I tried to summarize Bergson's main ideas earlier in discussing Russel's "A History of Western Philosophy" on Seniornet: click here.

[Edit 10-10-99] The thread was archived here.

So, here we are - or rather, here I am. Greetings to all or any lurkers! Please do consider dropping a line about Bergson or anything even hardly related. I hope that the gist of his fine writing, as clear and distinct as it is, will somehow show here and the main goal is exchanging our thoughts on these matters.

For the next number of days the first chapter is on the program, "the retrograde movement of the true growth of truth". That seems an abstract mouthful that might scare some pukingly away. But hear this!: it is exactly the abstract mouthfuls that Bergson wishes to rule out, brush aside, in this very chapter.

The abstract and the intellectual stuff is a product of so-called intelligence. Intelligence is our ability to look into the past and project the future. But what we call "the past" or "the future" is really in our creative minds. There perceptions are continuously accumulated when the present changes, moves and flows. There are no past and future, for these are really only our memories, created in the present.

In fact, this contracted intellectual habit of ours to call perceptions that are still in our living systems the past or the future, is the retrograde movement of the true growth of truth. For we hold on to what concerns us most in the present, which is true to our feelings, in short: which is true. Our bodies and in particular our brains, allow us to hold on to them.

The present that we perceive is a pure act of creation that involves our whole being and that we can know through our whole being. Why then use the intellect to 'perceive' only categories of thought, abstracted from reality, that we are used to? The category of time is not a line on a piece of paper or the 5th wheel on the wagon (time as an extra dimension of space) as physicists or cosmologists are used to treat it. It cannot be measured. Time really is duration in which newness evolves in a constant flow.

In this constant flow, we are used to contract bad habits, like the faulty way we think about time. Therefore we have a problem with thinking about freedom and the intellect. We assume that we can predict things or that anything happening was the achievement of a possibility. But in fact it all stems from our creative nature, perceived through our mind and body.

Any comments?

You know, Ron, this looks very interesting. Philosophy is not my strong suit, but this phrase intrigued me: But what we call "the past" or "the future" is really in our creative minds. There perceptions are continuously accumulated when the present changes, moves and flows. There are no past and future, for these are really only our memories, created in the present."

If there is no past, how did the baby grow up to be a man? Where is the baby?

Why does more than one person have recollections of the same events if there was no past? For example, those in Hiroshima who remember the bomb and who have physical scars of the same, was there no bomb?

I'm interested in this way of thought if I can understand it. The 1+1=3 certainly makes sense to me, as I've never been good in math! hahahahaha

Ginny

Hi Ginny! I am glad this interests you. Your question is a valid one. What happened to the child? The child is the parent of the adult! His being is conditional to further developments. The 'past' in physical time really is the deeper part of the present. Our inner self is a grown child, while our present outer self still is a baby in psychological time. The present in physical time is the present plus CREATED 'past' in duration. You see, physical time and psychological time work in opposite ways.

As physical time progresses, psychological time regresses (hence, "retrograde movement"). But is not physical time an enormous abstraction, even when it seems we all use this abstraction? It sure is, and the cause is our intellect and the influence of science (Newton, Einstein) in society. This is comparable to the influence of Freud, who introduces concepts as 'libido', 'ego', 'superego' in everyday language, while it really is an abstraction and not a true feeling.

Duration is what we truly feel. That is psychological time. When something happens like the Hiroshima bomb, this happens in the present and the scars are present on the body and in memory. We feel the scars and the memories and name it "the past" while it is really the present. So we apply the theory of physics, that there is a 'disappearing' past even when we embody this past and it does not disappear. In fact, all our new experiences depend upon it, are getting closer to it, as a child to a parent.

The 'future', like the 'past', is nothing but the mystery of creation in what we experience, or as Bergson says, the natural selection of present recollections of past perceptions by the stated problems. Nature seeks to transcend what is material and uses anything that works to achieve that. That is why man exists. That is why brains and intellect exist. And that is why we are material bodies in a continuous stream of psychological time. Our most developed, psychological and not merely physical, nature is always a creative 'becoming'.

Ron, as a true beginner, let me have a dialogue most unPlato like with you so I can grasp this, if possible. It may NOT be possible at all, but I'm going to give it a good shot!

You said:

"The child is the parent of the adult! His being is conditional to further developments. The 'past' in physical time really is the deeper part of the present. Our inner self is a grown child, while our present outer self still is a baby in psychological time. The present in physical time is the present plus CREATED 'past' in duration. You see, physical time and psychological time work in opposite ways. "

So you don't deny the physical presence of the baby, nor the recollections of the past surrounding the baby by those who were present?

I am familiar with Wordsworth's "The child is father of the man, " yet the child's being can not be "conditional to further develoments." He IS. Should he, God forbid, perish, he lived, none the less?

"Our inner self is a grown child, while our present outer self still is a baby in psychological time." It would seem to me to be the opposite. All you hear now is the "inner child." Certainly my wrinkled face does not present a baby in any time?

" The present in physical time is the present plus CREATED 'past' in duration. You see, physical time and psychological time work in opposite ways. "

Why is this so?

"As physical time progresses, psychological time regresses (hence, "retrograde movement"). "

Not always.

"But is not physical time an enormous abstraction, even when it seems we all use this abstraction? It sure is, and the cause is our intellect and the influence of science (Newton, Einstein) in society. This is comparable to the influence of Freud, who introduces concepts as 'libido', 'ego', 'superego' in everyday language, while it really is an abstraction and not a true feeling. "

Here I'm out of my league.

"Duration is what we truly feel. That is psychological time. When something happens like the Hiroshima bomb, this happens in the present..."

1945 is the present?

"and the scars are present on the body and in memory. We feel the scars and the memories and name it "the past" while it is really the present. So we apply the theory of physics, that there is a 'disappearing' past even when we embody this past and it does not disappear. In fact, all our new experiences depend upon it, are getting closer to it, as a child to a parent."

If we deny the fact that we age, physically or mentally, we fool ourselves. Is this just another way of saying that we are immortal after all?

"The 'future', like the 'past', is nothing but the mystery of creation in what we experience, or as Bergson says, the natural selection of present recollections of past perceptions by the stated problems."

That makes sense. How else could it be?

" Nature seeks to transcend what is material"

What is the definition of nature used here?

" and uses anything that works to achieve that.

How do we know this?

"That is why man exists."

The purpose being solely to transcend the material with a material being?

" That is why brains and intellect exist. And that is why we are material bodies in a continuous stream of psychological time. Our most developed, psychological and not merely physical, nature is always a creative 'becoming'."

I think we are beginning to see why my courses in Philosophy always met with failure. Yet I do appreciate your views and your willingness to express them and hope to continually learn this new approach. Ordering book.

Materially!!! hahahahahhaa

Ginny

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On reading Bergsom's, Creative Mind, I was rather puzzled, at first, about his fixation on time. Then I began to see his use of it as a standard for our evolutionary selves.

I think we all understand that the child in us piggybacks with us to our parent selves. This process is easy to see, but the fact that if we are always becoming and never static, why doesn't man seem to change?. The evils of yesterday are still with us. Psychological evolution is indeed slow. Good nutrition has fashioned our improved bodies, but good nutrition doesn't seem to have made an improved mind.

Happy to have your responses! Thanks!!

"The child is the parent of the adult! His being is conditional to further developments. The 'past' in physical time really is the deeper part of the present. Our inner self is a grown child, while our present outer self still is a baby in psychological time. The present in physical time is the present plus CREATED 'past' in duration. You see, physical time and psychological time work in opposite ways. "

So you don't deny the physical presence of the baby, nor the recollections of the past surrounding the baby by those who were present?

Philosophy reminds us that we have based this knowledge upon just one sense, the sense of time or duration. I don't deny the physical presence of the baby, nor the recollections of the past surrounding the baby by those who were present. All I must deny, following philosophy, is the interpretation of time as something that starts in the future and ends in the past, for "future" and "past" are mental constructions like everything is in common sense and physics. The only thing that I immediately can experience, which is an important psychological given to me, is change and movement in duration.

It is hard to realize that, because of the contracted intellectual habit of considering time as I consider space: extension. Duration is not extended and it is not to be divided into physically measurable units. I can only sense time as change and movement. All the rest is interpretation and intellectualization. We need good common sense and physics for that and we have developed it too, but it is not enough to feel and understand duration itself, the most basic of all, that runs counter to physical time and that is the energy of life and creation, transcending and transforming (in)organic matter.

I am familiar with Wordsworth's "The child is father of the man, " yet the child's being can not be "conditional to further developments." He IS. Should he, God forbid, perish, he lived, none the less?

In duration, we have to get used to the retrograde movement of the true growth of truth. It is strange to restate our findings from philosophy in terms of physical time (as strange as the other way around) but let us try it. It means that the material body evolved from baby to man by transcending natural energy. The child ate and grew, and the newness is what we call the old, for what is added last, is the appearance of a man. (I am sorry to admit that I am not familiar with Wordsworth).

"Our inner self is a grown child, while our present outer self still is a baby in psychological time." It would seem to me to be the opposite. All you hear now is the "inner child." Certainly my wrinkled face does not present a baby in any time?

" The present in physical time is the present plus CREATED 'past' in duration. You see, physical time and psychological time work in opposite ways. "

Why is this so?

Wrinkles are more recent than babyfat, therefore it is younger, evolutionarily speaking. Physical time and psychological time work in opposite ways, because the origin of everything, energy, is transforming into matter but at the same time matter that came into existence is being moved and changed by the energy that was not transformed, into forms that will allow it to stay alive. That is how matter gets its energy. The earth may be cooling down, but inside it is still hot. The body may be material, but it is still vital. In short, while energy turns into matter, matter is energized and starts to live. Truth grows retrograde into the direction of where the source of energy is located. Flowers grow towards the sun.

"As physical time progresses, psychological time regresses (hence, "retrograde movement"). "

Not always.

I regret my use of the verb "regress". It is a retrograde progression, somehow equalizing what happens in the other direction. The ball of wool unrolls at one end and rolls up on the other, is the metaphor Bergson uses. Isn't that always so?

"But is not physical time an enormous abstraction, even when it seems we all use this abstraction? It sure is, and the cause is our intellect and the influence of science (Newton, Einstein) in society. This is comparable to the influence of Freud, who introduces concepts as 'libido', 'ego', 'superego' in everyday language, while it really is an abstraction and not a true feeling. "

Here I'm out of my league.

I only wanted to illustrate how physics have shaped our mind to understand reality separate from our immediate sense of time, duration, which is the only thing connecting us directly to it. The great physicists and psychologist have articulated our assumptions so well, that we were led to believe it IS real and not just an intellectual artifact. That doesn't mean it isn't true. It may be true only partially. The philosophy of duration is saying just that.

"Duration is what we truly feel. That is psychological time. When something happens like the Hiroshima bomb, this happens in the present..."

1945 is the present?

We can say rationally, "1945 was the present in 1945." Now, experientially, "1945" is the experience that endures perhaps even truer in the retrograde movement of its true growth.

"and the scars are present on the body and in memory. We feel the scars and the memories and name it "the past" while it is really the present. So we apply the theory of physics, that there is a 'disappearing' past even when we embody this past and it does not disappear. In fact, all our new experiences depend upon it, are getting closer to it, as a child to a parent."

If we deny the fact that we age, physically or mentally, we fool ourselves. Is this just another way of saying that we are immortal after all?

It is not another way of saying that we are immortal after all. We grow or age in two directions at once and are composites of both movements: on the one hand life turns into matter, while on the other hand matter turns into life. You refer only to the first movement, but the second cannot be denied. It is the development of our species, the growth ("aging") of our organic being, the deepening truth or precision of our thinking.

"The 'future', like the 'past', is nothing but the mystery of creation in what we experience, or as Bergson says, the natural selection of present recollections of past perceptions by the stated problems."

That makes sense. How else could it be?

It could be as the theory of physics would have it: that the future is moving towards us, while the past is moving away from us. Creation however, can only happen when the "past" stays within us and welcomes or deals with any future presenting itself in the present.

" Nature seeks to transcend what is material"

What is the definition of nature used here?

Nature = Energy ("white heat") in the universe, crystallizing while cooling down, but still hot enough to move this matter and synthesize it naturally into "living" forms, setting off evolution.

" and uses anything that works to achieve that.

How do we know this?

This is just philosophical speculation, like the physicists' articulation of our assumptions about the nature of time as something divisible and discontinuous. It is better than that, because it does not forget to first look at our experience of time. Time is not like a line drawn on a piece of paper with "t1, t2, t3….tn" written underneath, but it is like the greatest piece of music ever composed like Barber's Agnus Dei (my favorite).

"That is why man exists."

The purpose being solely to transcend the material with a material being?

Almost. The purpose being to transcend the inorganic material with the organic material, and to transcend the organic being with an even higher being, and to transcend the even higher being with… and so on to the beginning of duration or Creation itself. If I ever get really religious it is because of this thought.

" That is why brains and intellect exist. And that is why we are material bodies in a continuous stream of psychological time. Our most developed, psychological and not merely physical, nature is always a creative 'becoming'."

I think we are beginning to see why my courses in Philosophy always met with failure.

Please explain.

Then I began to see his use of it as a standard for our evolutionary selves.

That is the right way of putting it, Cathy! Glad you are in here.

Psychological evolution is indeed slow. Good nutrition has fashioned our improved bodies, but good nutrition doesn't seem to have made an improved mind.

Perhaps it is not as visible as we would like to see it. But the advance of science is proof of this process. What science still has to deal with, apart from its own systematic growth, is incorporating the nature of time as we really experience it!

I am rather excited about a program to be aired tonight at 7:50 p.m. on est., C-Span 1.

It is called: America, the great think off. It will be a discussion as to which has been the most beneficial to us as a people - Science or Religion. Or to put it in the oppposite - which has done the most harm. It is on C-Span 1. I would not miss this program for anything. I just love this stuff.

Ron - I surly hope you can get C-Span! Can you?

That sounds very interesting Cathy. Unfortunately I cannot reach C-Span. But do share the gist of it!

HI, All, have loads to say but will do only a bit. This is at once intimidating and exciting but daunting, really daunting.

Cathy I missed the show, how was it??

OK, I can see that I'm going to have to take stuff very slowly in here for several reasons, the primary one being I don't know what anybody's talking about??

I did read the first 29 pages, or tried to, and want to share my reaction thereon.

I've printed out this entire page to go think upon.

It's obvious I'm in way over my head here and so please regard me as the 3 year old at the table. There may be more of you out there, too, so join right in. I can see glimpses, just glimpses of electric brilliance in the text but alas, they're as illusive as a firefly to my addled brain.

So here goes!!!

On the first 29 pages: I'm, by nature, sort of a literal person. Trained as a linguist, you might say. And so sentence construction is important to me. Bergson's constructions are all over the place. They almost seem like a foreign language or translated from same, clumsily.

There are no definitions for the terms. The structure is bizarre. I'll be reading along and trying to understand what he means by a certain term which he's trying so earnestly to explain and I find myself wandering off in a split kind of mind thingie, where I am actually intent on PARSING and DIAGRAMMING his sentences!! Can you believe that?

At first I thought it was just curiosity, but I spent two sheets of the Benson Society's letter from England trying this buzzard out: "If this logic we are accustomed to pushes the reality that springs forth in the present back into the past in the form of a possible, it is precisely because it will not admit that anything does spring up, that something is created and that time is efficacious."

It is literally ALL I can do to keep from opening a folder for Grammarians and featuring that. In fact, I may write JO and see if she would participate.

Now when one reads something which makes no sense, and one KNOWS that the author won the Nobel Prize for it, then one is forced to admit that one is lacking a bit in the old brain department? It's a marvelous humbling experience. I now know how it feels to be dyslexic, and it's not a good feeling. So if you read 29 pages and you can't, at the end of those 29, tell even yourself WHAT those 29 pages were about except that it seems to be about time and motion, then you know you personally are in over your head.

However, I think it's worth the struggle, but I hate to slow the group down. Maybe you better open a Primer in Philosophy! hahahah

Now, here's something you might find interesting. The "Smartest Woman in the World" according to the Guiness Book of Records, Marilyn Vos Savant (isn't THAT a good name for her? hahahahah) Wondered always if she were a fake. Anyway, somebody wrote to her in her newsmagazine column and asked what she would ask Stephen Hawking, Physicist, if she met him, and here's her response:

"If I could, I'd ask what he meant when he wrote, 'You can think of ordinary, real time as a horizontal line...Early times are on the left and late times are on the right. But you can also consider anotehr direction of time, up and down the page. This is the so-called imaginary direction of time, at right angles to real time...The idea of imaginary time is...an intellectual leap of the same order as believing that hte world is round. I think that imaginary time will come to seem as natural as a round earth does now. There are not many Flat Earthers left in the educated world.'"

That's clearer to me than what I read, but am open to instruction.

I disagree, too (!!??!!) with some of Bergson's premises about the construction of a symphony, for example, and also the bit about...is he TALKING about "visualization" way before his time, which is now used by athletes? Yet he says it's impossible.

Deep stuff here!!!

Have printed out the page and am going off to study it, if possible, maybe I can get more out of your posts of explanation!

Ginny

Ginny,

I hope the stuff will soon no longer be daunting! This is typical for metaphysics, challenging basic scientific assumptions, which have spread all through our common sense. Science provides us the intellectual apparatus to study matter outside of our being, but metaphysics includes the basic experience of time and life.

Science assumes that the materially real is extended, discontinuous, divisible, quantitative and predictable. Metaphysics assumes that life, apart from matter, is not extended, continuous, indivisible, qualitative and always unpredictably new, like a symphony.

The line you quoted explains what happens when we forget about this other side of reality.

If this logic we are accustomed to pushes the reality that springs forth in the present back into the past in the form of a possible, it is precisely because it will not admit that anything does spring up, that something is created and that time is efficacious. (page 26)

Reality springs forth in the present as the product of creation. Intellect treats it as if it was extended like space and that it flies by like a comet, arriving from the future and disappearing into the past. The assumption of its extendedness leads us to believe that time is divided into future, present and past.

