Creative Evolution - Henri Bergson
Category: Misc. Non-fiction
Tags: Misc. Non-fiction
Creative Evolution is a 1907 book by the French philosopher Henri Bergson. The work proposes a version of orthogenesis in place of Darwins mechanism of evolution, suggesting that evolution is motivated by the lan vital, a vital impetus that may also be understood as a natural creative impulse. The book also developed concepts of time which influenced writers like Marcel Proust and Thomas Mann. Bergsons term duration, for example, refers to an individual, subjective experience of time, as opposed to the mathematical, objectively measurable clock time. Bergson suggests that the experience of time as duration can best be understood through intuition. This theory of evolution makes possible the free emergence of individual intelligence. It is totally distinct from the deterministic hypotheses that are either mechanistic or teleological. Bergson argues by means of striking metaphor and analogy. He compares life to a wave spreading outward toward a circumference that is broken down at one po
