Creative EvolutionCreative Evolution, originally published in 1911 by Henry Holt and Company, is the work which catapulted Bergson from obscurity into world-wide fame. A study of the philosophical implications of biological evolutionary theory, the impact of this book reached far beyond biology and seemed to many to herald a new age in philosophy and the sciences. |
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accidental action adaptation affirmation amoeba ancient ancient philosophy animal Aristotle arthropods becoming body cause cell cinematographical complete concepts consciousness continuity contrary coördinated creates creation definite Descartes direction divergent duration effect effort elements energy essential everything evolutionism evolved existence experience explain express external fact faculty finality function geometry glycogen human hymenoptera hypothesis idea individual inert matter infinitely instinct intellect intelligence intuition kind knowledge larva laws Leibniz less living material mathematical means mechanism ment metaphysics mind mobility molluscs movement nature negation nervous system object once organism original pass perceive perception philosophy physical Plato Plotinus point of view positive positive science possible precisely present principle protoplasm psychical pure reality regard relation represent retina sense simple solar system space speak species Spinoza suppose tendency theory things thought true variations vegetable vertebrates vital whole word York Sun
Popular passages
Page 249 - In reality, life is a movement, materiality is the inverse movement, and each of these two movements is simple, the matter which forms a world being an undivided flux, and undivided also the life that runs through it, cutting out in it living beings all along the track. Of these two currents, the second runs counter to the first, but the first obtains, all the same, something from the second.
Page xiii - It is necessary that these two inquiries, theory of knowledge and theory of life, should join each other, and, by a circular process, push each other on...
Page 38 - If this be true, it is no less certain that the existing world lay potentially in the cosmic vapour, and that a sufficient intelligence could, from a knowledge of the properties of the molecules of that vapour, have predicted, say the state of the fauna of Britain in 1869, with as much certainty as one can say what will happen to the vapour of the breath on a cold winter's day .... The teleological and the mechanical views of nature are not, necessarily, mutually exclusive.
Page 87 - This impetus, sustained right along the lines of evolution among which it gets divided, is the fundamental cause of variations, at least of those that are regularly passed ) on, that accumulate and create new species.
Page 51 - It is to believe that life, in its movement and in its entirety, goes to work like our intellect, which is only a motionless and fragmentary view of life, and which naturally takes its stand outside of time. Life, on the contrary, progresses and endures in time. Of course, when once the road has been traveled, we can glance over it, mark its direction, note this in psychological terms and speak as if there had been pursuit of an end. Thus shall we speak ourselves.
Page 176 - But it is to the very inwardness of life that intuition leads us, - by intuition I mean instinct that has become disinterested, self-conscious, capable of reflecting upon its object and of enlarging it indefinitely.
Page 103 - If, on the contrary, evolution is a creation unceasingly renewed, it creates, as it goes on, not only the forms of life, but the ideas that will enable the intellect to understand it, the terms which will serve to express it.
Page x - Our reasoning, so sure of itself among things inert, feels ill at ease on this new ground. It would be difficult to cite a biological discovery due to pure reasoning. And most often, when experience has finally shown us how life goes to work to obtain a certain result, we find its way of working is just that of which we should never have thought.
Page 254 - ... should be reflected in his mind — that he should be a god, too, though a puny one? So far as he knows his own powers, so far as he knows those of the Infinite, so far as he is a creator, his method mirrors that of his Creator. The vital impulse is finite, it cannot overcome all obstacles. The movement it starts is sometimes turned aside, sometimes divided, always opposed, and the evolution of the organized world is the unrolling of this conflict.