The assumed separation of a future and a past further leads us to believe in possibilities other than those of creation itself. Supposedly we can choose between futures. When the color red appears and next the color yellow, science thought (back then) that orange had become a possible combination of red and yellow. But the appearance of the color orange was a creation of nature just as new.

Another example shows how visualization of movement on film (that athletes used) divides time and movement into measurable segments or instances, while movement and change to experience are a continuous, indivisible flow.

Finally, many thanks for that quote from Hawkings! He seems to have more respect for the other approach of time than Einstein who felt disapproved of and attacked by Bergson and therefore attacked and disapproved of him in return.

If you like, we can take more time for the first chapter. I do not want to force anything!

Well, here I am again. First, my computer crashed and I couldn't get it working again. Then I had an upheaval in my household that thoroughly rattled me. Haven't had time to read or even think straight. I will try to go back to the beginning of the Bergson discussion and try to catch up. It may take a while for me to get the drift of the discussion.

Shasta! Glad you are back in one piece. Now I have to be extra careful about my incomprehensibilities again!

Jeepers, Shasta, I'm on page 1, mentally. Glad to see you back.

hahahahah

Ginny

Ginny, you mentioned missing definitions for the terms. If you tell me exactly which terms, perhaps I can clarify some.

Ginny - Thanks for your interest in the Great American Think-off. It is a new concept that is making inroads for this small town in Minnesota, New York Mills, Minnesota. It will give you a complete picture as to what it is by going to the website: www.think-off.org.

Ron - I am in my at least third reading of: Introduction I of Bergson Book, Creative Mind. I tell you one thing, this man is a master of making the obvious obscure. Either he takes great pride in taking on someone of earthly intelligence and making a blithering idiot of him/her; or we give him more credit for intelligence than he deserves.

His essay on time and space leaves me frowning when I can not afford anymore frown wrinkles in my vulnerable female face.

To me he is saying that evolution is a constant changing and to slect an interval and say "that is when this/that/ change took place. He is saying, in my crippled understanding, that all life is a flow and changes are a result of the flow and no observed duration put it aside for a distinctive change. There are those who believe that man was in his evolution long before science declared the plausibility.

Whew, Shasta,! Nice having you back.

Ron - now you have some professional company and I can relax in my concern not to bore you.

I will continue to read, re-read, and throw out my opinion of what I have read. Should make for great comedy for those who DO understand.

Cathy, I was thinking the same thing about Bergson that you were thinking: isn't he just making the obvious obscure? So what if time is a continuous flow instead of the little pieces we have carved it up into? We chop it up into minutes and hours and weeks and years for a practical reason. We do it because it helps us organize our lives in the world. It's necessary for us to find ways to orient ourselves in our world, and the invention of clocks and calendars is one of our methods of doing so. We know we are creating an artificial contrivance, but what would our lives be like if we didn't carve up time?

I went back and read Russell's chapter on Bergson again. I think he helps me understand Bergson better because he gives me a logical thinker's viewpoint on an intuitive thinker. I always considered myself an intuitive thinker until I met a REAL intuitive thinker.

I was delighted to see that so many people had joined our discussion. Don't let "Ron the Wise" daunt you. I never understand what he is talking about but I am convinced that it's something interesting if only I could understand it. And where but on the computer would we get an opportunity to talk to a real live Bergsonian? And a Dutch Bergsonian at that! I remember when I was in college, we had a native Russian on our teaching staff. I had never intended to study Russian, but I couldn't pass up an opportunity like that, so I studied Russian for several semesters, and absolutely loved it! (Then promptly forgot it all, I'm sorry to say.)

I had really intended to study Plato, but since we have an expert on Bergson, who wants to talk about Bergson, I'm ready to give Bergson my best shot. It's another opportunity I can't pass up.

How wonderful it is to know you all are really trying to understand Bergson!! If he does not deserve the credit, then I deserve it even less. The main problem you seem to encounter, is why make the obvious obscure? So what if we understand time intellectually? Cathy referred us to Debra Tastad, one of the final four of the Think-Off '99, describing how religion essentially differs from science, exactly the way metaphysics differs from science!

Religious philosophies teach that more exists to life and death. Exuding an inner peace, believers realize suffering is inevitable, but their beliefs provide hope. If the body fails, they know it is merely a shell containing the "true self". Science, however is based in the rational mind. It is difficult for the scientific mind to understand or lend credence to those basing their lives in spirituality. Science expects a physical order to life, whereas religion transcends the limited need for human logic. Limitless, it cannot be calculated or measured. During my 24 year nursing career, I have often questioned the value of the vast medical and scientific advancements which can prolong life, or is it to prolong death? Terms such as "right to die," "quality of life," and futile treatment, have become commonplace. In many ways, the advancements have out paced society's ability to solve the ethical problems associated with the new health care technology. Ethics Committees are necessary to develop guidelines, make recommendations, and monitor these situations. Often, these need resolution through the legal system.

On page 47 (ch.II) Bergson says that "modern metaphysics gave itself an object analogous to that of religion". In The Two Sources of Religion and Morality (1932), he talks about metaphysics and religion interchangeably.

About the difference between space and time we have to be very careful, since these are so basic. Maybe too much carefulness hinders clarity to break through, so let me boldly state how I read him on this issue. All experience is a mix or a composite of time and space. Time is what all material things have. Some of these, the living organisms, can feel time, its movement and change, where perception as a material function of the core coincides with the perception of matter as a faculty of the brain. We will get to space in a moment but let me say a few things about perception first.

In perception as a material function of the core, we "tense" or contract millions of tiny shocks or vibrations into an extended, spatial sensation, for example a color. Perception of matter as a faculty of the brain, on the other hand, is a contraction of recollected perceptions, that we carried with us in memory and that have been elicited by the present perception of matter. The two images are supposed to be identical, but in life we must "spatialize" further than to the tiny shocks of spatial sensation of color and we do so intellectually. From then on, the practical theories of physics come in handy. So what? The point is, we can be more precise in the above. The mix of matter and life may not be a "badly analyzed composite" (Deleuze, 1991).

On the one hand, physics adds time as a fifth wheel onto the wagon in "temporalized space". That causes us to believe in possibilities where instead of that we really have no choice but to follow creation, instinct and intuition as I tried to explain in my previous post ("The other side of reality"). And it blocks perception of the deeper meanings of life as Debra Tastad described (also the subject of The two sources of religion and morality).

On the other hand, duration is also creativity, which means that we push a direction drawn from experience towards 'outer space' extended from where our senses are, which is physical reality, an object or a stated problem (ch.II is about Stating the problems), until we can actualize the image, act intelligently or move. I know I have a hard time waiting for my recollected perceptions to properly 'fit' objects or problems and I tend to jump to conclusions. The creative mind and intuition can solve that "bad analysis", I must believe.

He is saying that evolution is a constant changing. Intervals and time slices are models of what we perceive according to physics, but that we do not really perceive, for what we really perceive according to Bergson (and I agree), is newness, continuity, flow, quality and indivisibility (wholeness). Also, when we perceive through our sensory system, there is an 'interval' of contracted recollected perceptions that are butting in so to speak, to literally make sense in both the material and intellectual ways.

Indeed we need to practically organize our lives in the world, must find ways to orient ourselves in our world. We must just be careful that this world does not become cold and sterile when we only go that way. Intelligence relaxes and life reverses into expansion instead of contraction/attention, when we have found material forms. But then creativity and intuition come to a standstill. Our minds, at least mine, wants more than the fully predictable that soon becomes meaningless and depressing.

There is an essence to life that we can deny even all our lives, but then the world turns cold. I have seen "real men" break down in the end holding on to any straw from this plane that they could still reach. It takes an effort opposed to this relaxation in matter and expansion in the mind: life and creative energy also contracts and "tenses" to understand and transcend things intellectually until much further precision in the psycho-physical duality of time and space of experience is reached and life is more satisfying. That is how cosmic energy tries to preserve itself as energy and not as matter.

Well on the one hand I'm truly gratified that I'm not the only one struggling. I really feel the need for a primer here. And too, I do want to do the dialogues of Plato, maybe we could do them AFTER this one? Seems like that one just got a foot off the ground when this one took off.

Dialogue is a good word.

OK, Ron, I'm just swimming in language, it's a wonderful experience but I still don't have any concrete thing to grasp. AND I'm leaving Saturday thru Wednesday, don't you all go on to Chapter 8 now or something, I'm behind enough.

Yes, this is fun, if only we were speaking the same language! hahahahahaa

But it HAS inspired a new discussion which will go up upon my return and should be fun for the literal minded amongst us.

Meanwhile, why the META tag? What does that mean? Metaphysics Physics is "the science dealing with the properties, changes, interactions, etc., of matter and energy."

So are we saying that Bergson also had formulas which support his theories?

But wait, we're talking philosophy which is "the study of the priciples underlying conduct, thought, and the nature of the universe." HUH, I thought it was love of wisdom or something. Philein logos but it's not, it's sophos. huh.

Well.

Well now I'm stuck again. What, in very simple words, only one or two syllable words, does he SAY or MEAN in the first 29 pages?

Ginny

Now I understand what your frequent 'ha' meant: you are choking!! I am so sorry!

IS THERE A MEDIC IN THE BUILDING?!!!??

hahahaha, No, the frequent HA means laughter or risible exhalations. No need for paramedics. hahahahahahaa

Ginny

I understand what Ginny means when she finds Bergson's language bewildering. Personally, I always balk at the word 'duration.' To me "duration" means a limited period of time, and I know he means just the opposite--unlimited.

I looked it up in Webster's dictionary, and to my surprise, Webster said, "In the philosophy of Bergson, 'duration' is a temporal continuum, intuitively known, within which the 'elan vital' operates." So that means Webster has accepted Bergson's use of the word, and so must I. I understand 'elan vital' to mean the 'life force.' So the life force is operating within a time flow that is continuous, and I have got to learn to call this 'duration.'

(13) Science neglects duration, but we do feel and live it. We can look at ourselves through an artificial understanding, but what if we did so directly? (16) Bergson suggests what we should find. The static becomes dynamic. Change becomes indivisible, even substantial. (18) Everything becomes new and unique. (19) Perception, when it is created, predicts better than any preconceived scientific theory. (20) This is inner growth, opposed to a film of evolution that could be played at any speed by science. (22) Anything we perceive to be true, we say was predicted, but it is creation itself that creates perception and the truth of it at that same moment. Time does not have to daunt us for it does not pass away, in duration. (25) If there was no real duration we could predict to our great grandchildren the essence of their lives before they were born. (27)To think so is to err, one of the few basic errors science makes. (28) Practical life has requested it so, it seems, but it is no necessity.

Shasta, perhaps it feels better to call duration "la durée" so that it, more substantially, has an article and cannot mean a limited period of time as easily.

Ron, when you read Bergson's books, do you read them in French, Dutch, or English?

I keep reminding myself that Bergson received the Nobel prize for literature. Not for philosophy, but for literature. Of course, the Nobel prize is never awarded for philosophy. But this means he was an outstanding writer. A prose poet, he's been called. So I keep looking for the poetic content in his writing. Does his writing seem poetic to you?

Shasta, to me the poetry is in the strong contextual metaphoric logic, more than in the chosen rhyme and rhythm of the words, which unfortunately is weakest in English, better in Dutch translations and naturally best in original French. But how about, for example, "On the page it has chosen from the great book of the world, intuition seeks to recapture, to get back the movement and rhythm of the composition, to live again creative evolution by being one with it in sympathy" (p.87)?

Do you understand, and sympathize with his view?

Now THAT I understood! What a good time for me to go on vacation, which I am doing tomorrow, back Wednesday. Thanks for the breakdown, too, Ron! I can see how hard and patiently you are trying. I do think it's a language barrier and the French you've provided really has illuminated the words, but in English?

Shasta, I had no idea he'd won for literature!!!! I now see that in the heading, too. Wow, puts a new slant on it.

I'll see you all Wednesday, hope you all will have solved every problem by then!

Ginny

Have a good time, uhh... durée, Ginny!

To me the main question in Introduction I, in Bergson’s, Creative Mind, is: Is there nothing new under the Sun? If creation is, as defined, an unbroken, on-going flow of innovation, it would seem to me to back up that age old adage. Is it true?

I tried to think of some “new” event, such as: art, language, literature, science that was not built on past knowledge, or past possibilities. Does man have, at hand, all the knowledge he needs to survive and survive well? Does he only need to put together old knowledge, in one of several ways, to come up with a new possibility ? In other words is there some knowledge, active or inert, to bring forth and lay the foundation for new, never discovered principals? Or is all knowledge already known, but needs new arrangements to create new possibilities. To me, today, it seems that everything we know is built on what we knew. Is there nothing new under the Sun? I am, I think, ready for Introduction II to see if Bergson has an answer.

Cathy, I think there will always be new things under the sun. In fact, I think human evolution is only in its infancy. How I wish I could live a thousand years from now and see how things have changed.

Ron, I think I sympathized with Bergson more when I was younger than I do now. One of his basic concepts is his separation of time and space. Not only does he separate them, but he considers them totally different. His description of the two seems natural and convincing to me; actually it's how I have always thought of time and space. But the physicists tell us there's a space-time continuum. I've never understood how this could be, but I know nothing about physics. And these physicists seem to be so brilliant that I can't help believing they know what they're talking about.

Now, here's a conflict between intuition and logic. Like Bergson, my intuition tells me there is no connection between time and space. But I am in awe of science. I wonder how others feel about this. Are space and time different and disconnected? Or do they form a continuum?

Cathy, that is a perfect question. However, there is a perfect answer too. How can something that is always the same be always new? By being a unity that moves, changes and grows under the sun. There is an eternal recurrence of forms, but new forms are created as well that had never seen the light of day before. Also, when the forms of our material world, mechanistic, organic or humane, resemble forms that guarantee their survival, that in their turn resemble forms that guarantee their survival… where does it stop? And all these forms have contents of their own, that we as one of those forms, know to be the meaning of our lives, transcending and transforming matter that is around us, including our own material bodies.

Shasta, I can see the problem that you pointed out. However, there needs to be no problem at all I believe. We can be sure that it is true that a space-time continuum exists by which scientists can predict relativity of velocity and time due to objects' masses. Then this plays no role on earth, where the mass influencing us is constant. Although the law does not effect us here, it still applies. Time is real both prior and posterior to perception. Memory intercepts sensory information to and motor formation from our organisms. Now the laws of la durée do not need to interact with the laws of relativity, but they are very much alike! Einstein and Bergson both, and I believe independently, borrowed the concept of "multiplicity" from mathematician Riemann. Multiplicity in physics means that unities are formed by different (massive) stellar systems. Multiplicity in metaphysics means that unities are differences in perception of "kinds", that Plato talks about in Philebus. The difference between both interpretations of multiplicity is that physics finds differences in degree, while metaphysics finds differences in kind. The effect of mass in the space-time continuum is like the effect of objects in the contraction/attention versus relaxation of our recollections (Deleuze, 1991).

Wow! We have come a long way and I am happy about it! I have invited Gershom Zajicek M.D., who wrote about http://www.md.huji.ac.il/md/special/cancer/language.html"> The Language of the Wisdom of the Body, using Bergson's theories. He said he would take a look in here. Perhaps he can convince us how we can fully stay in awe of science and still welcome Bergson's revolutionary ideas!

Let's move on to Introduction (Part II), Stating the problems.

Ron, tell me how the effect of mass in the space-time continuum is like the effect of objects in the contraction/attention versus relaxation of our recollections.

Also, tell me what a process philosopher is.

Shasta, the effect of mass in the space-time continuum is that mass speeds up time. When two watches are synchronized and move from A to B, one on the surface of the earth, for example in a car, and the other in a plane further away from the center of gravity, the watch closest to the center will run faster (if I remember correctly, I got this from a TV series a long time ago). So time is contracted by mass, the closer it gets to a center of gravity. The mass creates its own space-time atmosphere like any other mass does. Together, these systems or atmospheres are referred to as multiplicity.

The effect of objects is that they (naturally) select recollections of perceptions from the past, while being indifferent to the rest of our recollections, to contract them and form an image of the object. The image can be actualized out of its virtual (mental) existence, when the object is approached, an obstacle is passed by or a problem is solved by understanding and transcendence. The images then "relax" and retreat into the sum of recollections of the past, while new ones are created in the 'new present'. When new kinds of objects, obstacles and problems appear in experience, they each have their own contractions of recollected perceptions from the past. Together, these contractions towards objects are referred to as multiplicity (comparable to the multiplicity of physics).

The term "process philosopher" is new to me, but I think I understand it. Creativity, duration and the élan vital are continuous, indivisible flows of energy or life, bringing about movement and change, at least in experience. This is Bergson's metaphysics. Although they hardly admit it, scientists have their metaphysics as well, when they intellectualize or explain their empirical data in theories conforming to those of relativity. I would not mind calling them "product philosophers" since they apparently only study matter, the product or crystallization of energy. Time is only scrutinized as relative to space and matter.

Product philosophers and process philosophers are theoretically on opposite sides of the space-time continuum. Space is temporalized by matter, say the product philosophers, and time is spatialized by life, says the process philosopher. Spatialization is what happens when scientists intellectualize their data, to create a mirror image of ourselves as material objects or products to whom time is irrelevant unless we fly in spaceships nearing the speed of light. However, we also are, and more than anything else, subjects in the indivisible, continuous stream or process of life.

I don't understand completely, but I'm beginning to understand a little. Will keep trying.

Something funny happened. I was thinking about space and time when I went to bed last night, and here is what I dreamed . I dreamed my father and mother were separated and living apart. In reality they never were; they were always happily married. But in the dream they were living in separate places and I was trying to figure out why this had happened. They still seemed friendly but they just weren't together anymore.

In the twilight zone between waking and sleeping, I thought, "Father Time and Mother Earth have somehow become separated and this is not how they were originally. They were married, fused together." Was I still dreaming? I'm not sure. But isn't it funny that my dreams picked up the space/time problem and continued trying to resolve it?

Shasta, did you notice that all the elements we have been talking about were in your dream? Time-space duality, contracted recollections from the past in the present, intuition, creativity, etc... It is a wonderful example of the creative mind in its purest form, thanks for sharing!!

