushes toward total assimilation with the object of their focus, its members specialized for the activity they are performing. The other, intellect, is removed from the object, aligned with it only conceptually. It is a far less perfect connection, and partly for that reason, open to changing direction when the context changes. The essential function of instinct is interpenetration, of intellect problem solving. Obviously the angle of its trajectory is toward flexibility and that is what the intellect can supply. However while Bergson is the champion of the 'vital' element in evolution, he is also deeply aware of the energy involved in solving the problems instinct has settled. Too often, that most cogitating animal, mankind, falls back into modes of thought that are conventional and near automatic. Intellect, by itself, can never break out of the already known except by an exceptional act of will.
The divergence of the intellect and instinct bifurcated a momentum that is the simple, effusive flow of life. By definition life is the opposite of stasis, of quiescence, and life on the move is explosive for Bergson. Movement has to entail choice, being here rather than there, such that the humblest organism with the ability and necessity of movement, demonstrates a spark of consciousness. Consciousness is nearly coterminal with life, and for the moving organism, it is. Bergson most basically believes that while the scientific worldview is obviously not dealing with the real but only the efficient, it is no serious error when concerned with the material world. But beyond the unbridgeable gap that separates life and matter, there is another huge gap for Bergson at the threshold where life moves or it doesn't: plants seem mired in the soil that contains them. Being photosynthesizers, they provide the energy that allows other life to break away into mobility.
So now that we know why most of us think the way we do most of the time and why (most) scientists want to think mechanistically all the time, what do we have left? Most obviously, all that 'stuff' the intellect charted through in the first place. The world is very complex, especially when an organism starts moving around in it, and that is why coping mechanisms like instinct and intellect were called for. And one reason why life is so complex is that has a history, as Bergson says, it endures. Duration is very different from the time of the intellect. Scientists attempts to make time static by using frozen moments which she can contemplate and arrange with elements already known. They operate with the principle that 'all is given'. So while we can't think any other way than with time as segmented ( 'intellect solidifies everything it touches' p. 38), we live time as a flow and sense the possibility of real change. If time truly flows, and we leave behind the frozen moments of the intellect, then events don't cause an effect, they interpenetrate, like a glass of water given drops of dye. Scientists like to present one artificially segmented section of time as being totally determined by the segment just before. This can't be true if time is fluid. For one thing, an event touches that which comes as well as what came before. Think of a fisherman walking upstream- he influences the water not only behind him but ahead of him as well. And then consider what lies behind: if time flows, the ripple effect from life's movement is incalculably vast. Think of a newborn who begins life already with the drag of his genetic history. With the passage of time, each experience both influences and is influenced by everything around it. The effect is almost exponential when one considers each ripple interpenetrating with the field around it, producing new ripple fields as courses meet. And while the medium of our lived experience may be best described as fluid, it is not weak. This long history that every human has, while not always there in awareness, can pounce back with a vengeance in the form of intense memories, or we can bring a past episode of our life front and center, to reconsider it, rejoice over it, or mourn it. No wonder Proust and Bergson are so often discussed together.
Indeed, the presence of art is one of the proofs that mankind is still capable of at least glimpsing that stream of life which is forbidden to the intellect. It is hard to deny that there is a different kind of knowledge which the great poets provide, that they supply suggestions of that whole through which the intellect can only map a course. The artist reconnects with life through a sympathy with his model that is not unlike the connection of an organism driven instinctively toward its object. In fact, the sympathy the artist exhibits is a latent spark of an instinctual relationship with the world that the human species polished with the tools of disinterestedness and reflection, tools of the intellect. Bergson calls this kind of knowledge intuition. I'm not sure that this origin story for intuition is totally necessary to appreciate the thrust of Bergson's intent, but it is a word for that which stimulates change, for what is insightful and creative. Bergson is sure we all feel such explosive moments at times, and wants to pull this recognition out of us. Intuition is in place whenever someone suggests a new course to an established system or makes real changes to a theory, whenever the already known needs change, however hard that may be.
For me, Bergson is a very fecund writer who provides templates for viewing many other thinkers. Pete Gunter, who wrote the introduction to my edition of Creative Evolution, rightly points out that much of Thomas Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions can be pulled from the pages of the former. Normal science as a convention that directs research, everyone happily confirming the niceties of the current theory-this is the work of the intellect attempting to expend as little energy as possible. But with some interruptions, the sleep of the already known is awaken with a bang and a revolution takes place, usually brought about by the intuitive insights of a newcomer to the field. So even science demonstrates the creative changes which its procedures tend to deny.
Colin McGuinn is one of the more prominent, current philosophers defending consciousness as more than just brain function. In 2018, I reviewed his 'The Mysterious Flame: Conscious Minds in a Material World' with this summary: the human brain has evolved to solve problems in space, with linguistic logic an added twist, and and that kind of brain does not have the ability to think in such a way that it can conceive of a piece of meat providing consciousness. Old hat for anyone who has read Creative Evolution.
I often thought of Heidegger while reading Bergson: their distrust of science as a path to the real is very similar, as well as their obvious contempt for humankind's inclination to fall back into habit and convention. (Bergson is much more light-hearted about it, though, a light-hearted buoyancy something I can't help attributing to him. Heidegger would define the opposite end of that scale. He calls mankind 'inauthentic' when falling into the conventional, Bergson more mourns the entropy which is necessarily there.) Bergson's working out of the attributes of the intellect, as that which allows humankind to maneuver the world through distant observation and conceptual manipulation, provides a framework for viewing so many critics of the Western tradition that came later. I think of Foucault who so emphasized the sedimentation of appraisal, the remote overview of prisoners and citizens, as the hallmark of the nineteenth century. Bergson maintains that this attempt to bring everything under the purview of the intellect is endemic to mankind and the only hope we can entertain is barricading it at the entrance to life and consciousness. As Foucault, for one, and Horkheimer and Adorno for another, show, that has not been too successful for some time.
