Bergson and Merleau-Ponty on Experience and Science

Abstract

The identity of philosophy has always been intimately associated with that of science. We can think of philosophy’s premodern period as the time, before the scientific revolution, when it was identical with science, when philosophy was simply the enterprise of understanding the world in all its aspects. How did the scientific revolution destroy this identity? By showing that there was at least one domain — namely, knowledge of the material world — where philosophy’s methods of rational insight and logical argument were not adequate. Here, it was gradually discovered (and, of course, anticipations of the discovery can be traced back to the very beginnings of Greek inquiry) that the empirical method of testing conjectures by observing whether their consequences were true was far superior. No doubt philosophy, considered simply as our search for ultimate truth or wisdom, could be regarded as employing this method. Then what the modern world has come to know as science would still be part of philosophy. But this is the mere contingency of words. The determining historical fact was that philosophy came to be identified with employments of reason other than the empirical, prediction-driven procedures of science. The future of philosophy, in the wake of these procedures, depended on the value of these other employments of reason.