I am not sure if the translator knew what he wrote in the contents, for "Stating the problems" is definitely different from "The stating of problems" as the chapter title actually is. Unfortunately I do not have the French version, but the Dutch says "About the stating of the problems". I did not notice this before or I would have forewarned you.

So what is most interesting in chapter II to you, so far? To me it is how, under what conditions, science and metaphysics can be mutually helpful. This seems a lot like the encyclical Faith and Reason, that appeared last September. I have my own ideas about this, that I would like to try to formulate, to then check them against Bergson's actual wordings. Of course, I must add, these are not my ideas, I just carry them with me right now.

What I think about the mutuality of science and metaphysics, as described before, is that science adds spatial interpretations to experience to an extent that it loses all contact with experience. Metaphysics takes the short route and runs 'anti-clockwise' to the chain of interpretations and conclusions, introspecting experience directly and unmediated. Therefore, science eventually temporizes space while metaphysics spatializes time.

Science is exact, sharp, conclusive, while metaphysics is not exact, fuzzy and inconclusive. Yet the latter is as important, for it is a more direct way to meet with real experience. As such, it can coexist with the arrival of the scientific interpretation, which, by being so dwelled-in into common sense, seems to be immediate as well. Now, what happens in experience materially, known by the scientific or intellectual mind, can be met with and developed by the metaphysical or creative mind.

Let me be more specific. The creative mind contracts and finds an image that fits the object, in this case, experience. But it contracts further and starts to 'direct' experience, or transcend the object. This happens in reality, but not reality as we know it intellectually or materially, for (1) it is the highest subject matter that is operational here, our gray matter that we cannot see as we cannot see the forest for the trees and (2) it happens before our senses can pick the sensory information up in action and form a response in reaction. In short, we hardly seem to know what drives us metaphysically, which, by the way, may be a good reason to keep calling it meta-physics.

So under what conditions are science and metaphysics mutually helpful? When they precisely meet in experience, like two protons fired in opposite directions in a cyclotron, exploding in collision after cycling in two ways. The sharp clarity of the intellect of science meets with a directional force of metaphysics. Space gets time and time gets space. This is the wonder of experience and I am sure it is the doorway to the wonder of creation - but I am a romantic. Anyway, I am sure there is much more to say to this. Now, what else does Bergson say or where am I wrong?

I think the possibility of mutual support of science and metaphysics is addressed in pages 44 and up. Words are not enough to describe experience, rather they are corrected by it. "…inner experience…will have to enlarge the concept, make it more flexible, and indicate, by the colored shading around the edges [the description Bergson uses for intuition, the fringe of instinct that we still possess] that it does not contain the whole of experience" (p.45). Then he introduces genera (p.51) as opposed to empty concepts, that help us accurately define our social habitudes, which are words that are just there but that hardly ever fit the object or experience precisely enough.

Inherent in reality itself, Bergson assumes "objective generalities" (p.56) which are genera of no artificial making, that are not created for the convenience of socializing but true to our nature and nature in general, which are there for a better reason than the need of clocks and daily soaps. These are (1) biological as if nature had its own 'concepts', for example genes (p.56); (2) qualities, elements and forces as used in physics such as colors, the table of elements or all the forces, weak to strong, in nature (p.57); (3) our ideas connected with social life, speculative or for fun (p.61).

Now something else that is very interesting to me is introduced, namely, that both science and metaphysics have attained an absolute , science in matter or space and metaphysics in life or time (p.67). This is about our capability of perceiving! Objects are distilled from continuity for the reason of being able to perceive! But these "things" we see, are they really concrete? Is not a particle also a wave? Perception should be attention to life (p.74) which is more than perceiving things. How about the things of the "dream plane" as in our beautiful example two posts above?

Then Kant is attacked because he stated that our categories for time and space were as far as we could get. This is where Bergson was attacked himself by his contemporaries. You can feel the pain on the bottom of page 77. And he adds "This supplementary attention [that the mind gives to itself] can be methodically cultivated and developed" (p.79). Moral, social and organic life, the former more intuitive and the latter more intellectual, can be developed. And the means to do it: precision in the match where scientific and metaphysic perceptions of experience meet or have to coexist, in our minds.

Children examplify this aptitude, so let us look at them and let us "rather cultivate a child's knowledge in the child" (p.86). We can "get back the movement and rhythm of the composition, to live again creative evolution by being one with it in sympathy" (p.87). We can miss "socialization of the truth" as a toothache, as I seem to have read in some of Cathy's posts. Yet it serves us for practical truths as Shasta pointed out not too long ago.

Sorry for this long post, but a would-be philosopher's got to do what a philosopher's got to do.

Bergson: "Let no one ask me for a simple and geometrical definition of intuition."

The Book of Tao: "I do not know its name. If I must name it, I call it Tao and I hail it as supreme....never-ending, far-reaching, returning....Words cannot describe it."

What is the difference between Tao and Bergson's 'intuition' or 'duration'? Is duration more purposeful and dynamic than Tao? A moving river rather than a still pond?

Good question, Shasta, I dunno. I have books on "The Tao of Physics" (Fritjof Capra) and "The Tao of Pooh" but I am afraid that won't help. I did not read these I must admit, though I did read "The Dancing Wu-Li Masters" (Gary Zukav). Perhaps there is somebody who can enlighten us? Otherwise let's search the Net and see if we can find a good definition of Tao for comparison.

Hey, Guys, glad to be back, thanks for the trip wishes, Ron, Barbara St. Aubrey knows Tao very well, somebody write and ask her, you can find her in the Great Books and also the Geisha discussion.

Hopelessly behind, as per usual, more later!

Ginny

I asked Barbara in a mail to tell us what Tao is about...

Ron, you and I seem to have the same books. I also have "The Tao of Psychology." But I can't believe a Bergsonian would not have read "The Book of Tao." You really have to get it and read it. It's a very small book. As I struggle with Bergson, I keep thinking, "The Chinese have already said this thousands of years ago. What is Bergson saying that is different?" But then I neither understand Tao nor Bergson, so maybe Barbara can enlighten me.

Shasta, you must explain this to me - if you will please:

(1) You neither understand Tao nor Bergson.
(2) You cannot believe a Bergsonian would not have read "The Book of Tao".

How can you know that they add up when you understand neither?

However, you did make me curious!

Ron, what I mean is that I suspect they are both talking about the same thing that I don't understand. If you haven't read Capra's book, you should. You will love it because you understand physics better than I do. I don't understand that either, but I still found the book fascinating.

Okay, I see I am still not making any sense. I will try one more time to extricate myself from this verbal tangle I have gotten myself into.

This is what happens when you think intuitively instead of logically. Intuitively, I do know what Tao is. And intuitively, I do know what Bergson is talking about. And intuitively, I think they are talking about the same thing. (But I'm not positive.) But when I try to translate my intuition into logical concepts, I cannot do it. That's what I mean when I say I don't understand. I don't understand at the intellectual level. I don't understand the language that Bergson uses to translate his intuitions into. I think he uses entirely too much verbiage and obscures his meaning rather than communicating it.

But because I do understand at the intuitive level, I am willing to be patient and try to unravel his language so that I can grasp it.

Hmmmm - recieved your email and have read the last few posts. I thought I would try to explain Taoism in relationship to Bergson but I'm so unsure that I understand where you are coming from while reading Bergson. This whole issue of time frozen or fluent does not yank my chain. Therefore, I will do my best by not comparing - here goes.

The best translation of Tao is the way or the path or a principle or a method or a doctrine or a system of order - the reality of the universe itself Tao is one of the most basic and comprehensive symbols in the Chinese language, the center of all philosophical and spiritual discourse. Every art and science is called a Tao but the source of everthing, of all art and science is called the Tao.

The ultimate nature of Tao is inherently beyond the bounds of human conception. Ancient Taoists trace in the patterns of events taking place in the natural world, the social world, and the inner world of the individual psyche. The Tao continues to focus on perfecting the mastery of human nature and life in three critical areas: individual well-being, social harmony, and accelerated evolution of consciousness, believed to form the foundation of overall human development, the guiding lights of the arts and sciences.

For the Chinese the I Ching is the basis of all wisdom and the best similarity would be the Bible (although to me the bible is very wanting in many aspects of understanding). Tao encompasses a concept of a divine creator and a unified universe that are considered as embracing all that is manifested in the universe throught the sixty-four hexagrams or GWA. Scholars generally agree that Fu Hsi originated the trigrams and hexagrams some time before 3000BC and Fu Hsi, acording to the Chinese, is the father of our present civilization. (He taught men the use of fire, how to build homes, live in communities and engage in agriculture) This system and code of ethics was passed down till around 1700 BC when the I Ching was recorded.

Thought, Force and Matter (atoms) formulate the universe and all there is in it. Force is vibratory and uses thought as the creative principle. By the application of Force or Vibrations to Matter, all forms are produced. The Force, is brought about by the positive Yang and the negative Yin, poles as it would be if these were poles of a circuit of electicity. The higher the rate of vibration the more evolved the form will be. Additionally, the fact that atoms have consciousness and vibratory rates it can be influenced by higher consciousness in keeping with the Divine Will for progress as exemplified by the Law of Evolution. The Law of Change, therefore supports and cooperates with the Law of Evolution.

The Chinese studies associated with Tao and I Ching include medicine, astrology, geomancy, meditation, philosophy, and the proper conduct of one's life as well as the science of community, war, harmony, change in: all Matter or substance; Force or vibrations, directions; Spiritual and Thought.

Around the 6th Century BC Confusius, after years of study, wrote commentaries on the I Ching, Tao Te Ching extracts the religious aspect of the I Ching The Tao is nameless yet exists everywhere, beyond the power of human words to describe or human thought to encompass its limitless power and aspects.

There are two classic Chinese books describing the essential philosopy and practice of the Tao as 'maps of the Way'.
Tao Te Ching an anthology of ancient sayings, poems and proverbs and attributed to Lao-Tzu, on the the greatest Tao ancestor; commonly believed to have been compiled about 500BC.
Chuang-Tzu was written in 300BC when the classical civilization of China was all but destroyed by civil war. Chuang Chow was concerned with both spiritual and social liberty and encouraged people to seek freedom from tyranny and oppression of all kinds, whether political, social, intellectual, or emotional. He also believed in freedom from death that is also a practice by some Tao monks. He could not be manipulated by either hope or fear.

During the 2nd century BC after unification of China Tao Te Ching and the I Ching was established as the imperial court's source for wisdom.

The Tao is the basis of all eastern philosophy and religions. Buddha also had discourse with monks practicing and using the I Ching. the development of landscape and Chineses painting of landscape is connected with the spiritual change wrought in the Chinese soul by buddhism especially the Dhyana school of meditation or in Japan Zen and both are linked to the hexagram revealed in Chinese thought as 'Grace'.

The only consistency in 'Tao' is 'change'. I Ching is the Book of Change. Any one using the I ching understands that Man is an element of time and for any given instant of time, the moment is a synthesis of alll the Cosmic forces acting together and can be represented by a symbol rather than trying to work out each force independently and correlating and collating all the factores concerned.

The philosophy to Tao is to realize you are born at a synbolic time when five elements (water, wood, earth, metal, fire) are acting together and one element is predominate. Learning all aspects of your birth element will help you grow. Not that if this or that happens then you ought to do this and that, to avoid pain. Rather, you only feel pain if you have expectations of certain behavior from others or - expectations of how certain events are either, not what you expected or, not how you expected, or within the time frame you deside. Pain is as a result of how you measure success. And if success includes a certain picture of how it should be, then Tao says you are setting yourself up.

All happenings are an opportunity to experience the other side of the event or behavior. Every thing has a Yin and Yang and everything is changing. There is no death only change, like a river that flows. Life and death is like night and day, the existance of which humans can do nothing about. It is the condition of things. Development is not a moral law that one is ment to learn better to obey; it is rather a guideline from which one can read and follow responsibly with free choice. Responsibility simply meaning the ability to respond.

I feel inadequate trying to explain Tao and I Ching since I am not a student of Bergson. For additonal understanding we may have to turn to another basis. I have been studying both the Tao and the I Ching now for the past 12 years and have barley scratched the surface.

Shasta, I am really glad you feel you understand him. And about the 'verbiage': the first time I read him I marked about one sentence in 10 pages. But now more is underlined then there is not!

Barbara, many thanks for your comprehensive post. I am afraid you are yanking the chains of 'my students' and will hijack this thread as soon as you start your own on Tao :^). "Frozen time" is not what B opposes. Rather, it is time that "goes by". Real time accumulates, does not get lost and is conditional to newly created time and it has qualities not found in that physical scientific approach.

But if we want to keep B at least in the corner of our eyes, we shall have to make a comparison. The basic and comprehensive symbol that Tao is, what is it more than the notion of balance? Energy never spills, science found out. What I do find interesting though is that it appears able to describe all aspects of life up to the spiritual level in a systematic way, as a unified field theory.

If it is the basis of all wisdom, it does not need to be scientifically proven. It is possible to make such a claim and perceptually train followers as we have witnessed even in our own lifetimes. I like the empirical provability of wisdom, theory or hypotheses. That must be my western mind. B opposes the very scientific mind I refer to here, but only to sharpen it where it forgets to consider experience, the other side of empirical reality, intuitively or immediately accessible.

The ultimate nature of Tao is beyond conception and so is creative evolution to B. That is to say, after a certain point. Up to that point, we can follow what he says about contracted recollections of past experience. We learn our whole life long as people, but also as a people, and as organic matter and heck, why not as inorganic matter! Instead of learning how to master our nature, he says we need to unlearn social habitudes and relearn to correct our words and concepts by immediate introspection of experience, like children do. Did you ever notice how baby's and small children can 'invent' words we cannot even pronounce? Accelerating overall human development is not what B had in mind. That was the return to real experience, which turned out to be time as we feel it, not as we believe to understand it.

The sixty-four hexagrams and trigrams sound a bit astrological to me, however when it is not about stars' positions but about the practicalities of life, then that sounds better. Perhaps it is more like the 10 or 613 commandments that Christian or Jewish religions adhere to.

Here in the West we have quite figured out how Force and Matter interact as well, but there still are some Yins and Yans to be resolved. The law of change, as presented by B seems one of them. Change and the perception of change beat the system of chopping up experience into things we can understand better than we can understand the fact of change itself. Change in fact may be the cause of perception at all. Snakes can only see what moves, so their prey has learned to sit still when they appear. A Law of Change supporting and cooperating with the Law of Evolution can be considered totally agreeable.

The method applies to medicine, astrology, geomancy (?), meditation and philosophy, prescribing how to conduct one's life. B is only concerned about missing one point: understanding what may happen in experience, when its natural vitality is crippled by one sided common sense or scientism. There are always two sides (Tao?) to experience: one material and one life dimension (the same, in opposite directions in the flow). Shasta dreamt that these could (also) mean Mother Earth and Father Time, which is quite Yin Yan I suppose. However, I feel better knowing it is space versus time than knowing it is Yin versus Yan. That does not yank my chain. Yet.

The idea that such almost prehistoric philosophy has shaped eastern culture so drastically is fantastic! Would the Chinese be a happier people therefore? Except for Hong Kong they do not seem to be so bureaucratized, mechanized and soapified as we are. Maybe I should learn Chinese and move. On the other hand, the extreme that we are living may be a blessing in disguise, once we correct a few absolute essentials in understanding and perceiving experience.

When 'change' is the only consistency in Tao, that is quite an achievement compared to our culture, but I would expect total consistency. B has 'change' in the center of his philosophy and it extends to perception, memory and evolution in a scientifically acceptable way. However, what is impressive, is how a method has been drawn from this one consistency covering everything between and beyond cradle and grave. Scientific methodology goes a long way but hardly further than a visit to Saturn's moons or bringing Dinosaurs back to life in the movies.

Perceptual training of the balances in nature and experience as a most integral part of culture is what I admire most in the way of Tao. Bergson would love it! Yet he would criticize the lack of scientific fervor, which, however, is quite understandable when created more than a millennium before Plato.

Thanks again Barbara, I feel quite enlightened, and I am sure there is a whole lot more to learn from such ancient and preserved wisdom. I found a book I had never really browsed until today, Taoism, by J.C. Cooper. At least now I know what I may be missing!

Thomas Cleary has translated much of what is recorded about Taoism and the earlier translators of the I Ching were Germans, Hellmut and Richard Wilhelm.

A little more about Yin Yang as translated by Sherrill and Chu -
"...the word Enantiodromia is a Greek word meaning that whatever goes to its untimate extremity will revert to its opposite. this Law plays two very strong roles in the I Ching. the first is in the development of the trigrams and is manifested at every stage of their development. What it means is simply this. Whenever the Yang reaches its extreme expression it changes to the Yin, and whenever the Yin reaches its extreme expression it conversts inself into Yang. It can be posited that when the Supreme Ultimate became active again after a 'night' of rest, it produced the Creative first. When the Creative, the Yang, reaches its extreme it converts itself into the opposite, the Receptive or Yin." This is only one aspect of the understanding of Yin Yang. Every experience, all matter, force, thought has Yin Yang.

Example; you are injured - this is painful - without injury you would not have an opportunity to learn about; the desire to blame, pulling back and focusing on the small (your pain), understanding how you choose to feel good if you are free from pain, that you award experiences good or bad based on your own expectations for your life, that understanding pain allows you to understand others pain, because your body is injured and you determine that is not good then you may either feel self-pity or anger or sadness or believe, like a knight in shining armour, you should fix yourself without reflecting on what you have been given as an opportunity to learn.

Happiness is a choice regardless of your circumstances. The Tao says; "To remain at the mercy of moods of hope and fear will cost you your inner composure and consistency. To remain at the mercy of hope and fear is to bob like a cork on the ocean, rising and falling as your hopes and fears assail you. Living the life of the superior person is certain to secrue your fate and bring you supreme success and good fortune. therefore, have courage and faith, be joyous, and all will be well. You are far more powerful than you suspect, and the universal plan includes your wellbeing."

Remember wellbeing is not your personal definition of what constitutes wellbeing. Wellbeing is the opportunities/events you need so that you may chose a response. All you have is your response.