I believe one of the most important of Bergson's legacies is his elaboration of the astonishingly complex history we are embedded in with his sense of duration. The influences that reach us have so many histories of their own that the field of our experience becomes so complex that 'not even a superhuman intelligence' (p. 5) would be able to predict a future outcome. Walter Benjamin demonstrates a similar sense of history while examining the architecture of the nineteenth century in "The Arcades Project". His translators ( Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin) write:
"The transcendence of the conventional book form would go together, in this case, with the blasting apart of pragmatic historicism-grounded, as this always is, on the premise of a continuous and homogeneous temporality. Citation and commentary might then be perceived as intersecting at a thousand different angles, setting up vibrations across the epochs of recent history, so as to effect the "cracking open of natural teleology." And all this would unfold through the medium of hints or "blinks'--a discontinuous presentation deliberately opposed to traditional modes of argumentation." (p. vi)
The subject in the midst of Bergson's duration is very like the reader that Terry Eagleton describes while summarizing Reception Theory:
"Reading is not a straightforward linear movement, a merely cumulative affair: our initial speculations generate a frame of reference within which to interpret what comes next, but what comes next may retrospectively transform our original understanding, highlighting some features of it and backgrounding others. As we read on we shed assumptions, revise beliefs, make more and more complex inferences and anticipations; each sentence opens up a horizon which is confirmed, challenged or undermined by the next. We read backwards and forwards simultaneously, predicting and recollecting...". Literary Theory, p.77
'Originally, we think only in order to act. Our intellect has been cast in the mold of action. Speculation is a luxury, while action is necessary. Now, in order to act, we begin by proposing an end; we make a plan, then we go on to the detail of the mechanism which will bring it to pass. This latter operation is possible only if we know what we can reckon on. We must therefore have managed to extract resemblances from nature, which enable us to anticipate the future. Thus we must, consciously or unconsciously, have made of the use of the law of causality. Moreover, the more sharply the idea of efficient causality is defined in our minds, the more it takes the form of mechanical causality. And this scheme, in its turn, is the more mathematical according as it expresses a more rigorous necessity. That it why we have only to follow the bent of our mind to become mathematicians.' (p. 36)
In other words, we just think that way. Humans need to be efficient in obtaining the deer and avoiding the lion, and those same patterns lead to the mechanistic, scientific viewpoint.
However, Bergson points out that this method, that of the intellect and science, is not the only method of coping with the overabundance of stimuli that is our world. Within the evolution of life, instinct is the other path, one that as far as efficiency is concerned matches the intellectual faculty. Bergson contradicts the somewhat easy to accept notion that intellect builds on instinct, the more advanced building upon the more primitive. Instead Bergson sees these two paths as parallel but diverging extremely early in the history of animal life. One, instinct, pushes toward total assimilation with the object of their focus, its members specialized for the activity they are performing. The other, intellect, is removed from the object, aligned with it only conceptually. It is a far less perfect connection, and partly for that reason, open to changing direction when the context changes. The essential function of instinct is interpenetration, of intellect problem solving. Obviously the angle of its trajectory is toward flexibility and that is what the intellect can supply. However while Bergson is the champion of the 'vital' element in evolution, he is also deeply aware of the energy involved in solving the problems instinct has settled. Too often, that most cogitating animal, mankind, falls back into modes of thought that are conventional and near automatic. Intellect, by itself, can never break out of the already known except by an exceptional act of will.
The divergence of the intellect and instinct bifurcated a momentum that is the simple, effusive flow of life. By definition life is the opposite of stasis, of quiescence, and life on the move is explosive for Bergson. Movement has to entail choice, being here rather than there, such that the humblest organism with the ability and necessity of movement, demonstrates a spark of consciousness. Consciousness is nearly coterminal with life, and for the moving organism, it is. Bergson most basically believes that while the scientific worldview is obviously not dealing with the real but only the efficient, it is no serious error when concerned with the material world. But beyond the unbridgeable gap that separates life and matter, there is another huge gap for Bergson at the threshold where life moves or it doesn't: plants seem mired in the soil that contains them. Being photosynthesizers, they provide the energy that allows other life to break away into mobility.
So now that we know why most of us think the way we do most of the time and why (most) scientists want to think mechanistically all the time, what do we have left? Most obviously, all that 'stuff' the intellect charted through in the first place. The world is very complex, especially when an organism starts moving around in it, and that is why coping mechanisms like instinct and intellect were called for. And one reason why life is so complex is that has a history, as Bergson says, it endures. Duration is very different from the time of the intellect. Scientists attempts to make time static by using frozen moments which she can contemplate and arrange with elements already known. They operate with the principle that 'all is given'. So while we can't think any other way than with time as segmented ( 'intellect solidifies everything it touches' p. 38), we live time as a flow and sense the possibility of real change. If time truly flows, and we leave behind the frozen moments of the intellect, then events don't cause an effect, they interpenetrate, like a glass of water given drops of dye. Scientists like to present one artificially segmented section of time as being totally determined by the segment just before. This can't be true if time is fluid. For one thing, an event touches that which comes as well as what came before. Think of a fisherman walking upstream- he influences the water not only behind him but ahead of him as well. And then consider what lies behind: if time flows, the ripple effect from life's movement is incalculably vast. Think of a newborn who begins life already with the drag of his genetic history. With the passage of time, each experience both influences and is influenced by everything around it. The effect is almost exponential when one considers each ripple interpenetrating with the field around it, producing new ripple fields as courses meet. And while the medium of our lived experience may be best described as fluid, it is not weak. This long history that every human has, while not always there in awareness, can pounce back with a vengeance in the form of intense memories, or we can bring a past episode of our life front and center, to reconsider it, rejoice over it, or mourn it. No wonder Proust and Bergson are so often discussed together.
