Abstract
In these past chapters I have given an account of the relevance of the philosophical oeuvre of Henri Bergson by first contextualising Bergson’s views with regard to three scientific domains – physics, life sciences, neuroscience – and subsequently by elaborating on Bergson’s ideas. Finally, I pointed to some elements that still seem relevant for these domains in the current situation. This, however, does not mean that these domains must be seen as separate, compartmentalised blocks. Interrelated discussions, perspectives and concepts apply to all three domains, and form a series of interwoven threads. The question that precedes all other questions is not the question of the self, nor that of matter, nor that of life. It is the question of how to account for ‘one’ and ‘manifold’: how are divergence, individuation and discreteness possible whilst direct, immediate experience is always in flux? This chapter discusses these interrelations.
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Notes
- 1.
As such ‘creative negentropy’ (Gunter 2013) might be seen as the best circumscription of the more elusive ‘élan vital’ (or vital impulse).
- 2.
His last work was a collection of essays that included his 1903 introduction to metaphysics, published in French in 1934 under the title La Pensée et mouvant, and in English under the title ‘The Creative Mind’. All nine articles included had however already been published previously, between 1903 and 1923.
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Landeweerd, L. (2021). Interlude: From Epistemic Debate to an Ethics of Technology. In: Time, Life & Memory. Library of Ethics and Applied Philosophy, vol 38. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56853-5_6
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