Since all events are as a result of force vibrating thought, and matter the Yin Yang, the Law or Change can be divined. Accepting the I Ching knows more about any given situation than humans, it can be of value as a guide. The aura or, energy patterns or, a persons experience attracting and repulsing throughout life, reflects man's inner self and the inner self is in contact with the Divine storehouse of infinite wisdom and knowledge. Therefore, the I Ching is a means of telling what you inwardly know but, have not been able to discern for yourself. The 64 trigrams, with their multitudinous meanings and interactions, form the foundation for understanding the I Ching.

Taoism connects with the Universal Intelligence at all times in that, heaven is a power that the representing gods walk with man rather than most western thinking that has a God off in the heaven who bestows power on man.

Geomancy n. Divination by means of lines and figures, divination by signs from the earth

Indeed lots of wisdom there, Barbara, but how is it experientially more than a mental painting and a suggested way of life (culture)? I mean, is the empirical basis 'no more than' the simple facts of day and night, man and woman, water and fire etc.?

When all I have is my response-ability, why are these my stimuli and not experience itself, that is, what I feel or believe independent from Lao's or Confusius' instruction? Why should the reflections of my inner self be the result of this mix of common experience of nature and a set of interpretational instructions other than those experimentally resulting from science?

These instructions do have a (perhaps great) sense of intuitiveness about them, but how is it identical to swimming upstream to the source of all my reflexes, again, independent from unproven instructions?

I conclude that Taoism is more like a religion than a metaphysics as rigorous and precise as science.

Yes, Taoism is more like a religion. It is the I Ching that would be a science. Since the I Ching is based on the vibrations of the force and not being a physicist, my ability to discuss and analyse measurments so minute is beyond my capability and therefore, the symbols of the ancients is sufficient for my study. My focus is not the science but, learning to see my experiences in ways that deepen my understanding of thought.

I believe for me, living from my nature would include activating my obsessive and the under developed aspects of my ego. I would prefer to seek and grow in wisdom, compassion, consciousness. Therefore, I would recommend that to compare or understand the scientific I Ching you may want to continue your own cource of research and study.

Good luck, Barbara

Bergson does recommend learning from the mysticists in the exact way you describe it so eloquently, Barbara. Therefore I will read Coopers book!

Thanks for being our guest and sorry I couldn't rattle and hum!

Barbara, I really appreciate your taking the time to talk to us about Tao. Years ago, I tried to experiment with the I Ching, but I could never convince myself that any real understanding could be gained from this. I agree with you that "the I Ching is a means of telling what you inwardly know, but have not been able to discern for yourself." But somehow I could never make it work for me. I think there is a basic difference in the way Westerners and Easterners think, and I don't understand why this should be so. We are all part of the same human race; how did this split occur?

Ron, sometimes you amaze me. You knew nothing about Tao, and yet you grasped so much of it so quickly. If I could grasp new ideas as quickly as that, I would be making more progress with Bergson. Of course, Barbara is a good teacher. Not everybody could explain it as clearly as she does.

But here is my next question. If we are to go beyond intellectual conventions and get into the core of existence, how are we to do it? As I read Bergson, I keep thinking: "Yes, I know what you mean but how are we to do it? I'm waiting for some "how-to-do-it" instructions. If we can't use the I Ching or the Tarot cards (and I've tried both), and we don't believe in star charts, just how do we activate the intuition?

meditate.

Alas, I can't do that either, Bert. I am so jumpy and easily distracted. I can't make my mind be still. When I try to meditate, I find myself thinking about a thousand different things.

Hello Bert!

Good to see you in here. I thought you had turned your back on us. Welcome!

Cathy, are you still there?

WARNING!! Everybody hold on to your seats, we are about to enter the core of existence!

So far, these steps have been sketched:

Look at what moves and what changes, what our senses and consciousness perceive (17).

Believe that for each thing an explanation can be given which would fit it exactly, and it alone (31).

Wait like the universe does, through all the real change and movement it contains (33).

Notice that intellect does not contain the whole of experience and correct it by enlarging the concept, making it more flexible (45).

Thus we go back towards the source of intelligence and find intuition as the fringe of instinct.

Ron, you said earlier that you were interested in Bergson's attempt to supplement science with metaphysics. The thing that interests me is his effort to obtain precision. I don't think he ever succeeded in this effort, but I admire his effort to do so. I've read somewhere that Bergson raised more questions than he answered. But the questions he raised were important ones.

He said (p.5l) ; "In philosophy and even elsewhere, it is a question of finding the problem and consequently of positing it, even more than solving it. For a speculative problem is solved as soon as it is stated."

I'm not sure it's quite that easy, but I know from personal experience that the clear statement of a problem is the first step in resolving it. You never get an answer till you ask a question. That sounds simplistic, but asking the right question is not as simple as it sounds. We don't ask enough questions. As children we asked questions all the time, but as adults we consider every question a confession of ignorance, and we try to protect ourselves from exposing our ignorance. This is when we stop learning things.

We lazily accept the stale platitudes of society and give up the search for fresh truth. Intuition coagulates into verbal concepts, as it should, but the process must be ongoing, not a one-time operation. I think this is what Bergson was saying. Intuition must continue formulating new concepts, as we discard obsolete concepts. It's like a tree forming bark from its living core. (Not literally the core, but the cambium layer.) The bark breaks up into dead pieces on the surface of the tree, as intuition breaks up into concepts at the surface layer of the mind. We have to keep asking questions and finding new answers to replace worn-out answers.

Shasta, I am stunned by your use of that metaphor, for I suppose you did not read The Two Sources, where it is used exactly so. Also, you are completely correct in suggesting what he was trying to say, Intuition coagulates into verbal concepts, as it should, but the process must be ongoing, not a one-time operation. However, fanatic that I am, I must disagree on your suspicion that his philosophy kept lacking precision. Let me try again and prove the precision in his thought, hopefully with some "fresh truth" ;^)

Intuitive perception initially is always vague. However, it is a real experience that perhaps some day, in a thousand years, can somehow be recorded. The only recorder that exists for it right now, is our own nervous system. Do we measure time and space with it? I don't know. At least we measure differences in kind underneath the differences in degree. We do not say "the temperature is 0 degrees Celcius" but we say "it is cold". Neither do we say "this lightwave is 3 nanoinches long" but we say "this is green". Is that imprecision?

Also, the images of perception and recollection may be exactly alike in the present, while the images of recollection of the past 'relax'. But the very fact of the possibility of an exact match is necessary to describe the method of intuition and the (recollected) perception of time (Deleuze, 1991). Once memory is active in immediately storing a present perception, the image is contracted as a recollected perception. From the moment it is part of memory, it gets direction, suggests of what kind the perception is. Of course this may happen at all levels, for example instead of looking at the present, picturing a whole period, but that is not what he meant by the intuition of duration.

Scientific experiments work with dependent and independent variables. The independent variable often is time and the dependent ones are all sorts of 'measurable' traits, that stem from best guesses from current theory. When we can do that in the scientific community, why couldn't we do the same personally in everyday life? Waiting like the universe does, through all the real change and movement it contains is exactly like what science does. Bergson says we have to "let ourselves live" ("le moi se laisse vivre").

I always followed my father's role-model. The man who supposedly afraid of nothing, calculates all things, does not get carried away emotionally etc. That is like being an 'independent variable'. The experimenter in the white coat who says "the experiment requires you to carry on" to the test person who has to apply deadly shocks to other test persons in Milgram's obedience experiments in the 50s. Humphrey Bogard who does everything "his way" (or was that Sinatra).

Once I found out this was just a social stereotype, I was glad to discover that I (still) could look at myself from some indeterminate point of view, "me, doing this, thinking that, acting such, believing so". That I believe is where I must be to really know myself, my mind, the contents of experience and the creativity resulting from the two sides of reality in experience, perception and recollection or space and time, instead of a badly analyzed composite as science would have it.

I sincerely hope our latest posts were a bit comprehensible for the other participants. Please tell if you feel lost, and try to pinpoint where - if you still have the gumption! Do we move on to the next chapter, to the previous, stay a bit longer, or do you want out! ??

No, I have never read "The Two Sources", but a tree is probably a universal symbol that is common to all minds. And I agree that intuition is vague and cannot be presented with precision.

There is an amusing passage at the bottom of page 84. He says he respects both Homo Faber (man the maker) and Homo Sapiens (man the knower), but he has no use for Homo Loquax (man the loquacious? He who only talks to hear his head rattle?)

He goes on to say that the French are less loquacious than other countries. And here I was, the loquacious American, accusing this Frenchman of using too much verbiage! I must learn to be like Bert (a man of few words) -- say what I have to say in one word and stop talking. This is why I can't meditate, Bert. I am Homo Loquax!

Do I want OUT? And admit that this Frenchman has defeated me? NEVER.

I thought Shasta made a lot of sense, but I'm still struggling with the "question answer" thingie.

I always have more questions than answers. I never have the answer in mind when I ask a question and if you formulate a question so that you can receive the answer you want, you've not asked a true question but are playing a game where the result is something YOU are trying to control.

For instance, WHY did THE HOURS win the Pulitzer Prize? I have no clue. How can we know the answer by posing the question?

Ginny

Ginny, you either have to ask the right question, or you have to follow up with additional questions. Why did "The Hours" win the Pulitzer Prize? If you don't know why, you ask, "Who are the judges and what are their criteria? Why did they choose "The Hours"? What did they see in it? If you still don't know, you write them a letter and say: "Why did you choose this?" You have to keep asking questions until you pin down the answer. As I said, it isn't as easy as Bergson makes it sound. It takes a lot of persistence and curiosity.

Did I translate Homo Loquax right?

I am very frustrated! I have made an attempt this weekend to assure you of this forum that I am still viable.

I have pledeged to turn off the TV and devote myself to the Creative Mind by Bergson. I will admit a resistence to this depth of study. I indulged this last two weeks in reading a spy novel. FUN!

I felt guilty and am currently vowing to read to catch up. If that is impossible - I will surly be a case study!

Cathy

I'm behind, too, Cathy, with not much hope of catching up but will kvetch, anyway!

The CREATIVE MIND is the title of the book. Amazing.

Yes, Shasta, good translation of loquax. For those interested (in LJ's honor) that word has some interesting meanings: (Lewis and Short): "talkative, prating, chattering, loquacious, full of words...croaking of frogs, chattering of birds, expressive speaking, murmuring, babbling..." hahahaha, that last one is what I'm doing in here, babbling.

Now, then, Shasta: you said "You have to keep asking questions until you pin down the answer. " and you said one should ask the right questions, but that is not what I thought (who knows?) Bergson was saying. He said that the moment you ask the question the answer reveals itself and the answer was always there as soon as the question was asked.

Great.

Am I going to win the Lottery tomorrow?

I think I'll style myself, in the tradition of all dialogues, as The Unbeliever or the Ignorant, take your pick!

Ginny

Shasta, you make me believe that intuition primarily leads to the question 'Why?'. Intuition of durée is the objective, independent, non-committal metaphysical attitude of simply waiting through change and movement in experience. Not just the things around us change and move, but we change and move ourselves too. So there is a fundamental duality in ourselves: we are both totally caught up in our situation AND we are totally independent.

This greater awareness can make us perceive new patterns, new objects, new problems and ways to 'solve' them in larger patterns, understanding, answers or detours. Asking Why? presupposes a greater scheme, a larger pattern, an object higher in the "order of greatness", differences between areas unrevealed by just looking at the areas themselves.

To be able to do so, we need to suspect the mechanisms of a greater system and curiosity may lead us there, if not the attitude or method of intuition. The immediately recollected image of the present initially exactly matches the present perception of matter around and in us, even being us. Images more 'relaxed', deeper in memory, may enable us to see and believe in the 'higher order of greatness' that we resemble and that is our raison d'être.

Cathy, I very much appreciate your continuing attempt to grasp the essence of Bergson's thought! I have studied psychology for years and this theory in particular for another number of years. Please make me or the others explain it to you and don't take anything less then perfectly clear for an answer (like Shasta ). It is my error when you get frustrated. It should be 'reader-friendly', enlighten you - yes it should be fun too. Thanks for hanging in here!!

Ginny, a bit more about the question-answer thingie. What we feel and see, things, objects or situations that may be problematic for us, select from all that has happened to us, yes even all that may have happened to us, those thoughts (recollected perceptions) that fit the feeling, thing, object or situation either most exactly or most resembling. You could say this is the application of theory to practice. If the knowledge thus 'contracted' and fitted around the present is right, and do we not always believe our knowledge is right, then it contains answers. Stating the right problem may thus provide the right answer.

Do you want me to change the timetable?

Actually Chapter III is a little easier to understand than the other chapters. That dense thicket of verbiage that surrounds his thought is not quite as impenetrable as usual.

He is opposed to predetermination because it takes all the fun out of life. I agree. If we have to walk around like pre-programmed robots all the time, what's the point of being here?

He thinks nothing is possible till it happens. Now, there's a new and strange idea. I might be willing to dispense with probables, but couldn't we at least retain the possibles? Should we wake up like a goose in a new world every day? How can we make plans for our future activities if we can't juggle the possibilities?

Matter is around us, we are matter ourselves, our thinking is shaped upon matter, we predetermine what will happen when and where. THAT we have learned and THAT we have cultivated in the intellectual mind as our philosophy of the real, but we need to look closer.

For life is continuous change and motion. The indivisible continuous quality of time precedes anything intellectual. Movement and change create all possibilities and probabilities. Reality continuously selects and actualizes one. We don't juggle the possibilities. Rather, they juggle us. Therefore, we keep them all alive.

I know life juggles us and jostles us around quite a lot, and sometimes it seems as though we have no control whatever over the things that happen to us. But, Ron, there has to be a certain amount of juggling we can do ourselves. Otherwise, there is no point in our being here.

We never need to be out of control, when things are met with contracted recollections of past perceptions of them, Shasta. What else can juggling be?

Ron, you keep talking about these contracted recollections of past perceptions. Isn't that just memory? What else can it be? Why is memory any different from contracted recollections of past perceptions? Why do you and Bergson keep talking about a commonplace thing like memory as if it was something special? A rose by any other name is still a rose. And memory by any other name is still just memory.

Memory sounds more like passive matter than a creative mind or creative evolution at work. Different perceptions from the past, adequately contracted, reveal the 'inner' structure of the thing in itself. Therefore these perceptions need to be recollected simultaneously in duration. Memory is for 'time passing by' and not for simultaneous recollections.

Cathy and Ginny, I hope you are still happy to be hanging out here for there is nothing as frustrating as being frustrated all the time! (How is that for a bit of verbiage?

Well, I'm actually behind a bit, so will lurk to see if I can catch up, have to read AMSTERDAM for the new Prized Fiction discussion before tomorrow and am leading two, myself, in July. Still one does want to learn this, even if one just reads the posts to see if one can actually understand these heady concepts.

I'll be back soon with the chapter read, will try III.

Ginny

--- Change of schedule: chapter III starting today. However, anything that's bugging you metaphysically remains open for discussion! ---

Ron, your remark about frustration was not verbiage. That was plain talk. If you hang out with us long enough, you may learn to speak English like an American!

I bought a pair (actually have 4 pair) of Ecco shoes, and opened the cute little instruction book which came with them and THE most interesting language you ever saw!! Is it Dutch, I wonder?

LOOK at this~!!

"FILOSOFT....

Vores mal er behagelig gang. Vores lifrndskab hedder Shoes for Life. Navnet Ecco abner en verden af uanede muligheder.Det handler om noget af verdens bedste fodtoj, og Ecco-sko er bade behagelige og moderne. "

Isn't that fascinating?? So....what's the word, fascinating. Is this Dutch, Ron, and do you have to read Bergson in this??

I barely understand him in English. I do think the French would be better, please feel free to use French translations of some terms, isn't this amazing!!

Ginny

Ginny, is it all abacadabra to you, or is there a light at the end? That quote is 99% incomprehensible to me, but I can figure out 1% for it must be about a comfortable tread ("behagelig gang").

Let's cut this another way: please tell me 2 things that are clear enough to you about what he wants to say and 2 that are totally obscure. The same I'd like to ask you, Cathy!

Ron, I fear disappointing you. I fear the worst. But here goes, I fear I'm a hopeless mess. I haven't read Chapter III, and so I will do that sometime this weekend. So far what I have read looks just like what I wrote above. Not Dutch hah?

Before I attempt to list 2 things I do understand and 2 I don't, (AN EXCELLENT AND FABULOUS QUESTION!! Am going to steal it for another discussion!!) let me review and refresh by reading Chapter II again and then Chapter III. I should have this done by Monday, since it's a holiday here. I do like this group and I do want to understand.

I may be forcing it and trying to understand every word when it's just the ideas which are wanted and it may be totally beyond my grasp, but isn't it FUN to try to expand your mind??

Now if YOU are lurking and saying NO WAY, try it, nothing ventured, nothing gained. I would like to GAIN something here!

See you all Monday,

Ginny

Language is a good and useful tool that the human race has labored for eons to develop, but it can't always express what is known intuitively. Bergson's use of language frustrates me because he seems to obscure his meaning rather than reveal it. He had this intuitive insight that he wanted to express. He wanted to say the unsayable, and he kept struggling to make his point.

"In this point is something simple, infinitely simple, so extraordinarily simple that the philosopher has never succeeded in saying it. And that is why he went on talking all his life. He could not formulate what he had in mind without feeling himself obliged to correct his formula, then to correct his correction: thus, from theory to theory, correcting what he thought he was completing....complication which provoked more complication....All the complexity of his doctrine.... is therefore only the incommensurability between his simple intuition and the means at his disposal for expressing it."

Now, that's Bergson talking about himself. (Page 108) He thinks he's talking about the philosopher in general, but he's really stating his own problem explicitly. And maybe this will help us understand why we find him so hard to read.

Happy birthday y'all!

Ron, where did you pick up a word like y'all? I can't believe you would ever have heard that! Nobody uses it but those of us in the deep South.

As a "Youth For Understanding" exchange student I lived with a foster family in Ohio during the schoolyear '75/'76, Shasta. I remember my foster sister laughing about the expression "y'all" that her husband from San Antonio, Texas, introduced into the family.

Thanks for your explanation of the reason why we have such a hard time understanding Bergson. I hope Ginny and Cathy feel better now.

Ron, you said at one time (unless I'm mistaken) that Bergson was a Platonist. I was puzzled about that, and I still am.

