August 28, 2025 Light of Consciousness in the Nebula - Bergson, "Creative Evolution"

August 28, 2025 Light of Consciousness in the Nebula - Bergson, "Creative Evolution"

I'm talking about Bergson's "Creative Evolution," in which he points out that mechanism and objectivity cannot explain evolution. In short, they cannot explain it after it has unfolded in space.

Professional gamer Daigo Umehara also says, "The shortcut to improvement is not to compare yourself with others, but to compare yourself with your past. Philosophically speaking, comparing oneself with others is "comparing oneself with the image of others developed in space," which is an act of mechanical or objective evaluation. If we try to measure our evolution and growth by what is developed in space, it hinders our growth. This is also related to Bergson's "Consciousness and Freedom." If we replace the meaning of activity with spatial lines and curves, we lose sight of its original dynamic meaning. We should not overconfidently trust human intelligence.

As Nassim Nicholas Taleb also stated, the human intellect is for prediction, but it is only an analysis based on human-constructed spatial developments. Some things are already out of sight at that point, and it is a fallacy to speak of the future or evolution on that basis. Progress and development can only be measured by comparison with the past, not with others. Similarly with history, the key to moral development is to examine the possibility of several branches in the past and to recognize that the present is established by a series of coincidences.

With this premise, the history of living organisms is discussed in Chapters 2 and 3. First, the whole consciousness diverged into inorganic and organic, and then the organic matter diverged into plants and animals. The nebula is mentioned, and the view is that life could have been expressed even in a planetary system without a sun. Plants took a form that could store sunlight as energy, and they began to take in light via chlorophyll, from which they branched off into animals. In other words, plants and animals arose in the solar system on the basis of photosynthesis, but Bergson suggests that different forms of life could exist in other stellar systems.

The issue of consciousness is fundamental, and it is because "movement" became necessary that consciousness became more evident in animals. As the nervous system develops and accumulates uncertainty along with movement, consciousness becomes more distinct. The greater the gap between possible and actual action, the clearer consciousness becomes. This is the milestone for Chapter 3, where man further liberates consciousness by creating tools and externalizing the motor mechanism. The condition for further evolution is said to be the turning of that liberated consciousness toward the self and the linking of intuition and intellect.

In Chapter 3, the position of the human being is questioned. It is the human intellect that finds matter, and matter is understood as a human principle, an increase in entropy. Matter does not fill the entire universe, but is manifested by the intellect at the moment of descent or cessation of consciousness. There are therefore two kinds of order, a "passive order" that manifests in descent and a "creative order" that manifests in ascent. This corresponds to the order that resides in music and art and the order of material arrangement.

By externalizing the intellect and splitting it up like a machine or artificial intelligence, man can escape the shackles of the intellect itself. And if he feels lonely, he can overcome this by connecting with his intuition. In this respect, man becomes more than an animal and goes on to further evolution.

In Chapter 4, we return to the question of matter and order. To say that "there is no matter" does not mean "there is nothing." Matter is only manifest in the fullness of consciousness and the universe as a whole, and there is no nothing at all. Even when there appears to be disorder, there is, on the contrary, a predominant order at work.

Man misunderstands "nothingness," continues to create things, wastes them, and strangles himself with waste. Increasing entropy needlessly and engulfing the entire organism is the biggest mistake of modern man and the bottleneck of modern civilization, Bergson warns.