Indeed, the presence of art is one of the proofs that mankind is still capable of at least glimpsing that stream of life which is forbidden to the intellect. It is hard to deny that there is a different kind of knowledge which the great poets provide, that they supply suggestions of that whole through which the intellect can only map a course. The artist reconnects with life through a sympathy with his model that is not unlike the connection of an organism driven instinctively toward its object. In fact, the sympathy the artist exhibits is a latent spark of an instinctual relationship with the world that the human species polished with the tools of disinterestedness and reflection, tools of the intellect. Bergson calls this kind of knowledge intuition. I'm not sure that this origin story for intuition is totally necessary to appreciate the thrust of Bergson's intent, but it is a word for that which stimulates change, for what is insightful and creative. Bergson is sure we all feel such explosive moments at times, and wants to pull this recognition out of us. Intuition is in place whenever someone suggests a new course to an established system or makes real changes to a theory, whenever the already known needs change, however hard that may be.
For me, Bergson is a very fecund writer who provides templates for viewing many other thinkers. Pete Gunter, who wrote the introduction to my edition of Creative Evolution, rightly points out that much of Thomas Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions can be pulled from the pages of the former. Normal science as a convention that directs research, everyone happily confirming the niceties of the current theory-this is the work of the intellect attempting to expend as little energy as possible. But with some interruptions, the sleep of the already known is awaken with a bang and a revolution takes place, usually brought about by the intuitive insights of a newcomer to the field. So even science demonstrates the creative changes which its procedures tend to deny.
Colin McGuinn is one of the more prominent, current philosophers defending consciousness as more than just brain function. In 2018, I reviewed his 'The Mysterious Flame: Conscious Minds in a Material World' with this summary: the human brain has evolved to solve problems in space, with linguistic logic an added twist, and and that kind of brain does not have the ability to think in such a way that it can conceive of a piece of meat providing consciousness. Old hat for anyone who has read Creative Evolution.
I often thought of Heidegger while reading Bergson: their distrust of science as a path to the real is very similar, as well as their obvious contempt for humankind's inclination to fall back into habit and convention. (Bergson is much more light-hearted about it, though, a light-hearted buoyancy something I can't help attributing to him. Heidegger would define the opposite end of that scale. He calls mankind 'inauthentic' when falling into the conventional, Bergson more mourns the entropy which is necessarily there.) Bergson's working out of the attributes of the intellect, as that which allows humankind to maneuver the world through distant observation and conceptual manipulation, provides a framework for viewing so many critics of the Western tradition that came later. I think of Foucault who so emphasized the sedimentation of appraisal, the remote overview of prisoners and citizens, as the hallmark of the nineteenth century. Bergson maintains that this attempt to bring everything under the purview of the intellect is endemic to mankind and the only hope we can entertain is barricading it at the entrance to life and consciousness. As Foucault, for one, and Horkheimer and Adorno for another, show, that has not been too successful for some time.
I believe one of the most important of Bergson's legacies is his elaboration of the astonishingly complex history we are embedded in with his sense of duration. The influences that reach us have so many histories of their own that the field of our experience becomes so complex that 'not even a superhuman intelligence' (p. 5) would be able to predict a future outcome. Walter Benjamin demonstrates a similar sense of history while examining the architecture of the nineteenth century in "The Arcades Project". His translators ( Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin) write:
"The transcendence of the conventional book form would go together, in this case, with the blasting apart of pragmatic historicism-grounded, as this always is, on the premise of a continuous and homogeneous temporality. Citation and commentary might then be perceived as intersecting at a thousand different angles, setting up vibrations across the epochs of recent history, so as to effect the "cracking open of natural teleology." And all this would unfold through the medium of hints or "blinks'--a discontinuous presentation deliberately opposed to traditional modes of argumentation." (p. vi)
The subject in the midst of Bergson's duration is very like the reader that Terry Eagleton describes while summarizing Reception Theory:
"Reading is not a straightforward linear movement, a merely cumulative affair: our initial speculations generate a frame of reference within which to interpret what comes next, but what comes next may retrospectively transform our original understanding, highlighting some features of it and backgrounding others. As we read on we shed assumptions, revise beliefs, make more and more complex inferences and anticipations; each sentence opens up a horizon which is confirmed, challenged or undermined by the next. We read backwards and forwards simultaneously, predicting and recollecting...". Literary Theory, p.77
July 18, 2022
يبدو برجسون متأثرا بتيار الكانطية المحدثة فى زمانه ولكن بأصالة فلسفية من طراز كانط نفسه حيث يبدأ اهم كتبه بإيضاح التماهى بين الفلسفة العلمية والفلسفة المحضة كما حاول كانط من قبله تخيل فلسفة علمية تعتمد فى منطقها على اختبار ما هو موجود حيث تمثل التماهى بين العمليات الظاهرية الآلية والعمليات العقلية المنطقية . وقد سعى هيجل من بعده الى تشييد صرح منطقى فى الاساس للفكر العلمى .
الا ان برجسون يتجه الى البحث عن علة ذلك التماهى من خلال نقد الفلسفات الدوجمائية أحادية المنظور فى جوانبها المختلفة كنقد المادية الميكانيكية والتجريبية والفردية وأفكارها عن الزمان والمكان وكذلك فى نقده للفكر المثالى الغائى والميتافيزيقى .