On page 132, Bergson says: "From the time the philosophers of the school of Elea....had shown the impossibility of keeping close to the sense-data, philosophy started off along the road it has since traveled, the road leading to a 'supra-sensible' world: one was to explain things henceforth with pure 'ideas.'....for the ancient philosophers the intelligible world was situated outside and above the one our senses and consciousness perceive: our faculties of perception showed us only shadows projected in time and space by immutable and eternal Ideas."

Now, that's Plato. A world of Ideas that are projected into the shadows of perception. But Bergson doesn't see the world that way, does he? So in what sense is he a Platonist?

I'm jumping ahead of the discussion, but I will return to Chapter III whenever you are ready.

Shasta, you are saying, if I am right, that Plato was not in any way a materialist whereas Bergson is accepting materiality in his philosophy insofar the Elan Vital or Creative Evolution is ultimately based upon the interplay between matter and energy, as between perception and duration. Then surely you are right. However, there is something else that makes his philosophy akin to Platonism and that is the idea of multiplicity, as Deleuze pointed out. Plato's philosophy was based upon the Idea of ideas and Bergson's upon "kinds of order".



Perceptions of kinds are unique and products of creative evolution. Material sensation is perception of movement and change, which is energy creatively working through matter. The energy brings about a kind of order in matter. Matter is discontinuous, divisible and measurable in difference of degree in quantity, while energy is continuous, indivisible and difference of kind in quality. Bergson describes change and movement in duration rather than energy but I am sure he means the same phenomenon.



Riemann had introduced the idea of multiplicity into mathematics and Einstein worked it out for matter and energy (E=mc2). Bergson applied it in an ideational way too to complement Einstein's work. This interest for the idea, recollected perception, complementary to materialism, is what reminds us of Platonism. Plato's dialogues show how one idea leads to another. Bergson describes the way ideas evolve in the creative mind by natural selection, deactivating all recollectable perceptions that temporarily are of no interest in action or present perception (movement and change).

I hope that was American English. Or should I have learned to fear the worst by now?:-0

I can't help thinking Plato and Bergson are more different than alike. I don't think Bergson himself considered himself a Platonist. On page 139, he says: "And faithful to the spirit of Plato, Plotinus thought that the discovery of truth demanded a conversion of the mind, which breaks away from the appearances here below and attaches itself to the realities above.....For Plato and for all those who understand metaphysics in that way, breaking away from life ....and transporting oneself into a world different from the one we inhabit..."

It seems to me that Bergson is denying the validity of Plato's philosophy of Ideas, and separating himself from Plato.

Ron, I was teasing you about learning to speak like an American. I don't know why anybody would want to. Also, I don't know why you are trying so hard to teach us to appreciate Bergson, when we seem to be such hopeless pupils. Are you beginning to suspect that this is an exercise in futility? Do Dutch people understand Bergson better than we do?

Indeed that quote strongly suggests Bergson's denying the validity of Plato's philosophical outlook, Shasta. But do consider this: in Plato's days philosophy had not been worked out as it had for Bergson. I once heard that self-consciousness was discovered by the Greek. So the basic distinctions in philosophy like matter versus idea still had to be outlined. The Idea of ideas must have been quite a mental achievement in those days. It is no wonder that no knowledge of psycho-physical realms was developed yet.

Greek philosophy was the beginning of Western science and Plato's in particular was important for the rise of Christianity. Bergson, although he had a Jewish father (a musician by the way, who must have inspired him to describe duration as music), wanted to convert to Catholicism. Nazism stopped him, but he had a priest at his funeral. Don't you think that his descriptions of mysticism strongly relate him to Christianity and a forteriori to Plato?

I like American better than English or Australian. Your language has a power of its own. Frequently I am surprised by American inspired neologisms that quickly get picked up at least in Dutch. Also, I like its clarity and straightforwardness. Other languages, like German, develop much different. Expressions only seem to grow bigger and uglier, for example a lollypop in German (which is a lot like Dutch) is called a "baby-suck-sweet-with-a-handle" (Baby Saugbonbon mit Handgriff).

And no I do not get tired of you. I appreciate our discussion greatly and hope you are not disappointed with my suggestion to read Bergson. It is hard to find people who like to discuss him. One or two words were spent on him while I was in college. The teacher admitted he hardly understood him and quickly went on to things he liked better. It was not until I started reading Bergson myself more or less accidentally many years later, that I really discovered who and what I had found for lifetime companionship.

Ron, are you telling me the truth? I don't know any German and I suspect you are taking advantage of my ignorance. Does a German child really call a lollypop a "Baby Saugbonbon mit Headgriff?" I can't believe he wouldn't think of a shorter word than that.

I'm going to give up on comparing Plato and Bergson and try something else. I asked earlier how one can activate the intuition. Bert said, "meditate." You offered some other suggestions which didn't seem very practical to me. But on page 135, Bergson offers a suggestion that I can understand. (At last he has said something I can understand!)

He says Art activates the intuition. Especially painting. He says each artist has a unique and intense view of the world that enlarges our own insight into life. I know this is true. I am somewhat surprised at his choice of painters though---Corot and Turner. I like them both, but it doesn't take much effort to appreciate Corot and Turner. Try the Cubists or Picasso's distortions, or Pop Art. How I loved Picasso! (In those days when art still mattered to me.) There was something so barbaric and elemental about his work. Even when it was ugly, it was fascinating.

Speaking of art, I see they are opening the new annex to the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam. Of course I haven't seen the building, but the picture looks too modern and sophistocated to suit Van Gogh's paintings. I understand some Japanese business donated the money and requested that the Japanese architect, Kurokawa, design the building. In America, we say, "Don't look a gift horse in the mouth." That means, if you are offered a free museum, take it. And don't make stipulations." Wouldn't Van Gogh have been delighted to know that the Japanese built him a museum?

Shasta, to be honest I do not know whether I was telling you nothing but the truth. In fact, this is what I was told by people who should know and who love Germany since they go there on holidays for the past 40 years or more. Anyway, the Germans sure make it a habit to construct sentences that never end, with the verb postponed to somewhere on the next page. I do not like the language too much therefore.

I wonder why you are giving up on comparing Bergson to Plato. Is it because I cannot convince you or because I have slightly succeeded in conveying Deleuze's and my position? OK you may forget about it

I am glad you return to the important idea of "activating intuition". Do I remember correctly that you are an artist yourself? Or was that Cathy? I believe the Cubist's or Picasso's distortions (don't know about Pop Art) can be understood from Bergson's views. The real makes itself possible (p.104) through artists, and why could that not be different sides or aspects of reality at once as the Cubists and Picasso intended? Picasso is fascinating indeed. I saw a documentary on him recently by Norman Mailer.

Recently someone in the bank of the Netherlands (government owned) here bought Mondriaan's last, unfinished, work "Victory Boogy Woogy" from (I believe) the museum of Modern Art in New York for 30 mln dollars, causing a scandal for he seemingly did not consult anyone about his spending intentions.

I think I know what you mean about the too modern and sophisticated look of the new Van Gogh museum here. It made me smile that you over there would know about something like that! Poor Van Gogh would have been a happier man had he known that his paintings one day would be considered such a treasure! He was an orchid at the dunghill.

I have given up on Plato because I cannot convince you, and you cannot convince me. So we have reached a deadlock on that.

Yes, I am an ex-artist. Of course, one is never quite an ex-artist any more than one is an ex-Catholic. The church never lets you go and neither does art. But I have tried to get away from both.

I know Mondrian's art and like it, but it's outrageous that paintings sell for so much money. When they become that expensive, they have passed from the realm of art into the realm of commerce, and it's indecent. Think of poor Van Gogh living on the edge of starvation all his life, and now people are buying and selling his paintings for phenomenal prices. It's disgusting.

But I am digressing from Bergson. Tell me what you think is interesting in Chapter III.

By the way, my computer is becoming temperamental again, so if my loquacity is suddenly silenced, you will know what happened to me.

We cannot miss each other's loquacities, Shasta. From the way you describe your computer problem, it seems that you run out of memory, that includes disk space, every now and then. I have that same problem. You need at least 10 MB diskspace free to enable the computer taking care of itself. If you have a Windows PC, try deleting the files in the directory C:\Windows\Temporary Internet Files. It saves me up to 15 MB at a time.

Check this out, Guys, IS this a Bergson thought? It comes from THE HOURS which just won the Pulitzer Prize but which itself is derivative from Virginia Woolf's MRS. DALLOWAY:

". Our lives are like hours drifting toward a future that is never reached, we live in the present, this elusive place that doesn’t really exist, it’s already the past as we name it the present."

Is that sort of Bergsonian?

I tell you, I have sort of failed here in that I can't list two things I understand clearly. Well, yes I can: I understand that Bergson is trying earnestly to explain some concept about time.

And I do agree with Shasta that he appears to be talking about himself, that IS comforting. Yet, it's impossible to continue to read when none of it makes sense?

It's like this: the new Bryson book is talking about something called Open University on British TV in which people can obtain college degrees by taking coursework partly at home, partly on campus and partly on the television, "mostly at odd hours like very early on a Sunday morning or late at night when normal programming has finished."

The instructor typically is an academic "with lively hair and a curiously misguided dress sense...standing before a blackboard, with perhaps a large plastic model of a molecule on a table in front of him, saying something totally incomprehensible like: 'However, according to Mersault's theorem, if we apply a small positive charge to the neutrino, the two free isotopes will be thrown into a reverse gradient orbit, while the captive positive beomes a neagtive positron, and vice versa, as we can see in this formula.'"

One can SEE a definite desire to communicate, but it's just not clear? And the more you read the more unclear it becomes.

Keeping firmly in mind the man's Nobel Prize, one can only conclude one is Dumbo incarnate, and I don't know how to get around it?

Is there a PRIMER of Bergson? A CLIFF'S NOTES??

I hope that above quote is Bergson like as a year ago I had no earthly idea WHO he was, so feel sort of "in the loop!"

Dumbo

Shasta, what I think is interesting in Chapter III, is his emphasis on the 'art of living' (p.106). Continuous unforeseeable novelty is what I should experience. I know there has been a time in my life (around august 1982) when I had arrived at conclusions that I now try to live as fully as I can see Bergson is living them after he arrived at the same (and many more). I want to capture that same feeling I had back then and Bergson is helping me greatly. It is a whole system of theories, beliefs, half-truths and whole truths (at least as I experience them).

Continuous unforeseeable novelty is the road to freedom of spirit, the realization that life is not this tight-jacket full of fear, shame, disappointment. I do not have to feel out of control at all, as I quickly do and which keeps me in this self-chosen position of strong control AND loss of all the good things in life. Well… many to say the least. Bergson describes this road, where to start, what to look for, how to act, how not to act (including thought). Best and most convincing of all is that I cannot find a fault in his thinking, only things that are or must be right, and a focus on what is interesting, what we want out of life, anytime.

So what is most interesting in the chapter? That intellect is taking things by the other end (p.93). He is explaining our illusion that the possible is less than the real and that I must get rid of this illusion to open my eyes. And is it not interesting that we can say to ourselves "there could be nothing" (p.97) which is a paradox in terms!

How do you see the art of living, as an "ex" artist?

Ginny, glad you are not giving up on us now! Here are some CLIFF'S NOTES. You had me ROTFLOL (rolling on the floor laughing out loud) with that expression. Did you get it from Cheers on TV? More reflective thoughts here.

"Our lives are like hours drifting toward a future that is never reached, we live in the present, this elusive place that doesn't really exist, it's already the past as we name it the present."

This quote is just the thing Bergson emphasizes and analyzes. He would say the present is the way in which the past survives. The past is almost as immediate as the present is, therefore past and present can be identical and there can be continuity. Duration then is what holds past and present together. The future is continuous unforeseeable novelty, creation, movement and change.

"Some concept about time" is the idea that the thing called memory holds on to the thing called real time. Then, in experience, which is based upon memory, time or rather duration, starts to live its own life, trying to stay in contact with reality that happens in real time. That is pretty much it.

I confess I have lively hair and a curiously misguided dress sense. (I blame that on living alone.) Fortunately my mother (of 70) can correct me now and then when I visit her.

Please don't feel like a dumbo. That's me and I don't like to be reminded!

Ron, I checked some of the links you suggested. And I am more puzzled than ever as to why you are talking to me and Cathy and Ginny about Bergson when there are plenty of people who really understand him that you could talk to. People who understand and admire him just as you do.

I read the lecture about the relationship between Bergson and racism. I don't need Bergson to tell me racism is wrong. I grew up in a racist environment and knew by the time I was six years old that it was wrong and stupid. People who look down on other people are simply trying to overcome their own sense of inferiority by finding somebody else they can feel superior to. It's a simple psychological mechanism, one of the most prevalent and basic mechanisms in the human psyche.

As for Bergson's preference for an open morality, I find that hard to correlate with his joining the Catholic Church at the end of his life. There is nothing open about the Catholic Church. Perhaps he was drawn to the traces of mysticism that still remain in the Catholic religion, and which no longer remain in the Protestant religions?

Shasta,

Thanks for all the effort you have put into this thread. I would like to say the same to Cathy and Ginny. "Plenty of people" is somewhat overestimated to say the least, but sure there are people I can contact and have contacted to persuade them to post here or in Bergsonet. They haven't done so yet but who knows they will. One response appeared on Bergsonet after 4 months. But, it is true, I have been pushing Bergson on Delphi's forums and Salon Table Talk as well. So why would I hang out here?

I liked the History of Western Philosophy thread very much. It inspired us to create our own thoughts and share these with the other participants. The same I had hoped would happen for The Creative Mind, and let's be honest, it happened to some extent, though I agree, not as much. Perhaps he is just kicking in open doors, perhaps it is a fake. I know I should not believe that and I won't.

The lecture on Bergson and racism to me was more a sharing of thought after reading a treatise on the sources of religion and morality, which are matter and duration. Racism is just one very obvious form it can take; more important and still explained in the same terms, is 'closed morality' which happens ALL the time. I see it as the mind refusing to look at itself directly thereby criticizing it from the inside out instead of from the outside in, in the opposite direction. Sure racism can be explained by a simple psychological mechanism, but it takes metaphysics to get rid of prejudices that appear as common sense and that are tricking us into less awful but similarly miserable realms.

I believe Bergson saw much good in the Catholic Church and did not shut his eyes for any human wrongdoings even within its confines. It is a system of caring for the human spirit, attaching quality to each life at least spiritually, which many people value. Mysticism is just its tangent, not disqualifying the earthly matters making us struggle. Protest movements cannot claim its deep doctrinal roots or they would no longer be Protestant that much any more. I found the "dogma" of Vatican I quite in line with philosophy of a very practical nature. I can see why Bergson would approve of them.

If you want to quit this thread I can see why, but as long as there are posts here, I will respond to them.

Ron.

Well, as long as you are willing to respond, I will keep asking questions. I envy you because you have so many things that you believe in, and I believe in almost nothing. And you must not allow my skepticism to shake your beliefs. Bergson is not a fake. Highly intelligent people have valued his ideas. Just because I don't understand him doesn't mean I don't consider him worth studying. And one reason why I consider him worth studying is that he seems so important to you. I am always impressed when somebody has found something that is of great value to him. And I am always curious to find out why.

You know, I like the attitude in this folder! I loved the Cliff Notes, too, Ron, thanks so much!! hahahahah I had to save that one to a bookmark.

Well since the majority here do not understand Bergson, are you willing to try an experiment, then?

Let's try a Bergson Primer. Let's isolate one concept and define it and move slowly on till we grasp the whole?

What one element, Ron, since you don't mind being asked questions, this is neat. I would like to understand but I need a leveling field, so what one element, Ron, would you say is at the core or crucial to what Bergson is saying in this book? Let's start there, and since you are obviously kind and hospitible, you won't mind attempts to define and understand, as I'm thrilled to pieces to see that the quotation from THE HOURS was in line with Bergson, and I don't think that can be a mistake!!

So!!! ONE concept? Just one??

Ginny

I opt for 'duration'.

OK: "duration " means "the time that a thing continues or lasts."

What does Bergson mean by it?

This is neat.

Ginny

Ginny, this word "duration" has been one of my hang-ups. I define it the same way you do. But I think Bergson means something entirely different. I don't think the English language has a word that means precisely what he means. If you think of words like "endure" and "durability" that suggest a lasting quality, they might suggest what he means. A continuous unbroken flow that goes on and on and on. I think he is describing the life force that flows throughout the universe and animates all living things. But maybe not. Maybe he means something more specific than that. Ron, give us your definition.

Well if he does mean a life force that flows throughout the universe and animates all living things, Shasta, I understand that! Maybe we'll progress here after all!!

Ginny

Ginny and Shasta,

The Élan Vital is change and movement in the universe, resisting entropy, the 4th law of thermodynamics (predicting that everything changes and moves towards a state of chaos and heat). The Élan Vital gives rise to all material structures, functioning or living in inorganic, organic and humanly fabricated structures.

Intelligence does not allow us to see change and movement itself for it only seeks what is constant, unchanging, recognizable. Now duration is the time a thing lasts as we perceive it through all its dynamic changes and movements.

The intuition of duration is our ability as the fringe of instinct (the sensory motor system and the core) to feel or perceive change and movement by comparing past and present, nearby and far away, by use of memory. Thus knowledge grows, creativity is enabled and quality is added to continuous and indivisible life as opposed to measurable, discontinuous and divisible matter.

Why can't we feel and perceive change and movement with our intellect? Comparing past and present is a function of the intellect, isn't it?

The intellect compares past and present, but to do that it first needs to cut up perception and cognition into different images. Then it looks for what "things" are similar or dissimilar (difference in kind) and how they may be related (difference in degree). It can only do so thanks to the existence of memory that can make the images of the present and (recollected) from the past 'simultaneous'.

Now suppose reality, perception and cognition are about quality, continuity and indivisibility, then this differentiation into images and things by intellectual operations, performed upon the immediately given, must disqualify them. Luckily we can try to capture this movement of differentiation itself, not intellectually but intuitively, in the opposite direction, towards the source.

It may seem that these different images and things are moving and changing, but this is the result of a lot of interpretation and reconstruction, even when performed almost immediately. It is not the capture of real movement and change for that is only possible by using our intuition.

