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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.