ويعتمد برجسون فى نقده منظورا جدليا ومتطورا يحاول ان يقترب به قدر الامكان من منظور الحياة التى تعمل بشكل متصل على خلق لحظات فردية وفريدة فى مضمونها لكنها لا يمكن ان تجتزأ من الحياة الا بشكل تجريدى متعسف فى الفكر او لحظة المعرفة او فى بنية العلم النظرى . وهذا الإجتزاء - الذى هو من طبيعة العقل العملية - هو السبب فى الدور الذى يقع فيه العقل نفسه عند دراسة اصل الظاهرة وماهيتها . كما عند بحثه فى ماهية الوجود بشكل عام وميتافيزيقى .
ولا يغفل الكاتب عن تحذيره من هذا الفصل طوال مسيرة الكتاب الذى تناول فيه التطور كأساس او مبدأ انطولوجى يكون مسئولا عن تدهور الوحدة المجردة الى اجزاء فيكون بذلك المبدأ الذى يربط أجزاء الكل المفرد ويوحده فى صور عينية تتطور بدورها وتنقسم ولكنها تظل متحدة من حيث الماهية . وتكون كل الأشياء فى صيرورة ولا توجد ابدا بذاتها اذا ما قورنت بالكل الذى يشملها وتكونه واقعيا ، الا انها تكون اشياء محددة بالنسبة لكل ما هو محدود اى بالنسبة لكل ما هو مشمول ومتضمَن كجزء من الكل وكل ما ينطوى فى ماهيته على مبدأ محدد للوجود ولا يكون حينها الكل معروفاً او محددا . فالاجزاء كما الكل الذى يشملها يكون كل منها ذو صورة محددة فى لحظة محددة لكن لا يمكن ان تقتطع هذه الصورة من تسلسل تطورها او من صيرورة الزمن التى لا تكل عن العمل على تطور ظاهرها بناء على تطور مضمونها ومحتواها .
وخلال هذه المسيرة التطورية للوجود التى يتناولها برجسون بنقد الميتافيزيقا الكلاسيكية والمحدثة على السواء محاولا العثور على الرابط الخفى الذى يجعل الحقيقة منقسمة داخل كل منهما مما يساعده على اظهار الجانب التلفيقى لكل أيديولوجيا تدعى لنفسها امتلاك التصور الكامل للحقيقة المطلقة . وبذلك يفصل الكاتب بين المنهج العلمى والمنهج الفلسفى من جانب الا انه يقر بضرورة اعادة الربط والتوفيق بينهما بشكل غير دوجمائى . فالحقيقة دائماً متطورة ولا يظهر معناها الاكثر تطورا الا بالجدل الدائم بين وجهتى نظرها المتضادتين بحيث ينبغى لهذا الجدل ان يربط وجهتى النظر برباط وثيق عند النظر فى أمر الحقيقة المطلقة ، أو الفصل بين كل رأى اذا اختص النظر بدراسة لحظة مجردة تتبعه .
وخلال هذا النقاش والجدل الدائر بين وجهتى نظر المادية والمثالية ، او الالية الميكانيكية و الغائية الروحية ، تظهر ميتافيزيقا الحياة كحقيقة واحدة لها مبدا تطورى متزن يعمل على ان تكون الحقيقة فى ذاتها أبدية ولكنها لا تظهر الا فى الزمن على مراحل تطورية متتابعة ( لحظات واجناس وافراد ) وغير مستقلة بذاتها ويكون لكل منها ضرورتها المطلقة ومعناها النسبى فى تكون الحقيقة ذات المعنى المطلق والضرورة النسبية (اى داخل تيار الحياة فى سيولته كديمومة ) ، كما يكون لكل لحظة مجردة من لحظات الحياة ضرورتها النسبية ومعناها المطلق اذا نظر اليها من نقطة محددة داخل هذا التيار .
ويظهر الميل الحيوى للحقيقة كدفعة مركزة تتشتت فى أجزاء مادتها مما يعمل على تكاثفها فى أجزاء محددة ( قربا او بعدا عن المركز ) بنسب متفاوته وتظل هذا العملية مستمرة باستمرار الوجود ، عاملة على تحديد ثم تطور أشكال ما تتضمنه هذه الحقيقة فى نظام (منطقى ضمنا وضرورى واقعيا وحيوى إطلاقا ) متطور يعاكس اتجاه الفوضى والعشوائية واللامنطقية الذى تسكله المادة المجردة كمادة أرسطو .
وتكون الحياة خلق وتطور ونمو مضطرد لطبيعة المادة فحيث تبحث المادة عن طريق لخفض الطاقة تبحث الحياة عن رفعها وفى حين تكون حركة المادة لاشعورية ولا إرادية فان حركة الحياة شعورية . وتنمو الحياة فى اتجاه تطور الإرادة فيكون الانسان العاقل هو أسمى ما نعرف من مراحل تطور الحياة ، حيث تصل المادة فى تطورها الى الوعى والإرادة التى يمكن ان تتطور بذاتها ان جاز القول .
وحيث تنطبع المعرفة المادية الغريزية للكائنات فى صورة عقلية لا شعورية ،
يقوم العقل بعد ذلك بتحقيق هذه المعرفة اللاشعورية فى صورة علم ( عقل ) موضوعى (شعورى)
وكما تكون الغريزة فى اتجاه يسرى من المادة الى الحياة ( تركيب ضرورى ولا شعورى ) . فإن العقل هو اتجاه الحياه الى المادة ( تحليل واعى ) .
وفى حين يمكن التنبؤ بالظواهر وردود الفعل المادية بدقة تجريبية قياسية ، لا يمكن التنبؤ بالظواهر وردود الفعل النفسية الا كحدس غامض غير مؤكد .
