Bergson's "Creative Evolution": The History of Intellect and the Recovery of Intuition

Bergson's "Creative Evolution": The History of Intellect and the Recovery of Intuition

Well, let me start with a general overview. What I want to deal with here is the big story that Bergson's "Creative Evolution" tells - that is, how "intelligence" was born in the flow of life and where it has developed. In a word, this book is a long historical narrative that describes "the road to human intelligence" using evolutionary theory as its material, and the last chapter (called Chapter 4 here for convenience) illuminates the activities of intelligence from ancient to modern times from the perspective of the history of philosophy and science. Thus, the biological narrative in the first half and the philosophical narrative in the second half are not separate, but run along a single axis: the history of the creation of intelligence.

Bergson's distinctive feature is that he declares from the outset that the history of life and evolution cannot be explained in terms of a "completed picture. Evolution cannot be confined to a static mechanistic or objective theory. For this reason, he draws on the power of "narrative" to depict life as a process that unravels in time. This is what differentiates this book from a mere textbook on evolutionary theory, and despite its philosophical prose, the reader feels the thrust of the book as if it were a full-length novel. There is an "overall tendency" that precedes the whole of life, from which branches proceed, and at the deepest level of this tendency is the human intellect--a pattern that is repeated chapter after chapter.

As a first step in the branching process, he sets up a contrast between plants and animals. Plants are fundamentally inclined toward mechanisms that "settle" and capture light energy. Animals, on the other hand, lean more toward "movement," and develop more sophisticated sensory-motor systems for working with the outside world. It is important to note that Bergson is not saying that plants are "unconscious". Rather, he depicts the two styles as the result of the momentum of life (elan vitals) branching off in different directions. In other words, that it was not the presence or absence of consciousness, but the difference in the mode of movement and energy economy that supports consciousness, that separated the plants from the animals.

Accelerating on the animal side is the increasing complexity of the sensory-motor system. The more we move, the greater the resolution of possible actions, and the more clearly we can see the distance between what we can do and what we have not yet done. This "ability to measure distance" is the root of what Bergson calls the clarity of the intellect. What is unique to human beings is the intervention of tools. Freed from the movements bound to our own organs, we are able to incorporate "extra-organic movements" through tools. Whether underwater or in the air, the horizon of action can be extended by means of tools and planning, even if there are no direct anatomical organs. This relative freedom from organs is emphasized as the distinguishing feature of the human intellect.

On the other hand, Bergson is also attentive to the theories that have been exchanged around the theory of evolution. Referring to classic arguments such as Darwin's natural selection, Lamarck's acquired traits, and Weismann's theory of isolation, he urges that "life's morphological changes must not be reduced to a mere mechanistic synthesis or an objective scheme. While the order of inorganic matter can often be described in terms of the law of "accumulation," the process of "division and differentiation" is the essence of organisms, and their emergence cannot be grasped as a development faithful to a predetermined blueprint, This is why we cannot grasp the emergence of an organism as a development faithful to a pre-determined blueprint. Muscle training makes muscles bigger, but this change does not guarantee the creation or inheritance of new organs.

In the depths of this web of branching and differentiation, the human intellect is located. But Bergson does not stop there. He opposes "intuition" as the opposite of the intellect and describes the relationship between the two as the ups and downs of life. That is, intuition is at the pole of the upward movement of consciousness, and intellect precipitates in the downward phase of consciousness. In the descending phase, the continuous flow is cut into small pieces, and "matter" appears as a fixed contour. Therefore, "matter" is also the image that precipitates at the point where the movement of life stops moment by moment. The intellect is adept at describing such stops and breaks, and while it excels at geometry, calculus, and the manipulation of causal chains, it is not so good at vividly grasping the continuous flow itself (persistence).

This is where the eye of "Chapter 3" rises. Instinct in human beings has not disappeared completely, but has barely remained in the form of "intuition. Intuition is the ability to dive into a sustained stream and grasp in a way that resonates with the subject. The intellect can bridge over intuition, but conversely, it cannot descend from the intellect to intuition--this is Bergson's hard claim. Therefore, in order for human beings to regain the momentum of life (élan), it is essential to reconnect the intellect with intuition. Reconnecting" here does not mean irrationally withdrawing. Rather, it means to reconnect the fragments of the intellect into a living continuum.

What, then, is to be said in the part of the history of philosophy and the history of science (in this case, Chapter 4)? Bergson sketches the "self-development of the intellect" from ancient Greece to modern times. The longing for form and order, geometric ideals, and perfect figures in Plato and Aristotle. The geometrical world of modern science pioneered by Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, and others - an era in which the various relations developed in space were clearly perceived and, through the establishment of calculus, a powerful device for analyzing motion was acquired. With "orderliness" as its mother, the intellect had honed its field of expertise, even before probability theory and statistical perspectives were fully realized. In Bergson's eyes, however, it was a "descending mastery" that led to the admonition that one must not lose one's "ascending gaze.

From this perspective, the common sense opposition between "order" and "disorder" can be rewritten. According to Bergson, disorder does not strictly exist. When the two orders - the order inherent in the upward phase and the order inherent in the downward phase - seem to cross paths with each other, people call it "disorder. Warning against the popular "admiration of chaos" associated with increasing entropy, he urges us to correctly see the alternation between the vital and material orders. When we do not find the expected order there, we say that there is no order, but in fact a different kind of order is at work--a paraphrase that is key to his entire argument.

Where, then, does the uniqueness of human beings lie? As I have already touched on, the intervention of tools has given us relative freedom from the constraints of our organs and dramatically increased the plasticity of our actions. The intellect is not only born at the deepest level of the bifurcation, but it continues to further differentiate itself and dig downwards and downwards in the level of abstraction. But the more it digs, the more it risks slimming the momentum of life. That is why we need to go back and forth with intuition. There is a bridge from intuition to intellect, but the slope from intellect to intuition is too steep. Then, the intellect should periodically touch its own roots (intuition) again, and the "powder" generated by the cutting process should be returned to the "flow" once again. This is the practical implication of his humanism.

To return to the evolutionary sketch, we can summarize it in the following three points. First, the history of life is not a verbatim reproduction of a prearranged blueprint, but a creative bifurcation within persistence. Second, human intelligence was born at the deepest point of this bifurcation as a force skilled in "cutting and fixing," and has extended the horizon of action through tools. Third, intuition has not disappeared, but has persisted as an entry point to touch the "continuity" that the intellect has forgotten. Therefore, the condition to keep the momentum of life from withering away is to restore the return of intellect and intuition.

Finally, I would like to mention that this book has a lingering cosmological note. Bergson suggests that the conditions on earth just happen to have created these forms of plants and animals, and that the tendency toward life itself may be universal to the wider universe. Energy is stored in the ascending phase and released in the descending phase--this breath-like back-and-forth may define life in any world. What we call "matter" is merely a shadow seen at the "stopping point" of this return. Therefore, it is necessary to hone our intellectual skills (geometry, causality, calculus) to stitch the material world together, but this alone will not be enough to tell the story of life. To periodically re-live the continuous time (duration) that intuition opens up--this was his proposal to correctly connect the history of intellect to the next.

In the above, I have outlined the "flow" of Bergson's "Creative Evolution" in terms of divergence and return, ascent and descent, and intellect and intuition. Biological material and philosophical reflection complement each other, and ultimately the practical goal of "linking intellect back to intuition" is set as a human task. We believe that this is the core of this book, both as a reading guide and as a blueprint for thinking.