Matter and Memory - Henri Bergson
Category: Misc. Non-fiction
Tags: Misc. Non-fiction
Matter and Memory, (Matire et Mmoire), published in 1896, was the second book written by Henri Bergson (1859-1941), one of the leading French philosophers of his age. It followed Time and Free Will (1889) and helped to establish him as a major force in anti-mechanistic thought, opposing the trend towards uncompromisingly secular and scientific views. However, when Matter and Memory appeared, Bergson was 39 and had yet to become the hugely influential figure he became in the first decades of the 20th century., The first edition carried the subtitle An Essay on the Relationship of Body to Spirit and although this was dropped by the author when revising the text in later editions, it remains a useful introductory statement. For in Matter and Memory, Bergson set out to consider the classic problem of the union of soul and body by the analysis of memory. He sought to refute the proposition, then very current, that memory, being lodged in the nervous system, localised in the brain, was there