لقد كانت الأفكار التى تبرق فى الذهن خلال القراءة حاسمة ومتلاحقة وتتطلب التأنى فى ربطها بما سبقها واطلاق العنان لما سينتج عنها فيما بعد والذى وجدته بشكل مشابه او مختلف او نادرا ما لم أجده فيما تلى من صفحات الكتاب وبالتالى يمكننى القول بأن فلسفة برجسون منهج فكرى حيوى فهو ليس ميتافيزيقيا حد الخيال المحض الذى يمكنه تصور اى شئ ولو كان غير ممكن ، ولا عمليا وعلميا حد الجفاف ففى كل جانب يُترك نصف الحقيقة لصالح النصف الاخر . اما برجسون فيبحث عن رؤية مترابطة لطرفى الحقيقة المتضادين ولكن المتكاملين وتكون الرؤية ذاتها تطورية تسمح لما سيلى من آفاق علمية وفلسفية ان تندمج معها سامحاً كذلك لهذه الافاق الجديدة بتغيير رؤيته الفلسفية ذاتها فهو لا يريد لها ان تكون ابدية كمذهب نهائى فالفيلسوف الحق لا يطلب المستحيل ، لكنه يريد ان يكون قد رأى ما يجب رؤيته فى عصره اى ان تكون فلسفته لحظة لها قيمتها القصوى فى تطور تاريخ الفلسفة .
الا ان برجسون يتجه الى البحث عن علة ذلك التماهى من خلال نقد الفلسفات الدوجمائية أحادية المنظور فى جوانبها المختلفة كنقد المادية الميكانيكية والتجريبية والفردية وأفكارها عن الزمان والمكان وكذلك فى نقده للفكر المثالى الغائى والميتافيزيقى .
ويعتمد برجسون فى نقده منظورا جدليا ومتطورا يحاول ان يقترب به قدر الامكان من منظور الحياة التى تعمل بشكل متصل على خلق لحظات فردية وفريدة فى مضمونها لكنها لا يمكن ان تجتزأ من الحياة الا بشكل تجريدى متعسف فى الفكر او لحظة المعرفة او فى بنية العلم النظرى . وهذا الإجتزاء - الذى هو من طبيعة العقل العملية - هو السبب فى الدور الذى يقع فيه العقل نفسه عند دراسة اصل الظاهرة وماهيتها . كما عند بحثه فى ماهية الوجود بشكل عام وميتافيزيقى .
ولا يغفل الكاتب عن تحذيره من هذا الفصل طوال مسيرة الكتاب الذى تناول فيه التطور كأساس او مبدأ انطولوجى يكون مسئولا عن تدهور الوحدة المجردة الى اجزاء فيكون بذلك المبدأ الذى يربط أجزاء الكل المفرد ويوحده فى صور عينية تتطور بدورها وتنقسم ولكنها تظل متحدة من حيث الماهية . وتكون كل الأشياء فى صيرورة ولا توجد ابدا بذاتها اذا ما قورنت بالكل الذى يشملها وتكونه واقعيا ، الا انها تكون اشياء محددة بالنسبة لكل ما هو محدود اى بالنسبة لكل ما هو مشمول ومتضمَن كجزء من الكل وكل ما ينطوى فى ماهيته على مبدأ محدد للوجود ولا يكون حينها الكل معروفاً او محددا . فالاجزاء كما الكل الذى يشملها يكون كل منها ذو صورة محددة فى لحظة محددة لكن لا يمكن ان تقتطع هذه الصورة من تسلسل تطورها او من صيرورة الزمن التى لا تكل عن العمل على تطور ظاهرها بناء على تطور مضمونها ومحتواها .
وخلال هذه المسيرة التطورية للوجود التى يتناولها برجسون بنقد الميتافيزيقا الكلاسيكية والمحدثة على السواء محاولا العثور على الرابط الخفى الذى يجعل الحقيقة منقسمة داخل كل منهما مما يساعده على اظهار الجانب التلفيقى لكل أيديولوجيا تدعى لنفسها امتلاك التصور الكامل للحقيقة المطلقة . وبذلك يفصل الكاتب بين المنهج العلمى والمنهج الفلسفى من جانب الا انه يقر بضرورة اعادة الربط والتوفيق بينهما بشكل غير دوجمائى . فالحقيقة دائماً متطورة ولا يظهر معناها الاكثر تطورا الا بالجدل الدائم بين وجهتى نظرها المتضادتين بحيث ينبغى لهذا الجدل ان يربط وجهتى النظر برباط وثيق عند النظر فى أمر الحقيقة المطلقة ، أو الفصل بين كل رأى اذا اختص النظر بدراسة لحظة مجردة تتبعه .
وخلال هذا النقاش والجدل الدائر بين وجهتى نظر المادية والمثالية ، او الالية الميكانيكية و الغائية الروحية ، تظهر ميتافيزيقا الحياة كحقيقة واحدة لها مبدا تطورى متزن يعمل على ان تكون الحقيقة فى ذاتها أبدية ولكنها لا تظهر الا فى الزمن على مراحل تطورية متتابعة ( لحظات واجناس وافراد ) وغير مستقلة بذاتها ويكون لكل منها ضرورتها المطلقة ومعناها النسبى فى تكون الحقيقة ذات المعنى المطلق والضرورة النسبية (اى داخل تيار الحياة فى سيولته كديمومة ) ، كما يكون لكل لحظة مجردة من لحظات الحياة ضرورتها النسبية ومعناها المطلق اذا نظر اليها من نقطة محددة داخل هذا التيار .
