The Philosophy of
Henri Bergson
Background
• Newtonian
mechanics could not
explain the
microscopic world of
the atom and the
very nature of reality
itself was no longer
a future scientific
certainty.
Introduction
• His math teacher
disappointed,
famously claimed:
“You could have
been a
mathematician; you
will be a mere
philosopher.”
Mind and Brain
• “We do not experience
the world moment by
moment, but in a
fashion essentially
continuous, illustrated
by the way we hear a
melody, which cannot
consist simply in
hearing a succession of
disjointed notes.”
Mind and Brain
• “Choice is creation,
and creation is
labor.”
Mind and Brain
• “I have simply tried to
show that when we
leave the domain of
mathematics and
physics to enter that of
life and consciousness,
we must make appeal
to a certain sense of life
which cuts across pure
understanding and has
its origin in the same
vital impulse as instinct.
Creative Evolution
• Evolution is creative
not simply in how it
does its job, but in
the fact that where it
will go and what it
will do is
undetermined.
Summary
• “The true statement
is of itself able to
displace the
erroneous idea, and
becomes, without
our having taken the
trouble of refuting
anyone, the best of
refutations.”
Summary
• “Before him we were
cogs and wheels in
a vast and dead
machine; now, if we
wish it, we can help
to write our own
parts in the drama of
creation.”