Mechanical Time and Vital Time: The Fallacy in the Clock (1900-2025)

Mechanical Time and Vital Time: The Fallacy in the Clock (1900-2025)
Bergson explained that there is an essential disconnect between the clock time we use in our daily lives and time as "duration" as perceived by life. Mechanical time is spatially delimited and quantifiable, while life time is flowing and qualitative, with thickness and change as an internal experience. Modern science has described nature on the basis of the former, but that framework cannot explain the creative evolution and intuitive perception of life. For example, a growing tree or a spark of thought is a continuous, undividable process that cannot be reduced to equal units like a clock. Bergson believed that this displacement is the limit of the modern intellect. The time in which we truly live is an intrinsic time, or "duration," in which the past and present are blended and opened toward the future. It is where emotions and memories are intertwined and infinite possibilities dwell. It is in this vital time, which cannot be grasped by the scientific intellect alone, that
Bergson found the path to philosophical speculation based on intuition.