So if the intuition is superior to the intellect, why did we develop the intellect? Isn't it because intuition is not very reliable? I have great respect for the intuition, and have always used it whenever I could. But intuition comes in spurts and jumps. It's not always there when you need it. You were just describing how the intellect processes memory. It may be a contrived and artificial process, but isn't it wonderful that the intellect learned to do this? It sounds like a remarkable achievement to me.

I agree with what you said, but the 'object' of intuition is in the mind itself (immediate perception and consciousness) while the object of intelligence is outside of the mind (material things). Therefore, intuition cannot analyze material things outside ourselves and intelligence cannot sense the immediately given.

In homo loquax, as the extension of the senses, intelligence evolved out of instinct and intuition. It remains to activate intelligence but also to test and evaluate objective material findings of intelligence against evidence immediately given in the intuition of duration, especially when the object is the mind itself.

I know what you mean when you speak of the intuition testing and evaluating the intelligence. I have sometimes worked out the solution to a problem that seemed perfectly logical, but I couldn't make myself accept it. I couldn't get my intuition to endorse it. It just didn't feel right.

....."while the object of intelligence is outside of the mind (material things)".......

The world's existence in itself without a knowing mind alongside it can never be established.

What is outside mind?

Bert, you are right that we cannot be sure that there is an outside world or even an inside one, like we can be inside or outside our houses. The substance that our beings can approach nearest, is the immediately given in the senses and in consciousness. But at least in the Western world many believe in and testify about an objective and a subjective world. The mind sets these worlds apart in the words 'objective' and 'subjective', literally meaning thrown-out-of (ob-jective) and thrown-into (sub-jective) it.

The world's existence in itself without a knowing mind alongside it indeed can never be established. Therefore the mind assumes to be part of two sides of this world. On the one hand it sets itself apart from what is assumed to be different from it, through intelligence. This is called the scientific and societal identification of matter. On the other hand it considers itself to resemble what is greater than itself, through intuition. This is called the religious, mystical or spiritual source of life.

Where the two sides of this totality meet, the creative mind 'spatializes' time (the intuition of duration) into perceived images, either presented to the mind about material things (including the mind itself) or recollected from (collective) memory.

On page 128, Bergson says: "Let us grasp ourselves afresh as we are, in a present that is thick and elastic, which we can stretch indefinitely backward... Let us grasp afresh the external world as it really is, not superficially in the present, but in depth, with the immediate past crowding upon it and imprinting upon it its impetus. Let us in a word become accustomed to see all things sub specie durationis..."

Ginny, how would you translate "sub specie durationis"?

This effort to retain the past continues to puzzle me, because the past always remains with us, whether we want it or not. I would like to disburden myself of the past and be rid of it, but you can't get rid of it no matter how hard you try. In what sense does Bergson want to "stretch indefinitely backward"?

Shasta: I have no clue! I'll need to go look durationis up, it looks at first glance as....well, I'd rather not say, will go look it up. Don't suppose he coined a phrase here, something like under the appearance (umbrella) of duration or something, don't know.

Nobody has a book which translates?

Back later,

Ginny

Ginny, sorry that I was trying to explain ONE concept with MANY others. Each of these many concepts represents one aspect of duration. Trying to translate it directly may be a better way indeed.

There's another definition of duration on page 149:

"This indivisible continuity of change is precisely what constitutes true duration....Real duration is what we have always called time, but time perceived as indivisible....In space, and only in space, is there a clear-cut distinction of parts....it is in spatialized time that we ordinarily place ourselves. We have no interest in listening to the uninterrupted humming of life's depths."

THE UNINTERRUPTED HUMMING OF LIFE'S DEPTHS.

I like that description of duration. That's what I meant when I said he's talking about the life force that flows through the universe. The elan vital. "Duration" is such a dull, dreary word. It doesn't do justice to the idea he's trying to express.

Very good, Shasta, I like that one too. It is the musical metaphor again, isn't it! Life as a symphony etc. All we do is rattle and hum. It makes me think of Barber's Adagio for Strings or Agnus Dei again.

It makes me think of something else. Was it the Greeks who believed that all the stars sang together? The music of the spheres. They thought there was such a perfect harmony in the universe that the heavenly bodies made a melodious humming sound as they rotated in their orbits. I always thought it was a shame when the scientists disproved this theory. But it was based on an intuitive realization that there is some kind of harmony that keeps the universe humming along.

Bradley defined philosophy as finding of bad reasons for what one believes by instinct but Aldous Huxley has endeavored to improve on this. He says, "finding bad reasons for what one believes for other bad reasons--that's philosophy."

Well, I know it doesn't belong here, oh well.....thought I 'throw' this in, since it is so difficult to understand Bergson's philosophy

I like Bradley's definition: finding bad reasons for what one already believes by instinct. It's funny because it's exactly what human beings do. We don't trust instinct, so we try to convert it into something respectable and logical, and it never quite works.

Ron C. de Weijze, Thank you for the e-mail response re Bergson and Einstein. I am in fact interested in all aspects of Bergson. At the time of my request I was in the process of grappling with quantum physics from an experiential standpoint. When I discovered your message this evening, some months after I had mailed my request into an internet system I was only then, and still am trying to master, I felt the usual fear which accompanies my intellectual existence, born of the quick forgetting of past insights until my instinctual faith reasserted itself and confirmed that I did indeed at the time of studying Einstein grasp essential analogies between his and Bergson's thought and was elated to discover that they had been in correspondance, a fact I did not know before. I am since last year, and for no other reason than an intuitive belief, an arresting of my attention during a brief course in Bergson's philosophy as an undergraduate some years ago, at present engaged on a Ph.D thesis titled "Henri Bergson and the Creative Evolution of Modern Literature". At present I am finishing a three month submergence in Proust's "Rememberance of Things Past" which has affirmed many of my intuited experiences of duration, which tonight I describe as love/desire/life force in search of an object/in search of a subject, seeking to declare itself. Proust describes love as mind conscious of time and space. My spiritual and corporeal being, my instinctive and intellectual being have never been reconciled to the point of forgetfulness.Habit never erased the acute consciousness of being essentially other than my collective experiences,in an intellectually unsupported belief that reality must reside elsewhere.Bergson's appreciation of our essential dual natured being comforted, affirmed and inspired as did and do many of the writers and artists whom I encounter, arrest my attention for the same reason. Proust records that his task as he came to understand it was to interpret the sensations attendent on the experience of duratation, as signs of so many laws and ideas, by trying to think, that is to say, to draw forth from the shadows what he had merely felt, by trying to convert it into its spiritual equivalent and this method which seemed to him the sole method, was the creation of a work of art, to try and read the impressions attendent upon the moment of durational contact is the act of creation itself.This seems to me to be in keeping with the status and significance which Bergson attributed to art and the artist and it also affords a vital, ethical, evolutionary significance to art which is otherwise overlooked. I am on a roll here, I had intended just to make contact and acknowledge your response. I would very much appreciate any comments on the above.

Shasta,one more definition, (the discussion wasn't too lively anyway)---but I noticed, a "wonderkind" just joined the discussion group,after this I'll definitely shut up.

This one from Paul Brunton:" Reasoned thought pitched at the highest level and directed inwards upon itself. Philosophy is not satisfied with a merely intellectual reflection of the truth, as in a mirror, but seeks direct vision of the truth." "Science suppresses the subject of experience and studies the object. Mysticism suppresses the object of experience and studies the subject. Philosophy suppresses nothing, studies both subject and object, indeed it embraces the study of all experience."

Would Bergson agree?

"finding bad reasons for what one believes for other bad reasons--that's philosophy." Aldous Huxley

Bert, that is a fine definition of philosophy. But what is it that one believes for bad reasons? Would that be irresponsible behavior for example? I tend to think of our possessive nature then.

We don't trust instinct, so we try to convert it into something respectable and logical, and it never quite works.

Shasta, I almost always agree with your critical comments, but this time I must say that unfortunately it does 'quite' work sometimes. Haven't there always been great discoveries, followed by great inventions, both in the physical world and spiritually? However I must agree that 99% of these are ill conceived. Perhaps that portion of each of these discoveries and inventions is sick and needs to be healed. That would be a great motor for creative evolution, wouldn't it?!

Aiofe, that was a delightful post, though I had to (joyfully) read it over about 27 times. It is packed with the most wonderful insights. Things I read in Bergson that sunk to the bottom of consciousness again right after, unfortunately, are put into full exposure again. I most sincerely hope the others in this discussion will appreciate your contributions as much as I will !!

Most interesting, though I find it hard to select a specific point, to me is your description of Proust's (wasn't he married to Bergson's sister?) self-appointed task. I read in another forum (http://204.71.206.112/webx?7@@.ee9ee33/201">Applied Proust) that he started his books at the end and then wrote backwards. I assume that tells us how he experienced duration. The signs of what had been actualized, in the end, could at least be interpreted by looking at what previously could have happened.

Perhaps this links nicely to the issue we were discussing, what to make of "sub specie durationis". The uninterrupted humming of life's depths. "What previously could have happened" can also be seen as "what can be conditional to what appears". What is drawn forward from the shadows what we merely feel. Shasta referred to the Greeks' idea of "all the stars singing together". Bergson also referred in The Two Sources (Ch.III) to a 'firmament' at the end of a 'cone' at the other end of which was the present. I think Shasta understands Bergson better than she believes.

I also profoundly appreciate your description of your intuited experiences of duration,

as love/desire/life force in search of an object/in search of a subject, seeking to declare itself.

What rose to my mind when I read that line, was Bergson's expression (forgot where I found it) that "the I lets itself live" (Le moi se laisse vivre). It is my experience (of duration?) of at least the past 20 years.

And what idea is behind this fascinating and mind boggling assertion?

My spiritual and corporeal being, my instinctive and intellectual being have never been reconciled to the point of forgetfulness. Habit never erased the acute consciousness of being essentially other than my collective experiences, in an intellectually unsupported belief that reality must reside elsewhere.

So you say that our dual being is seeking reconciliation to the point of forgetfulness. Why do I instantly feel that that is so indeed? Is it, as Bert says, "finding bad reasons for what one believes for other bad reasons"? I refuse. I have seen this happen in marriages. One of the partners offers this reconciliation to the other partner. One is not itching, while the other is, so what is called, and what may be, love, is given. We make the Others' fantasy come through.

On and on you roll. Habit is presumed to erase the acute consciousness of being essentially other (more) than my collective experiences. Why does this not happen for some of us in spite of our hopes? Are we over-intellectualized? Have we unlearned to trust instinct and intuition? Is it just the way love/desire/life force works - not having your cake and eating it too and next having the cake nor the eating? Correct me if I am not addressing your points adequately.

Thanks and keep it up!

Bert, do not think any of us wants you to shut up! Bergson would not only agree with Paul Brunton, he would want to know more about him! What does the 'embrace' lead to?

Bert, Ron is right. Nobody asked you to shut up. You only say one word per month anyway. Where were you when we were trying to figure out how to say "lollypop" in German? As for Bergson, I have no idea what he would agree to. He is a deep, dark mystery to me, but one I can't seem to leave alone.

Aiofe, I am hoping you will join our discussion so Ron can have someone to help him sing the raptures of Bergson. All he ever gets from me is a few carping sour notes, which he gallantly puts up with.

Aoife, Welcome! Welcome to our Books sections, loved your post and am so relieved Ron & Co will have somebody to chat with now who actually makes sense once in a while: I don't.

I have admired Ron's devotion to this discussion, it certainly shows, I'm proud of it, him, and you all. Something to point to with pride even though I can't follow half of it, I'm trying!!

Hubert! Welcome to you also! Stick around, everybody is welcome in the Books where we are interested in all opinions. We are think everybody in the Books is special and are grateful for all of you.

Ginny

It's been so long since I read Proust's "Remembrance" that I don't remember much of it, but these references to it have made me want to read it again. Bergson's theory of how the memory works seems really amazing to me. He seems to believe that we retain our entire past and can "unroll the whole history of the person in a moving panorama." (page 153)

We have all heard persons say, when faced with sudden death, "I saw my whole life pass before my eyes." I've always discredited these claims as pure nonsense, but this seems to be exactly what Bergson believes can happen.

Ron, you said you had done some work, based on Bergson's theory of memory. Do you think he believes literally that we can retrieve lost memories? I know hypnosis is supposed to accomplish this, but I am always a little suspicious of hypnosis. The mind is indeed highly creative, and can easily fabricate false memories. What do you think?

I have no problem believing that perceptions never get lost while the perceiving biological system is alive. I do not think that that organism is limited to our own individual nervous system. So I certainly think that Bergson believes literally that we can retrieve lost memories. I am not very much into Freud but his ideas about the subconscious I dig. Following Darwin and Weber, in addition to that I believe that natural selection takes place in the act of perceiving, itself.

The object of attention retrieves or recollects in the present, perceptions from the past. Memories that were expanded and dropped from attention, can at once become present (p.152). Our immediate interest moves and differentiates, not just by our own actions, but also by what is expected or simply by changes in our condition or environment. This movement is change in the unity that is greater than us and needs us to live for its own survival.

My software program supports retrieval and spatialization of memories. They form a unity by being related in a network. The whole is created from any amount of perspectives that can be moments of reflection. The knowledge domain is filled with knowledge elements, either by active storage or by responsive (consulting) retrieval.

Of course, illusions can also get stored and retrieved. Spatialization itself is a grand illusion, that nevertheless corresponds with reality that I believe is really out there. (It is illusory because spatial relations cannot be perceived, only fabricated in the mind with the help of memory.)

I suppose your software program is in Dutch, and I couldn't read it even if I could get it. The theory sounds plausible, but why can't we actually retrieve any memory we want to? Are you saying that you can really retrieve a forgotten memory? Suppose you remember nothing about your fifth birthday. Could you retrieve a memory of that day?

My knowledge of Bergson consists of a few references in the works of Rupert Sheldrake, along with a little paperback edition of the Introduction to Metaphysics and a book about Bergson by a British analytic philosopher. I've just now read the first introduction to The Creative Mind.

Bergson is a revelation. I'd always understood that science and math can't touch subjectivity, but I never realized that this means they also can't touch time. As far as science is concerned, time might as well flow twice as quickly or half as quickly or even backwards. Science would never know, because the instruments we use to monitor processes would also be going twice as fast or twice as slow or backwards. But consciousness would know! We know time intimately.

Duration is the reality of time, as opposed to the way we think about it. Time, as movement, is open-ended. Thus we can't measure time, since obviously a measurement has to be defined. Science is about definition; time is undefined. It's undefined, because it just keeps going! We can cut off a segment of it, but then it's not time anymore.

Bergson has overturned twenty-five hundred years of philosophy. Our thinking has always been colored by language. But language is not geared toward uncovering truth. It's geared toward enabling us to function in the world. The way we naturally conceive things is not the way they really are. So, for instance, we think of time as being a series of moments. This is a useful way of thinking but not a correct way. Since time is movement, and a moment is static, time cannot be a series of moments. Motion is not made of a sequence of non-motions. If philosophy is really going to pursue truth, it must overcome the pitfalls of common-sense thinking.

Common sense involves the spatialization of everything. Even time is understood spatially. In your mind, you've got "past" on one side, and "future" on the other side, with "present" wedged in between them. Philosophers, thinking spatially, treat succession as failed co-existence. I always assumed, like everyone, that time is the fourth dimension. Now I see how silly this is. It's as though the first three dimensions worked out just fine, but the fourth one is defective, so instead of seeing everything at once, we have to wait around all day. If the fourth dimension worked as smoothly as the first three, we could see all of past and future laid out in front of us. Past and future would be like left and right. This is nonsensical! If it's true-- and we just can't see it-- then everything has already been determined. The passage of time is just the unfurling of what's already been determined, like the unwinding of a roll of film. Bergson contends that potentiality is not a kind of existence. To be potential is specifically to not exist. Reality involves continual creation, not an unfurling of what's already been determined.

I hope you don't mind me posting my thoughts as I read the book. Sorry I'm so far behind. I will have questions, though none yet.

By the way, here's how you can prove that your memories never really go away: Just re-read the beginning of The Creative Mind, and you'll remember each forgotten word as you come to it.

--Ted

I'm afraid that doesn't work for me, Ted. When I go back and read it again, I always find something I didn't even notice before, or maybe something that didn't sink in because I didn't understand it. I am ready to believe that all memories are retained somewhere; but my problem is how to retrieve them. If memory retrieval was possible, no student would ever fail an exam; nobody would ever lose his carkeys; nobody would ever forget anything. If it's all still there, why can't we get at it?

Because we don't have total access to our own unconscious minds.

We are quite limited as to how much we can consciously recall. But memory extends far deeper than consciousness. Unconsciously, everything is retained. That's why, even though you've consciously forgotten something, with a little help it can be jogged back to the surface. Have you ever had a conversation about old times with someone, and you were reminded of something you'd long since forgotten? The memory was always there, but you didn't have access. Or how about when you lose your keys? You can't remember where you put them, but when you do find them again, you immediately remember having left them there. See what I mean? Just because you can't consciously recall something doesn't mean the memory is gone. Once the right stimulus occurs, it's back!

Consciousness is always seeking meaning. Conscious memory is about quality, not quantity. Compared to the vastness of what you don't remember, what you do remember is meaningful. Of course, we're not perfect, and even important things sometimes don't get remembered.

--Ted

Ted, glad you found your way over here. Welcome!!

I fully agree with you, but to answer Shasta's question, we should not forget that besides the need for retrieval to be triggered, storage and preservation are important for present retrieval as well. In storing, we need to be interested in the object. In preserving, the force of attention can keep memories in (present) or out (past) of its span and as though by magic, "past" can become present (p.152).

The quality or emotion of the interest is what moves us to spatialization. Recollected perceptions get tested for being related to each other in some way or another. If they are, rationally or in (spatialized) time and/or space, an image or a concept forms, for example of what to reach for or how to act upon (or even perceive) it.

When a memory is triggered by the right stimulus, its relatedness to other memories - or meaning - is triggered as well. More than one image or concept of the object can thus start to function or get alive again, thereby giving it 'depth'.

[Shameless plug: Personal Memory Manager PMM© is downloadable and in English. It runs on a PC, not on a Mac.]

