Abstract
Bergson’s criticism was specifically aimed at mechanistic thinking. Here, he did not merely criticise some of the scientists of his age, but rather a wide tradition in western thought that includes the ideas of René Descartes, Isaac Newton and Immanuel Kant. His critique concerned mechanistic thought in its deepest nature: a critique of our conditioned and habitual ways of conceiving of the world. Although he was a popular author in his own days, acclaim from the side of the exact sciences was scarce. He wrote in an age in which scientific completeness, radical analysis and universal validity clashed with subjective experience, spiritual discovery and the flow of life. Support from the exact sciences for someone who took a midway position between these two was not self-evident. Still, even after interest in his works began to wane, his ideas inspired theorists in quantum theory, physical chemistry, chaos theory and systems thinking. In most theories of science, Bergson’s oeuvre is ignored, however. This book seeks to sensitise the reader to Bergson’s ideas. It aims to show that his views represent not only an important undertow in twentieth-century philosophy, but also in twentieth-century science.
Berkeley was unable to account for the success of physics, and, whereas Descartes had set up the mathematical relations between phenomena as their very essence, he was obliged to regard the mathematical order of the universe as a mere accident. So the Kantian criticism became necessary, to show the reason of this mathematical order and to give back to our physics a solid foundation – a task in which, however, it succeeded only by limiting the range and value of our senses and of our understanding. The criticism of Kant, on this point at least, would have been unnecessary […] if philosophy had been content to leave matter half way between the place to which Descartes had driven it and that to which Berkeley drew it back – to leave it, in fact, where it is seen by common sense.
- Bergson, Matter and Memory, Introduction to the 1911 English translation.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
E.g. Louis de Broglie, Edgar Morrin, Ilya Prigogine.
- 2.
And there were times and places where the distinction between the two was not made: the title PhD, an abbreviation that is currently accepted worldwide as the title purportedly bestowing a mastership in any scientific discipline except engineering (or, in some cases and contexts, law), is a relic of this synergy: Philosophiae Doctor.
- 3.
With the exception of the posterior acceptance of intuition as source of knowledge.
- 4.
The distinction can also be found in physics: the debate between Bohr and Einstein can ultimately be traced back to an opposition between these two traditions of thought. It even extends to antiquity in other thought traditions: Taoism and Confucianism, although both influencing the antique Chinese worldview, share a similar opposition, concerning fixedness or change, abstraction or concreteness, structure or process, principle or praxis.
- 5.
The divide might also be associated with the German idealist tradition in comparison with the British empiricist tradition: the abstract versus the concrete; the realist interpretation of symbols and concepts versus the nominalist conception of these; the intuitive versus the rational; the poetically Gaelic versus the square Teutonic. But this of course amounts to an overly naive Romantic reductionism of thought and culture to nationality and language.
- 6.
Some possibilities might include Bergson’s discussion of creativity or imagination
- 7.
Sometimes also translated as ‘vital impetus’.
- 8.
In the next chapter I will discuss these in reversed order since this better enables me to discuss them in relation to Bergson’s thought. In the priotorisation of the chapters after Chap. 2 however, their prioritisation remains in the order in which I mention them here, although, as shown in the figure here, they are interrelated.
- 9.
Put in inverted commas here, since ‘things’ appear to refer to a definition of objects (stones, trunks, utensils without known functions), separate and outside of time and processes. But although the word ‘thing’ might indeed have such connotations, the word originally referred to something opposite to these connotations. It meant “what is under consideration”, meant ‘meeting, assembly, council, discussion’ (e.g. as it persists in the name for the Icelandic parliament: the Alþingi, or Althing. Only later it came to mean “entity, being, matter”. The original word stem might have referred to ‘appointed time’, since the root –“t(h)in - is taken to mean ‘stretch’, and is supposed to have gradually come to refer to a stretch of time, for a meeting or assembly”. Bergson’s philosophy thus seems to follow the opposite path from the etymological evolution of the word thing (he went from substance to duration rather than from duration to substance).
- 10.
Here defined as living and non-living, not as in (bio)chemistry where there are of course also nonliving organic molecules and structures.
Literature
Bergson, H. (1912 [1903]). An introduction to metaphysics (trans; Hulme, T.E.). Hackett Publishing Company 1999. Also included in: Bergson, H. (2007 (1923)). The creative mind: An introduction to metaphysics 1923. Dover Publications: Dover.
Bergson, H. (1911 [1907]). Creative evolution. New York: Henry Holt and Company.
Blanco-Pérez, C. (2018, Julio-Diciembre). Henri Bergson: A solution to the mind-body problem. Miscelanea Comillas, 76(149).
Bor, J. (1990). Bergson en de onmiddellijke ervaring. Meppel: Boom.
Borges, J. L. L. (1945). Nota preliminar, en W. James Pragmatismo. Un nombre nuevo para algunos viejos modos de pensar. Buenos Aires: Emecé.
Canales, J. (2016). Einstein’s Bergson problem: Communication, consensus and good science. Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science, 285, 58.
Colerigde, S. T. (1836). Specimen of the table talk (2nd ed.). London: John Murray.
Deleuze, G. (1991 [1966]). Bergsonism (trans. Tomlinson, H., Habberjam, B.). New York: Zone Books.
Reichenbach, H. (1984 [1956]). The direction of time. Mineola: Dover Publications.
Toonders, W., Verhoeff, R., & Zwart, H. (2016). Performing the future: On the use of drama in philosophy courses for science students. Science & Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11191-016-9853-3.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Landeweerd, L. (2021). Introduction. In: Time, Life & Memory. Library of Ethics and Applied Philosophy, vol 38. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56853-5_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56853-5_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-56852-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-56853-5
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)