ويظهر الميل الحيوى للحقيقة كدفعة مركزة تتشتت فى أجزاء مادتها مما يعمل على تكاثفها فى أجزاء محددة ( قربا او بعدا عن المركز ) بنسب متفاوته وتظل هذا العملية مستمرة باستمرار الوجود ، عاملة على تحديد ثم تطور أشكال ما تتضمنه هذه الحقيقة فى نظام (منطقى ضمنا وضرورى واقعيا وحيوى إطلاقا ) متطور يعاكس اتجاه الفوضى والعشوائية واللامنطقية الذى تسكله المادة المجردة كمادة أرسطو .
وتكون الحياة خلق وتطور ونمو مضطرد لطبيعة المادة فحيث تبحث المادة عن طريق لخفض الطاقة تبحث الحياة عن رفعها وفى حين تكون حركة المادة لاشعورية ولا إرادية فان حركة الحياة شعورية . وتنمو الحياة فى اتجاه تطور الإرادة فيكون الانسان العاقل هو أسمى ما نعرف من مراحل تطور الحياة ، حيث تصل المادة فى تطورها الى الوعى والإرادة التى يمكن ان تتطور بذاتها ان جاز القول .
وحيث تنطبع المعرفة المادية الغريزية للكائنات فى صورة عقلية لا شعورية ،
يقوم العقل بعد ذلك بتحقيق هذه المعرفة اللاشعورية فى صورة علم ( عقل ) موضوعى (شعورى)
وكما تكون الغريزة فى اتجاه يسرى من المادة الى الحياة ( تركيب ضرورى ولا شعورى ) . فإن العقل هو اتجاه الحياه الى المادة ( تحليل واعى ) .
وفى حين يمكن التنبؤ بالظواهر وردود الفعل المادية بدقة تجريبية قياسية ، لا يمكن التنبؤ بالظواهر وردود الفعل النفسية الا كحدس غامض غير مؤكد .
لقد كانت الأفكار التى تبرق فى الذهن خلال القراءة حاسمة ومتلاحقة وتتطلب التأنى فى ربطها بما سبقها واطلاق العنان لما سينتج عنها فيما بعد والذى وجدته بشكل مشابه او مختلف او نادرا ما لم أجده فيما تلى من صفحات الكتاب وبالتالى يمكننى القول بأن فلسفة برجسون منهج فكرى حيوى فهو ليس ميتافيزيقيا حد الخيال المحض الذى يمكنه تصور اى شئ ولو كان غير ممكن ، ولا عمليا وعلميا حد الجفاف ففى كل جانب يُترك نصف الحقيقة لصالح النصف الاخر . اما برجسون فيبحث عن رؤية مترابطة لطرفى الحقيقة المتضادين ولكن المتكاملين وتكون الرؤية ذاتها تطورية تسمح لما سيلى من آفاق علمية وفلسفية ان تندمج معها سامحاً كذلك لهذه الافاق الجديدة بتغيير رؤيته الفلسفية ذاتها فهو لا يريد لها ان تكون ابدية كمذهب نهائى فالفيلسوف الحق لا يطلب المستحيل ، لكنه يريد ان يكون قد رأى ما يجب رؤيته فى عصره اى ان تكون فلسفته لحظة لها قيمتها القصوى فى تطور تاريخ الفلسفة .
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August 18, 2014creative evolution, a philosophical theory espoused early in the 20th century by Henri Bergson, a French process metaphysician (one who emphasizes becoming, change, and novelty), in his Évolution créatrice (1907; Creative Evolution). The theory presented an evolution in which a free emergence of the individual intelligence could be recognized. It was thus wholly distinct from previous deterministic hypotheses that were either mechanistic or teleological and represented evolution as conditioned either by existing forces or by future aims. Bergson based his theory on the distinction between matter and the élan vital, or life force, the progress of which he saw as a line continually bifurcating or diverging from its course. The evolution of matter is orderly and geometric; disorder, however, with free and unpredictable creativity, is the effect of the life force on its material surroundings. The argument is largely conducted by means of striking metaphor and analogy: life, for instance, is compared to a wave spreading outward toward a circumference that is broken down at one point only and to an artillery shell from which new shells scatter when it bursts. said the Britannica but I don't know how to describe it accurately.
August 10, 2022
You don't need me to tell you about Bergson if you've got this far, but I'll throw this out there, that if you're someone, like me, who's trying to read some tough-toenail 20th century continental philosophy like Heidegger or Husserl, you might find as I did that Bergson is a kind of refreshing encounter with a lot of the same big-time issues like the nature of Time and the limits of Science in a less heady style that helped me feel like I am swimming with and not just getting swept up by the overall flow of where these guys on the continent have been trying to go for the last hundred years or so.
I will say this felt like "Bergson does evolution" in that it's not where I think his foundational and most important arguments are maybe made -- as witnessed by occasional explicit reference to his other works like 'Time and Free Will' and 'Matter and Memory'. But it's apparently the marquis title in terms of reach, and it feels like with Bergson there's maybe no bad place to dive in, so have fun and get wet.
I will say this felt like "Bergson does evolution" in that it's not where I think his foundational and most important arguments are maybe made -- as witnessed by occasional explicit reference to his other works like 'Time and Free Will' and 'Matter and Memory'. But it's apparently the marquis title in terms of reach, and it feels like with Bergson there's maybe no bad place to dive in, so have fun and get wet.
July 19, 2019
Many times it's not the complexity of the concepts but the opacity of the style that keeps philosophical discourse confined to ivory towers and dusty bookshelves. Then, every so often, comes along a philosopher who can actually string a few a sentences together and has something to say. Bergson is more than that, and it becomes more clear as the text progresses. It may be kind of slough getting through all the biologism of the first chapter, but hang in there, it get's better. It should be noted, that aside from simply providing much of the metaphysical ground work for In Search of Lost Time, Bergson actually inspired Proust's prose as well.