Ron, I read the part called "Philosophy." It all sounds too complicated and technical to me. If I were sitting in on that discussion about the airport, I would ask only two questions: do we need another airport? Can we afford another airport? If the answer to both questions is "Yes", then build the airport. If the answer is "No", then forget it. But, of course, I know it is never as simple as that. I understand that you are trying to set up a system for sorting out the true from the false; but isn't this getting pretty far from intuition? Isn't your system based on intellectual activity rather than intuition?

Shasta, I think I know what you mean.

"Concept engineering" seems a little technical and anti-intuitive, yet let me assure you that my intention is to capture pure duration. Bergson's criticism of Kant, if I understand correctly, is that the latter is too intellectual. On p.128 he says that Kant, like I hear you saying every now and then, does not believe that metaphysics is possible because we cannot enter another realm than the one of our senses and consciousness. Assuming that Bergson's philosophical intuition = his metaphysics, he contends that any other reality than that of the senses is not necessary to reach intuition.

That is exactly what I attempt in the program. Sense-impressions are turned into notes and end up as nodes in an information network. This fragmentation seems to be a division of the indivisible, therefore an artifact, but it is the onset of visualization or spatialization. When they are related in conceptual frames ('perspectives'), it is by these relations that they can be instantly recollected, 'rotated' and contracted, whenever they are called for by renewed reality.

Anything has more than one aspect, so that it can be better understood than by just one intellectual 'clipping' or even by one context. Didn't Bergson mean to capture all aspects of (any part of) reality "sub specie durationis", by recollecting all past perceptions of that (part of) reality, related by the thing itself? I think he did!

"Concept Engineering" sounds fascinating, and I am very curious to find out how it works, but it also sounds like it could require some mental effort on my part, and I am very lazy.

Bergson tells me (p. 208): "Let us then work to expand our thought; let us strain our understanding: break, if need be, all our frameworks." An inspiring challenge, but all that expanding and straining and breaking sounds a bit strenuous to a lazy person.

I like his comments on philosophy though. "We shall no longer witness a succession of doctrines, each one of which claims to embrace the totality of things in simple formulas. We shall have a single philosophy, an edifice which will, little by little, be built up alongside science and to which all those who think will bring their stone."

I love that part about each thinker bringing his stone. When we were studying Russell's "Western Philosophy," I kept thinking that each philosopher has his own piece of the truth. But each one thinks he has the whole truth and the only truth, when really each one has only a piece of the truth. All the pieces need to be fitted together into a coherent structure, as Bergson suggests. Even the contradictory theories are true at various levels, just as matter is both concrete form and formless energy, depending on which level you look at.

"Nature is what it is, and our intelligence which is a part of it, is less vast than nature; it is doubtful whether any one of our present ideas is large enough to embrace it."

Ron, I am beginning to understand why they call Bergson a prose poet.

Ron, I'm a little confused about something. Bergson distinguishes space and time such that space can be measured but not time. You can divide space into segments, but you can't divide time into moments. I see how time is indivisible. After all, it's just our conceptualization that divides it into seconds and minutes and hours. In reality, time is undivided. But can't we say the same about space? It's just our habit to divide it into units of measurement, like inches and miles. In reality, space is also continuous and whole. This is how I interepret Zeno's paradox of the arrow. If space were divisible into units, an arrow could never get anywhere, because first it would have to go halfway, and before it could get that far, it would have go half that distance, ad infinitum. So, an examination of Zeno yields the same results for space as well as time. Either way, division is only in our minds. Why does Bergson accept this regarding time but not space?

--Ted

Glad you like the term "Concept Engineering" Shasta. It was given to an article in the Int. J. of Continuing Engineering Education and Life-long Learning, of December of 1998, my first published article. A late draft is what you read on my site. I would be happy to explain further.

To be objective, we must be lazy and skeptical. It is a necessity in these times of information overload, to differentiate the hype from the real thing. Of course there will always be a margin to negotiate what is real but hasn't been communicated adequately or what is hype but is sung around all the time.

The stones' metaphor and the idea of concrete form / formless energy is very important to me. In The Two Sources, Bergson explains the idea that nature produced consciousness as an extension of the senses, or intelligence as an extension of instinct. It is a beautiful thought that intuition 'reconciles' the two, after they drift apart. (Don't know if Bergson used this word, but Aiofe did upthread).

Ted, good point. Somehow it doesn't bother me any more, I guess since I saw that what we call space really is spatialized time. The image we create may fit extended matter precisely, the more we direct attention to it, but the only way we can make sure is in duration. The data need to get stored and retrieved, even when almost immediately. This can be done in Zeno's way, that is always more precise, in a continuous and undivided way. But all that the senses really tell us is what they sense and where: in the senses.

However, consciously we perceive a movement of differentiation. Memory is involved here, a state of the senses that is no longer in contact with present sense data, but with data of the past. Simultaneity is simulated, believed, highly probably even true, but it is not true in the present tense. Now there is nothing against seeking and finding continuity and undividedness in the simulated image of simultaneity, but we should not forget that it is not space itself, supposedly out there, that immediately creates it, though it may be responsible through duration.

Hi Ron, hi all, Forgive my delay in responding to the "thought-full" reply to my last contribution. Sorry for just butting in on a thematic discussion and allow me please to do so again in the spirit of the building blocks of truth I see you are at present discussing. Can I ask does Bergson make explicit reference to recoupage in The Creative Mind? and also Ron if you could give some opinion on its merit or practicability as an analytic method. Is it not something that we do as a matter of course? I understand him to have used it to confront existing philosophical solutions embedded in opposite cenceptual systems to see at what point they overlapped, what they had in common and to thus reveal how they shared a falso assumption concealed by language, the plaything of the intellect, in the way they put forward their propositions and framed their conclusions. He then used both "wrong" solutions as a basis for proceeding using the intuitive method. Might I suggest to those in your present discussion that what they describe as laziness of mind is perhaps the intellectual resistance Bergson is highlighting. Such resistance diminishes with each intuitive insight, diminishes when we sense and follow the insights of others such as Bergson even when we don't why or how our attention has been arrested. On another point if it is ok to ask here, Does anyone know about the availability of Duration and Simultanaeity, when it was last printed in translation? Thanks

Hi Aiofe,

Happy to see you are still around. You don't need to excuse yourself for butting in or asking questions. Actually, it cannot be encouraged enough. Where would we be without having chances to express beliefs, thoughts and hunches?

I have been looking for Duration and Simultaneity at Barnes and Noble, in general searches and at Bobbs-Merill that published it in 1965. The latter does not seem to exist any more (cannot find it on the Net at least). Cannot find it. Sorry.

Took me some time to figure out what you meant by recoupage. The French verb (recouper) has a surprising double meaning: both fragmentation and verification! I found a lead to this word, in Deleuze's "Bergsonism" (1966), of which I have the English translation (1988, reprint 1991). About the method of intuition:

Thus intuition does form a mehod with its three (or five) rules. This is an essentially problematizing method (a critique of false problems and the invention of genuine ones), differentiating (carvings out and intersections), temporalizing (thinking in terms of duration).

In French on p.28 the 2nd line reads:

C'est une méthode essentiellement problematisante (critique des faux problèmes et invention des vrais), différenciante (découpages et recoupements), temporalisante (penser en termes de durée).

What we do as a matter of course, as I agree with Bergson, is pressing our concepts of the object of study further and further based on measured experience (the empirical method). However, what science forgets is to turn the mind to the mind itself, holding on to its empirical method. Thus the material universe can wait or wait in solidarity with our duration. Metaphysics, on the other hand, often forgets the experiential aspect that is so well developed in science. Indeed this is how he critiques both science (Einstein) and metaphysics (Kant, although Kant concluded metaphysics is impossible while Bergson opposes this).

Language he considers a wonderful tool, but too colonized by social exchange and application to practicality and fabrics of the social (I imagine he means romanticism, idealism, fascism etc). Indeed I have seen him make the moves you describe so well. Thus he shows what he means by his intuitive method. First he makes a 'movement of differentiation', criticizing a philosopher or scientist and next allows heterogeneity in duration (undivided but differentiated 'multiplicity'), reconciling all views or showing their complementarity or intersection (recoupage).

[BTW, Cathy, are you still there? Can you bring us back to earth after the eclipse?]

Ron, It is good to con-verse on con-natural knowledge. It keeps my faith in the possibilities of language's wonderfully challenging limitations. If I remember rightly (and I confess that my memory functions more in accordance with the vitality rather than the detail of the impressions made upon it) I came across the recoupage reference in Pilkington's "Bergson and his Influence". One of the reasons I ask about it is that Bergson uses it almost startlingly to make of "why is there something rather than nothing" a non-question. For a while in my life and still at moments, my own faith is founded on there being something rather than there being nothing. I thought I had intuited through memory a state of being other than how I experienced myself in the present and I suppose I interpreted other to mean non-being. Bergson in Creative Evolution 188-189 (Mitchel Translation) writes of our describing absence as the presence of something other than a sought for reality. This convinces me each time I re-read and contemplate it again,it even I suppose offers comfort in the absence of loved ones but no matter how often I bring it to mind, I have to work back to its startling irrefutability and to date it is the only aspect of Bergson's philosophy which evokes this forgetfulness. Have you any cross references or illuminating thought from The/your Creative Mind on this ? I won't be on line for a few days.

Sorry I missed all this good stuff. I think it is too late to read and then jump in. But would like to know if anything is planned for future readings.

Today I read a book review of two books dealing with philosophy and reason.WITHIN REASON:rationality and Human Behavior by Donald B.Calne and PHILOSOPHY IN THE FLESH:The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought, by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. Sounded provocative to me , dealing with the neural connections to intuition and emotions and some new definitions of reason --- and controversial.

Please e-mail me if there will be more discussion on metaphysics . Thank you Jenny

Aiofe, I do not have the same edition of Creative Evolution that you referred to, but I guess you mean the beginning of chapter IV, 'The Idea of "Nothing"'. There is an enormous lesson in that passage, that I too only seem to learn by re-reading it. Yes this is a part of The Creative Mind also (Ch.III, The Possible and the Real, p.97):

One says: "There could be nothing," and then is astonished that there should be something - or someone. But analyze that sentence: "There could be nothing." You will see you are dealing with words, not at all with ideas, and that "nothing" here has no meaning. "Nothing" is a term in ordinary language which can only have meaning in the sphere, proper to man, of action and fabrication. "Nothing" designates the absence of what we are seeking, we desire, expect. Let us suppose that absolute emptiness was known to our experience: it would be limited, have contours, and would therefore be something. But in reality there is no vacuum. We perceive and can conceive only occupied space. One thing disappears only because another replaces it. Suppression thus means substitution. We say "suppression", however, when we envisage, in the case of substitution, only one of its two halves, or rather the one of its two sides which interests us; in this case we indicate a desire to turn our attention to the object which is gone, and away from the one replacing it."

It strikes me that Bergson treats nothingness completely different than, for example, Heidegger. I imagine that pre-war politics picked up the startling positive message of this kind of metaphysics and put it, upside down, to the test in the holocaust. Is it a fruit of Jewish religion? If so than his attempt to convert to Catholicism is the more remarkable. I belong to neither but I wish I had faith like that.

Jenny, W-E-L-C-O-M-E ! Those titles are provocative indeed. How does Calne treat intuition, instinct or emotion? How does the embodied mind challenge Western thought as opposed to the other way around according to Lakoff and Johnson? Feel free to intercept our exchanges.

What intrigues me is the way Bergson breaks down the distinction between subject and object. Supposedly, qualities exist only in our minds, not in nature. So, for instance, the sky is not really blue. "Blueness" is merely the way the mind habitually interprets the frequency of light that reflects off of oxygen. But maybe the distinction between perceiver and perceived is itself imaginary. Maybe the coming into existence of blueness represents the communion between the subject of perception and the object. It exists neither exclusively in the perceiver, as is scientifically thought, nor exclusively in the thing, as common sense dictates. Rather it exists only insofar as subject and object become one.

In Zen, this is called, Enlightenment. This means that there is no difference between perceiver and perceived. All is one. To come to this realization is the goal of meditation (zazen).

According to Aristotle, substance is something that things have. Change, on the other hand, has no substance but is merely an accidental attribute of things. What's substantial is the thing in itself, not whatever process it may be undergoing. Aristotle is merely expressing standard, civilized thinking, which is nothing more than a utilitarian assumption. This way of thinking is convenient, it's useful, but that doesn't make it true. It's the logic of language that words equal things. But change is just as primary, just as real, as constancy. In fact, Bergson seems to claim that change is more primary, and that constancy (thingness) is just a projection of our minds. Frankly, I can't tell exactly what he's saying, and I'd like to know for sure. Anyway, Buddhism is clear about substance being change and not constancy. All is impermanent. This is why life is fundamentally sorrowful, because everything, even the self, is impermanent. Some Buddhists take this another step and claim that substance cannot be change itself, and therefore substance is entirely illusory. In other words, there is nothing at all. This is the belief of a Tibetan sect recently censured by the Dalai Lama. Most Buddhists are not nihilists, popular misconceptions aside.

Bergson states that we must get back to our immediate sense of reality beneath the "invariable substances" which we create in our conceptualization and then superimpose onto reality. He says that intuition-- the study of mind-- can be "methodically cultivated and developed." This is a near-perfect description of zazen, which is nothing if not methodical. However, there's no claim in Zen that intuition is strictly about mental knowledge. Zazen is about becoming one with breath and body and light and sound. Bergson's notion that intuition is knowledge of mind, as opposed to knowledge of matter, is contradicted by his apparent recognition that, through perception, subject and object are one. Intuition, I should think, concerns any preconceptual knowledge, be it of mind or matter.

I read that book review Jenny mentioned, which appeared in The Nation. Philosophy in the Flesh, by Lackoff and Johnson, certainly sounds worthwhile, given its condemnation of analytic philosophy, i.e. logical positivism. But it falls prey to that other demon, materialism, which considers mind to be nothing more than the brain at work.

--Ted

Ted, I have not understood Bergson as considering "thingness as just a projection of our minds." I understood him to be a dualist, with the world divided into that which is alive and that which is not alive (inert matter). Intuition is an activity of the mind--the basic vital activity of the mind. Thought is a secondary activity, which is useful but artificial. But I am not sure if I have understood him correctly.

Ted, you suggest that in reality it might be so, that the distinction between subject and object is only a phenomenon of the mind and that what is called subject and object is really one and the same thing. That would mean, in Shasta's terms, that the distinction is not only an artifact but also useless for it does not describe what it claims to describe.

Bergson, in emphasizing change in differentiated but undivided continuity, did not recognize that through perception subject and object are one and nothing more. He said these were opposed tendencies in nature. They were complementary, reconciled, composites that could be analyzed in a bad way. Matter breaks down while energy creates. Energized matter or functional structures of higher levels of life are raison d'être of lower levels, encompassing all living forms, our own lives, stemming from a source that only mysticism preceives.

Zazen is different from Bergson's metaphysics when it only attends the sense of breath, body, light and sound. I believe he meant to include consciousness (thought), but not insofar it misconceives nature and is biased towards matter.

I agree with Shasta that Bergson is a life/nonlife dualist. He believes life is special, that it entails a vital force absent in nonlife. Incidentally, this is the only thing I'm certain that Bergson got wrong. Afred North Whitehead's "organicism," which applies to nonliving systems as much as living ones, is much closer to the mark. But Bergson is certainly correct in asserting that intuition is primal, while intellect is an artifice tacked on. The intellect is highly efficient at facilitating interaction with the world and each other, but it's not the truth. Intuition reveals process, happening, flow, etc, while intellect artificially projects "thingness" onto it all. We perceive and think and talk in terms of static existence.

The Creative Mind, page 82: "Thus perception, thought, language, all the individual or social activities of the mind, conspire to bring us face to face with objects that we can take to be invariable and immobile while we consider them, as it also brings us face to face with persons, including our own, which will become in our eyes objects and, at the same time, invariable substances. How can we uproot so profound an inclination? How can we bring the human mind to reverse the direction of its customary way of operating, beginning with change and movement, envisaged as reality itself, and no longer to see in halts or states mere snapshots taken of what is moving reality?" He goes on to state that what is "practically useful, handy for cooperation" leads to insoluable philosophical problems, "because they are presented backwards." If we take the issue forwards, with change considered as primary as constancy, then these problems disappear. (Or is he actually reversing the Aristotelian metaphysics altogether by reducing stasis to flux? That's what I'm confused about.)

So, I'm not saying that Bergson is an idealist, i.e. that he denies material reality or reduces it to idea. It's just that "thingness," as a product of intellect, is not an accurate depiction of matter. God knows he was proved right on that point. Quantum physics could not have provided better confirmation. On page 84 he critiques the pre-quantum view: "No matter how much one refrained from any imaged representation of the atom, corpuscle, ultimate element, whatever it might be, it was nevertheless a THING serving as support to movements and changes, and consequently in itself was not changing, in itself not moving."

Bergson eliminates the total separation of subject and object. Now, instead of a boundary that divides, we have a boundary that joins. This seems very Bergsonian, like where he says, in Intro to Metaphysics, that pure perception unites mentality with materiality insofar is it's a mental function which exists strictly without memory, flowing in the current of time like matter. Here, he's bridging perceiver and perceived by denying that the images we see are created in our minds. He advocates dropping this nonsense in favor of commonsense. When we see something, we actually see it, or rather the light that carries its image. We see the image itself in light rather an image of the image in the brain. Bergson's metaphysics should "put an end to the old conflict between realism and idealism by shifting the line of demarcation between subject and object, between mind and matter." (Page 88). The general belief is that the surrounding environment "is exerted upon the brain by the intermediary of the sense organs; in the brain inextensive sensation and perceptions are elaborated: these perceptions are presumably projected outward by the consciousness and cover, as it were, external objects." (Page 89). In other words, we're separated from reality through our perception of it! "One was obliged to imagine in the brain some representation of reduced size, some miniature of the outer world..." No doubt he'd have called it the TV paradigm of vision had he lived to be a hundred. He claims correctly that the physiology of vision does not suggest cerebral creation of images. We have no reason to doubt that vision consists of seeing what's out there, and that the brain, like the eye, merely acts as a medium, conjoining viewer and viewed, subject and object. "It is not in us, it is in them that we perceive objects; it is at least in them that we should perceive them if our perception was 'pure'... 'One would' I wrote, 'greatly astonish a man unaccustomed to philosophical speculations by telling him that the object he had before him, which he sees and touches, exists only in his mind and for his mind..." Whether inspired by "idealism" or "realism" such speculations assume the separation of "subjective," as being distinct from reality, and "objective," as being one with reality. Bergson is claiming that we, as subjects, are one with reality insofar as we perceive it. This is what we know intuitively, and such intuition can be "methodically cultivated."

