"Intelligence Swims in the Sea--Thought on Bergson's 'Creative Evolution'"

"Intelligence Swims in the Sea--Thought on Bergson's 'Creative Evolution'"
Yes, that's right. Well, I would like to have a little chat about Bergson's "Creative Evolution". This work is considered a "labor of love" among Bergson's books, and although it is quite voluminous, from the perspective of today, 2025, it is a very pioneering work.

From the viewpoint of information science, I think he is already talking about the concept of "fractals," first of all. In short, he is saying that Objectivism in the conventional sense is not very good, and that if life has a purpose, it is the purpose that life as a whole has. I don't think there was an appropriate word for this at the time, but from today's perspective, I think we can call this a "fractal".

In other words, it is a bifurcating structure that remains in shape even as its scale changes. Like a coastline or the Mandelbrot set, the scale may increase or decrease due to branching, but the shape and structure are preserved. I think you mention fractality quite early on in these discussions, especially the one about the structure of the "eye".

Then, in Chapter 4, the concept of "nothingness" is introduced. Nothingness is not the annihilation of all things, nor is it the deletion of negation. Rather, it is about adding something. I think this also relates to the "irreversibility of entropy" story. Entropy continues to increase and will not decrease. The perspective that the disappearance or negation of all things is not an operation that makes the content scarce, but rather the addition of something new, is still a precursor to the entropy concept.

A further point is the importance of "probability" and "randomness" in evolution, the development of organisms, and the progress of human society. This is common with the discussion of "black swans" and "criminal vulnerability," which we also deal with in this channel, and it is still pioneering in that it emphasizes the importance of randomness very much.

In other words, it does not emphasize linear ideas and is distinct from the objectivist or mechanistic ideas of pre-modern science. This attitude is also connected to Bergson's thought as a whole. There are passages that make me think that Yuval Noah Harari and Taleb probably read Bergson. There are many examples of it being re-read in the 2010s and 2020s because it says something very basic in human thought.

Also, one of the most impressive "literary expressions" is "Bergson, enter the sea of Dionysus. Swim in it." and other such expressions. In short, if Newton was playing on the beach, Bergson must have entered that sea himself and tried to swim in it. To swim in the sea, one needs to "catch one's breath," and that "catching one's breath" is the process of reconnecting the intellect with intuition and bringing it back to the whole consciousness.

Life's temporary looking back to the past, that too is part of the "taking over" process. Taking over the breath allows us to keep swimming for a long time. In other words, the intellect can place itself in the vast flow of life. I think this is what leads to the expression of preparing a "philosophy that transcends the intellect" through the discipline of "ascending.

So that is one of my impressions after a quick look at the whole thing.