If you're new to Bergson, I might read Time and Free Will and Matter and Memory first, as this is in ways a divergence and a continuance of those two works.
If you're new to Bergson, I might read Time and Free Will and Matter and Memory first, as this is in ways a divergence and a continuance of those two works.
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August 8, 2010henry miller states in tropic of capricorn that this book changed his life. i usually jot down books mentioned in other books, and seeing as how the other literary references henry makes (dante, dostoevski) are among my favorites, when he goes on for a few pages talking about the extraordinary impact of a book he barely understood, i figure i better check it out.
August 13, 2023
Terrible decepción con Henri Bergson. La edición de Cactus es absolutamente maravillosa, como siempre: solo por eso se merecerían las cinco estrellas. Sin embargo, la obra en sí -lo que vengo a comentar, de hecho- me ha dejado más que tibia, fría. La evolución creadora me parece ser uno de los libros principales de la llamada "filosofía de la evolución", y sin embargo me ha aburrido increíblemente. Quizás sea debido a que mis conocimientos actuales sobre vida y evolución desacreditan gran mayoría de sus ideas o apuntes, pero creo que va más allá: se une quizás al hartazgo que siento por los señores que filosofan mayormente generalizando, aquellos que van siempre a los grandes temas y a los que les encanta recordar cuán importante es la inteligencia humana, reafirmando una y otra vez el antropocentrismo. ¡Qué agotamiento! Ni siquiera las nociones de instinto e inteligencia, élan vital me han parecido interesantes. No niego que en su momento pudiera suponer un cambio en la literatura evolutiva, pero sí pienso que la filosofía puede aportar difícilmente nada a una teoría evolutiva de carácter científico, y que el libro de Bergson no ayuda en ese sentido. Sintió claramente la necesidad de hablar del tema, por el cual siente gran interés, pero siento decir que no tiene una aportación significativa, ni siquiera conceptos relevantes y transponibles a otras áreas.
November 6, 2024
4.5, review to come maybe later
March 6, 2025
de ahora en adelante bergsoniana por los siglos de los siglos de una eterna duración creadora innovadora generadora biomística y deliciosa
March 8, 2021
It's a fascinating book. Very few philosophers use biology as their vehicle for exposition. His analogies are spot on and thought provoking. If I understand correctly, he discusses early version of emergence principle, where whole is bigger than the sum of parts.
July 16, 2024
Aight, bet. So Bergson's Creative Evolution is straight bussin', no cap. It's like, the whole universe is just out here wildin', no sus. Everything's just on its grind, leveling up 24/7, ya dig? It's not about that basic, predictable stuff - it's all improv, all day. We can't even wrap our smooth brains around how lit this cosmic glow-up really is. Gotta stop overthinking and just vibe with it, fr fr. It's giving main character energy, but for the whole universe. Sheeesh!�
June 28, 2021
لا يسلك هنري بيرغسون مسلكًا منتظمًا في بسط أفكاره، بلْ يُلقي عند كلِّ مرحلة فكرة جديدة لها اتصالٌ بمفهومٍ نوقش من قبل، فيعيد القارئ إلى الوراء كي يتمكن من ضمِّ القطع إلى بعضها بعضًا ويخطو إلى الأمام في فهم النظرية. وهذا في حقيقته أمرٌ مربك، ولعلَّ سببه هو ولع بيرغسون بفكرة "التطور" في حد ذاتها، وهي فكرة تقوم على الفصل بين شكلين وجوديين قائمين لا ثالث لهما، هما "الجمادات والأحياء".
ومبدأ الحياة الذي خرجت منه الكائنات الحية جميعها ذو "أصل نفسي" عبَّرَ عن "ميل" راسخ فيه لتكاثر الحياة، فتجسد هذا الميل عبر "وثبة" اتخذت مسارات متعددة، فتمايز عالم الحيوان عن عالم النبات وتعددت الفروع. وكان "الشعور" هو المحرك الملازم للوثبة في كل مرحلة من مراحلها، فطورًا يقوى إذا انفتحت الآفاق وقويت المدارك، وطورا يخفت إذا ضعفت تلك المدارك، فهو باعث على العمل، محفز للحركة، يأخذ بيدها إلى الأمام في "ديمومة" لا تنقطع. واللافت فيه أنه لا يسير إلى غاية محددة، فلا هو يتخذ "صورة ميكانيكية"، ولا هو تحكمه "غائية" واضحة المعالم، إنه بين بين، توقٌ وعشقٌ ورغبةٌ في ظهور أشكال إضافية من الحياة، فحسب.
إن كتاب "التطور الخالق" يشبه تلك الوثبة، فهو ذو مسارات عديدة، فيها ما يلتئم، وفيها ما يشير بعضه إلى بعضه، وفيه ما هو شديد الانفصال. غير أن له مفاتيح تساعد على التعامل معه، منها المفاهيم المشار إليها في الفقرة السابقة، التي كُتبت بخط غامق إشارة إلى أهميتها في الكتاب، يُضاف إليها فكرة محورية تتحدث عن "الحقيقة الواقعية" التي هي محل أثر الديمومة في حالي الأحياء والجمادات
ومبدأ الحياة الذي خرجت منه الكائنات الحية جميعها ذو "أصل نفسي" عبَّرَ عن "ميل" راسخ فيه لتكاثر الحياة، فتجسد هذا الميل عبر "وثبة" اتخذت مسارات متعددة، فتمايز عالم الحيوان عن عالم النبات وتعددت الفروع. وكان "الشعور" هو المحرك الملازم للوثبة في كل مرحلة من مراحلها، فطورًا يقوى إذا انفتحت الآفاق وقويت المدارك، وطورا يخفت إذا ضعفت تلك المدارك، فهو باعث على العمل، محفز للحركة، يأخذ بيدها إلى الأمام في "ديمومة" لا تنقطع. واللافت فيه أنه لا يسير إلى غاية محددة، فلا هو يتخذ "صورة ميكانيكية"، ولا هو تحكمه "غائية" واضحة المعالم، إنه بين بين، توقٌ وعشقٌ ورغبةٌ في ظهور أشكال إضافية من الحياة، فحسب.
