The Body in a Sea of Images Bergson, "Matter and Memory"

The Body in a Sea of Images Bergson, "Matter and Memory"

Bergson's starting point for his thought was not the naive idea that an image resides within the mind, but rather the bold assumption that the entire world has already spread out as an image, and that our bodies exist immersed in this image. From this viewpoint that everything is equally an image, the brain is not a source of representation, but merely a fine filter through which we scoop out the necessary fragments from the torrent of the world. We tend to think that the brain takes the outside world into its interior and uses it as a starting point from which emotions and perceptions emerge, but Bergson quietly reverses the direction of causality. First there is the world, and then there is the body, and what the body captures in the light of the world becomes the form of perception, not what the brain produces.

At this point, the major difference is that perception is outside the body and drifts into the continuum of the world with an expanse, whereas sensation can only occur inside the body and has no spatial expanse at all. The image of the body open to the world draws a line from the outside world, and that line sinks into the body, creating sensation as a slight tremor deep within. Without understanding such a flow, it is easy to fall back on the naive circular theory that takes the workings of the brain as the cause and the representations of the mind as the result. Bergson's careful premise is intended to avoid this pitfall, and he is trying to accept the connection between the body and the world as it is.

In his philosophy, the body is not an isolated shell of a subject, but an image presented to the world as it is connected to it. The complexity of the brain and nerves is not a magic key to explain the secrets of consciousness, but merely a signal station to sort through the vast number of actions coming from the world to regulate movement. This is why it is essential to bridge the gap between the outer world and the inner senses, to place them in continuity rather than rupture. The problem of memory, which Bergson would later develop to a great extent, can only be outlined from the basis of such a worldview. The world exists first, the body and brain are only a part of that flow, and perception and sensation are only subtle tremors that connect the two layers. Such a transparent view of the world was quietly penetrating the horizon of speculation from the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century.