إن كتاب "التطور الخالق" يشبه تلك الوثبة، فهو ذو مسارات عديدة، فيها ما يلتئم، وفيها ما يشير بعضه إلى بعضه، وفيه ما هو شديد الانفصال. غير أن له مفاتيح تساعد على التعامل معه، منها المفاهيم المشار إليها في الفقرة السابقة، التي كُتبت بخط غامق إشارة إلى أهميتها في الكتاب، يُضاف إليها فكرة محورية تتحدث عن "الحقيقة الواقعية" التي هي محل أثر الديمومة في حالي الأحياء والجمادات
February 15, 2024
For the readers out there keen to fully understand Bergson, a philosopher who is on the level of Aristotle, Plato, Hegel, Nietzsche, or Spinoza, one must be patient. This work is not always very accessible. This is one you might want to read after his other major works. Creative evolution is the paragon of the Bergsonian paradigm. A paradigm that has been followed by the more important philosophers of the past two centuries. Deleuze, Baudrillard, and Derrida. I will reread this book two more times along with books like Deleuze's Difference and Repetition, Baudrillard's Fatal Strategies, or Derrida's Margins of Philosophy.
It is this books political inaccessibility that tells it's story. This book comes out at a time when Bergson is essentially carrying on the mind bending work of both Nietzsche and Darwin, before either man had been fully discovered and appreciated. Unfortunately, Bergson is fighting against the optics of secularism and the paradigms of behaviorism, Galilean reductionism, and Platonism. Don’t read this book unless you have a background in all the above folks, and even then reread what he is saying. When Foucault is historically dethroned by Deleuze, it will be a short space of time before Bergson again redefines the modern.
It is this books political inaccessibility that tells it's story. This book comes out at a time when Bergson is essentially carrying on the mind bending work of both Nietzsche and Darwin, before either man had been fully discovered and appreciated. Unfortunately, Bergson is fighting against the optics of secularism and the paradigms of behaviorism, Galilean reductionism, and Platonism. Don’t read this book unless you have a background in all the above folks, and even then reread what he is saying. When Foucault is historically dethroned by Deleuze, it will be a short space of time before Bergson again redefines the modern.
January 5, 2015
I had been meaning to read something by Bergson for some time primarily because he was the cousin of Marcel Proust. L'evolutin creatrice proved to proving to be an unexpected delight. It contains the ideas presented by Teilhard de Chardin in le Phenomene humaine in an embryonic form. Bergson argues that evolution is not the result of accidents but due to the "elan vital" of living things. Essentially Bergson argues that species evolve because they choose to do so. Teilhard de Chardin modifies Bergson to state that matter organizes itself towards life and that life organizes itself towards Christ. Bergson does not posit the existence of God which is the fundamental difference between this work and that of Teilhard de Chardin.
I found "l'evolution creatrice" to be a very rewarding read. It's fundamental value however in my view is that it created the base for Chardin to write his '"phenomene humaine". This book is clearly for a limited audience only.
I found "l'evolution creatrice" to be a very rewarding read. It's fundamental value however in my view is that it created the base for Chardin to write his '"phenomene humaine". This book is clearly for a limited audience only.
January 22, 2022
Fantastico! Uno dei più straordinari filosofi dello scorso secolo prende in mano il dibattito sull'evoluzione e critica le posizione deterministiche e finaliste di Darwin e Lamarck affermando che la vita ha avuto inizio e si è sviluppata attraverso uno slancio vitale comune a tutte le specie sulla terra, che ha preso migliaia di direzioni differenti in base alla lotta tra vita (flusso creativo) e materia (leggi fisiche) che sono l'una opposta all'altra. Nel libro viengono trattate molte tematiche come l adistinzione tra istinto ed intelligenza e quale ruolo gioca la coscienza in entrambe le realtà. La realtà come un flusso di coscienza che è maggiore negli organismi con il sistema nervoso più sviluppato, ma non è il cervello. Bergson critica anche la presa di visione dei creazionisti, affermando che in verità le cose che noi vediamo non esistono, ma ci sono unicamente azioni e movimento.
July 30, 2011
Un des livres principaux de Bergson où celui-ci tente de déployer son ontologie du devenir, avec l'importance qu'il accorde habituellement à la durée. La philosophie ne peut pas faire l'impasse sur les avancées scientifiques et doit admettre les conséquences de l'évolutionnisme darwinien. La philosophie doit abandonner la métaphysique traditionnelle d'un absolu fermé sur lui-même, au profit d'un monde dont la valeur principale est la création, c'est-à-dire la liberté, la croissance et le changement. De ce point de vue, Bergson pourrait être lu avec les philosophes de la différence.
C'est un très bon livre, malgré sa complexité au premier abord. Bergson écrit bien, son style est doux mais il aurait mieux fait de diviser ses quelques 369 pages en plus de quatre chapitres, parce que c'est un peu peu alors.
C'est un très bon livre, malgré sa complexité au premier abord. Bergson écrit bien, son style est doux mais il aurait mieux fait de diviser ses quelques 369 pages en plus de quatre chapitres, parce que c'est un peu peu alors.
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