So, the distinction between subject and object is not so much a product of the mind in general as the intellect in particular. The distinction is an artifact, and it does not describe reality, but does that mean it's useless? Quite the contrary, as Bergson says, thinking that distorts reality can be "practically useful," even "handy". Clocks, for example, are quite handy (or wristy, if you like watches) while completely misleading us on the nature of time. Clocks are constantly telling a story, and the moral of that story is that time is space. But time is more than space and succession. Time has an intrinsic quality of motion that can't be understood simply as succession and can't be measured in space, but the clocks that lie to us on the "hour" also happen to get us through the "day." In fact, the clock is the original machine, the foundation of modern civilization. The right kind of lie, as the devil knows, can do wonders.

--Ted

Ted, you are much quicker to grasp Bergson's philosophy than I am. Something that bothers me is his statement that intuition can be methodically cultivated. I have always felt that I have as much intuition as the next person, but I have no idea how one would go about cultivating it. Bert suggested meditation, and Bergson himself said art cultivates intuition. But I wish he had been more specific. Maybe in some of his other books, he explains in more detail how this "methodical cultivation" can be accomplished.

Did you settle it to your satisfaction how space can be chopped up into pieces and time cannot? I thought I understood that until you raised the question, and now I'm not so sure that I do.

Shasta, Throughout the writings of Bergson's which I have read he uses intuition methodically as a light to guide his way, to test the validity of each building block of thought as he proceeds. I hear you doing this in distinguishing the givenness of intuition from its availability to you as a method to be applied in all and any circumstances. You, like Bergson, are referring back to your own experience as the ultimate point of reference. In elaborating the nature of intuition Bergson attributes a significant role to emotion, and the doubling which is characteristic of a philosophy built on an appreciation of our dual nature is again evident. He distinguishes emotion which is the result of thopught from emotion which is the cause of thought. Emotion is creative when it is newly felt and expressive of life as it struggles into material existence. Creative emotion is not a response but is unique to each creative gesture, action, poem, painting etc. This elaboration of emotion made sense for me of a my life long experience of feeling I had something momentous to say but having no idea as to what it might be. As though I was driven to declare, to give utterance to something inside me that was struggling to be born.Now I understand this to be duration itself. Bergson's elaboration of intuition also made sense for me of my experiencing myself as though existing on different levels but always doubting when one, say the intellect, was in the ascendent, that the other, intuition, had been mistaken. Bergson confirms for me the authenticity of both. As for methodically cultivating the practice of intuition, one of the places I started was by paying attention to what was going on in my own mind, to coincidences, associations, sensations of thought. Speaking of which, Ron I thought it noteworthy that your age as given in your seniornet personal profile coincides with the answer given to the "meaning of life, the universe and everything" in the cult science fiction novel and TV series The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy.Do you recall it. The absurdity (etymology of this word worth looking at) of an answer (42) to the intellectually misguided question "What is the meaning of life?" is effective in highlighting the misguided faith so often placecd in the intellect. Another feature of the novel which I recalled on reading Bergson was the "improbabilty drive" which powered the space ship,the improbabilty of coincidence, for example the phone number of a flat in London with that of a new acquantance's birthdate. What I wonder is the significance of such aleatory and idiosyncratic personal observations/connections? We all make and experience them throughout our lives, their profundity seeming to diminish when habit and intellect subsume or overlook them.I understand the spearhead of Bergson's creative evolutionary thrust to operate in some such chance fashion and this is why, to refer back to what you were considering Shasta, he allows such a significant role to art and the artist in furthering the creative evolution of humanity. It is also I believe important in cultivating intuition to become aware of how habit stultifies our individual creative evolution and to put ourselves in the way of non-habitual experiences. Being intrinsically linked with all duration, all life,our individual creative evolution will in turn impact on the creative evolution of the whole.

Aoife, I was particularly interested in your suggestion that we put ourselves in the way of non-habitual experiences. That's a really practical suggestion, and one that I need to give some serious thought to. I am very much a slave of habit, as I suppose most people are.

You were speculating about the significance of coincidence. Are you familiar with Carl Jung's theory of synchronicity? I always thought this was one of his most fantastic and provocative ideas.

Which of Bergson's books have you read?

Ted, I see what you mean. Perhaps the difference between Whitehead (plus Sheldrake?) and Bergson is that the former seek their point of reference in organicism, while the latter separates and reconciles mechanical and humanistic tendencies (mechanicism/organicism/humanism distinguished by J. Shotter, 1975). It seems that the organicist view declares ALL intellect to be fallacious, even when practical. Bergson only declares some intellect to be fallacious, due to the socialization and materialization of truth, uncompensated by direct and opposed inspection of the mind by the mind.

Aiofe, the "spearhead of Bergson's creative evolutionary thrust" seems to operate in the interaction of instinct and intellect, emotion and thought, through intuition, I agree. Present perceptions virtually recollect and contract the same or similar perceptions of the past and either correct or consult their interrelations to get to the sub specie durationis of the present object. The perceptions of the past declare themselves to have a unique identity and several aspects, or to play a role in one or many contexts of contextually (and conceptually) related perceptions, each role being another aspect. These links or associations to, say, second-order perceptions, in my view may be the reason for the creation of unsuspected new links, new contexts, transcending understanding of objects or problems of the present. (This, by the way, is what concept engineering is about.)

Shasta, I have never found a satisfying definition of synchronicity. Could you give one? I have found such definition on serendipity however: a prince of India had heard that an expedition to prove that the world was round, had found another India and had called its natives "Indians". So he ordered to set sail to find this new land. The ship discovered, by accident, an island off the coast of India, that was called Serendipus.

Synchronicity is a meaningful coincidence of psychic and physical events that are not causally related. For example, a clock stops at the moment of its owner's death. Or a mirror shatters at the moment the owner receives heartbreaking news. Jung believed that synchronistic events accompanied major changes in a person's life. He was particularly interested in how his patients' dream symbols were repeated in their external lives. If I remember correctly, he speculated that psychic and physical phenomena both spring from a common substratum in the unconscious, where the two are blended together. When an archetype is activated at this primordial level, echoes are sent up into the psychic life of the individual as well as his surrounding environment.

Synchronicity is a meaningful coincidence of psychic and physical events that are not causally connected. For example, a clock stops at the moment of its owner's death. Or a mirror shatters at the moment that its owner receives heartbreaking news. Jung believed that synchronistic events accompanied major changes in a person's life. He was particularly interested in how his patients' dream symbols were repeated in their external lives. If I remember correctly, he speculated that psychic and physical phenomena both spring from a common substratum in the unconscious, where the two are blended together. When an archetype is activated at this primordial level, it sends up echoes through a person's mental life, as well as his external environment.

Shasta, it is nice to know that you are capable of some superstition as well. I think Jung had a good theory about there being archetypes both dwelled into culture and, by ritual, into our minds. However, I do not see how there could be a spurious correlation between a mirror breaking and a devastating newsbreak. On the other hand I must confess I have experienced something a few years ago that seemed like direct divine intervention, but that must have been the exception confirming the rule that these results of enculturation, assimilation and dwelling-in cannot in turn cause the circumstances creating them.

Yet, thoughts along these lines have been speculated upon by Bergson (in my understanding), where he suggests that pure energy or duration differentiated into life and matter, life into plant and animal, plant into carbon and nitrogen, animal into instinct and intelligence and, finally (?), intelligence into domination of matter and intuition (Creative Evolution, Ch.2). Evolution has hardly seen the face of man. So why would it not have evolved into much greater systems that we do not know of? If that is so, then we exist because of this hidden cause, for we are the reason of its existence.

Ron, I am still chuckling about your last post. You didn't believe that about the mirror breaking? I thought anybody who believed Bergson would believe anything. Did you know that Jung had so much psychic energy that he could walk into a room and a table would split apart, or a bookcase would topple over? His whole family was strange. His daughter could walk across a piece of ground and tell you if there were corpses buried under it. Do I believe all this? I who don't even believe airplanes can fly? Even if I saw the table split open with my own eyes, I wouldn't believe it.

First of all, I want to excuse myself for staying offline that long to all those who still lurk occasionally and expect an answer or a better answer than they got - Shasta in particular.

What kicked me back online was a new posting of Prof. G. Zajicek who relates cancer research to Bergsonian studies, this time in a new site called "What is cancer". He suggests studying disease with intuition. Bergsonian critique of Kant is very articulate: "life could not have evolved without the knowledge of the real world", and of Darwin: "life is creative, [not] adaptive". Not to mention opposing Russell: "Bergson was a brilliant mathematician." Check out Bergson and medicine.

I notice that all the treasures I find in Bergson's writing, as well as in this thread, are producing less fire and nuclear fusion than while we are at it. Therefore I will reread the whole thread, including where it started in the History of Western Philosophy.

To those who do not return here I would like to express thanks for your efforts and thoughts helping spin-off this essential metaphysics.

Ron, Lest it be thought that I am one of those whom you consider may be lurking around this forum, possibly as a result of not hearing answers they want, let me assure you that I have found this site most worthwhile and your answers particularly helpful. In fact I was delighted with the trouble you took in responding to some of my thoughts. to find affinitous conssciousness in cyberspace reminds me of whales calling to each other over the vast deep oceans. I even consider it a moment of Bergsonian evolutionary opportunism. Being new to such discussions I do wonder how they conclude and anticipate a sense of loss at not having access to all the creative minds contemplating "The Creative Mind" I have just finished reading Matter and Memory again. It is liberating to know that memory is living and imminent testimony of the elan vital, to come away from the text and know that I have contemplated and intuited to my own satisfaction under the tutelage of Bergson who brings the mind to a point where it can intuit for itself. I spent some time last week with the Metaphysician who introduced me to Bergson. We spent some time forging links with Brgson and Spinoza and contemplating how Bergson reconciles Christianity, the christian story with the story he tells of evolution.He gave me some interesting insights into "the transcendentalia" in response to my contemplation of what role and parametres there are to chance in Bergson's universe. We considered how the innate spontaneous drive of "is" is to generate intelligibility and how chance provides the opportunity for the trancendentalia to become manifest. Back to metaphysical basics we went but with the enjoyment of seeing more clearly than previously how Bergson by-passes the pitfalls of all earlier metalphysicians as far as I can see (well at least those whose writings/ideas history has recorded) Perhaps certain of the mystics and artist had the insights but not the circumstances to deliver it in the way that Bergson did. I am at present considering Free Will in Bergson and wondering how often if ever I have acted freely and if consciousness of acting freely is a prerequisite to such an act or an obstacle. I am instinctivly drawn to memories of joy,love,conscious self-sacrifice (that hurt)and creative activity and feel uplifted by such contemplation, by the plenitude of life in recollection. Anyway I am starting to waffle. By the way Shasta, I have read too many primary and secondary texts by and about Bergson to list here but my hunger is such that I am far from satiated and given that Bergson acknowledges that each of his texts took him many years to research and write I would hate to think that my listing those of them I've read would suggest that I am more than slightly aquainted with the ideas and insights contained in them. One of Bergson's ideas I consider particularly potent and important is the significance he attributes to the individual whom he suggests will have at most one or two insights in a life time. It is good to consider that around any individuals insight, various serendipitous experiences including the ideas and thoughts of others,gather like tumble weed in the accumulation of vision. I particularly liked your reminding me of Jung's synchronicity and took his biography off my shelf for some further contmeplation. Aoife

Hello, again. I've been away from home for a few weeks, but in the meantime I finally finished The Creative Mind. What a wonderful book! Thanks, Ron, for giving me the idea to read it, and thanks to Shasta and Aoife and everyone else who has contributed to this discussion.

I managed to find the answers to my questions. Bergson definitely regards constancy as being nothing more than a projection of the intellect. He reduces constancy to change, which he considers the most substantial and durable thing possible. "Movement is reality itself..." (Page 169.) He asserts that "immobility" is an illusion produced when the object and subject of perception happen to be moving at the same speed, like two trains leaving the station at the same time. So, he does not try to give change and constancy equal weight, as I'd earlier suspected. My other question was why he treats space and time differently, such that space can be divided into points but that time cannot be divided into moments, i.e. time-points. It's true he concedes that space can indeed be divided into points. However, this does not apply in relation to things that are moving (page 168). As it travels from Point A to Point B, a "thing" never occupies any intermediate points. Though this seems strange, we know it's true, because otherwise Zeno's paradoxes would demonstrate that motion is impossible. After all, to get from Point A to Point B, first you have to go halfway, but you can't get halfway until you've gone half that distance, and so on ad infinitum. Thus we are totally paralyzed. Since this is obviously not the case, objects cannot occupy intermediate points between their point of origin and their destination. To occupy a point, you have to stop there. To travel through it means you never occupy it. Space only has points for things that are at rest. Since all things are always in motion through time and never at rest, that means time is not composed of points. Unfortunately, the answers to my two questions produce a contradiction. Bergson claims that immobility is entirely an illusion. Therefore space is in fact just like time-- all motion and no rest. Space also would have to have no points in it. So, I'm afraid I still haven't completely worked it out.

What Bergson calls "mobility" Buddhism calls "impermanence." Permanence is merely a projection of the intellect.

With Bergson, there is no thing that changes; there is only change itself. Just as the substance underlying change is an illusion, the "ego" underlying the flux of thoughts and feelings is a figment of our imagination. In Zen, the true self is not the ego. We are not the static images we hold of ourselves.

In his discussion of nothing, on page 115, Bergson makes the rather momentous claim that nothing does not exist. Nothingness, or absence, is all in our minds. We imagine, if only unconsciously, that the existince of something is the absence of something else. When I was a kid, I wanted a camera, but instead I got a harmonica! I hated that harmonica, because every time I looked at it, I saw the camera that wasn't there. Bergson calls this "substitution." In Zen, it's called "suffering." We're always looking for what we don't have. Consumerist capitalism, which Bergson refers to as "industry," keeps us remembering what we had and wishing for what we might have.

Shasta, you asked what it takes to have a spiritual life. I wish I could tell you. All I can say is what works for me, and that's the removal of distractions. No alcohol, sugar, sex... not even pizza! I do yoga every morning and sit in group meditation every week, plus solo meditation a couple more times a week. I meditate because it feels good in a way that doesn't happen from any other activity I know of. As to the yoga, the only reason I started doing it is that my knee hurt, and nothing else helped. My dietary changes were forced onto me due to candida-related illness. As to the sexual abstinence, that comes from having moved to a small town, and it will surely change one of these days, but I'm not exactly in a hurry, because I've been so much happier free of relationships! I think the greatest gift is to be forced to give things up, or to be forced into a wonderful practice like yoga. Truly a spiritual life is a happy life, and happiness comes when you can't get what you want. (Well, to some extent anyway...)

Thanks, everyone!

--Ted

Shasta I hope you are ok. I am sorry we are not communicating on a daily basis any more. I dunno what it is. Maybe it is the season. Or perhaps I am too serious at times about philosophy. I agree that we can overdo it, like Jung's daughter apparently did. Was that the message of your last post? Or were you just being your skeptical self, teasing us with irony ("I thought anybody who believed Bergson would believe anything")?

Aoife you are a master of images. The idea of being a whale communicating across the ocean's depths captures some particular feelings I do have more than once, in terms of joy, love and conscious self-sacrifice. Indeed it is incredible how Bergson reconciled evolutionary opportunism with Christianity. Maybe his idea of open morality stems from Judaism always having to watch out for its hostile environment. Evolution demands our minds to be in tune with reality but Western wealth seems to allow particular dreams in each of our heads that only some of us can realize, whatever reality is assumed there. Through Bergson I discovered a duality in my own mind's attitude: on the one hand I live in a dream fed by social demands and personal wishes that is only looking for reinforcement and that gets sad when this reinforcement is lessening or disappearing altogether. On the other hand I can feel duration and, as an outer body experience, see my own intellect leading my body, sometimes blocking its way 'purposely', that is, while in the other mode. So I believe "transcendentalia" come in two modes as well. I am trying to figure out how one mode can replace the other at will, when one starts hurting by lack of reinforcement or when there is nothing to be reinforced.

Ted till now I did not realize you were so into Buddhism. When I really had discovered Bergson for myself I started to look for the Dutch translator of Bergson's books and when I met him it turned out he had turned to Buddhism instead of Protestantism. He was trying to reach a state of "no ego". He even told me he did not want to go back to Bergson. As a present I had bought him Milan Kundera's "the joke" because Bergson has written a book called "the laugh". We had a good conversation but I did not understand his change of interest. His father was a famous painter and his brother a well known violinist, so it was clear Bergson stayed with the arts. I am not sure I agree with your conclusion that Bergson reduces constancy to change. I think he is just being cautious about closing the mind; constancy is not just a phantom or projection. However, it is hard or impossible to capture a mental image or an accurate understanding of it without shutting our eyes. Yet he assumes constancy in the inorganic, the organic and the fabricated, apart from the interpreter. When you say that with Bergson there is only change itself, you mean his explanation of mental processing. Einstein thought Bergson tried to falsify his theory, but he only complemented theory of relativity with his theories of psychophysical processing.

Thank you all!! But don't think I want to quit this…
Ron.

Hi, Ron. I thought this discussion was finished. I've been reading Plato and I absolutely love it. After struggling with Bergson's incomprehensibility, Plato is clear as a bell. I can't get over how contemporary the dialogues sound. Those old Greeks were talking over 2,000 years ago, and they are as easy to understand as if they were talking today. I enter into their discussions and write my comments in the margins. If I had been in Socrates' group, he wouldn't have had such easy agreement from his listeners. I often disagree with him, and point out the errors in his arguments. But they were wonderful thinkers, those Greeks! I've always been told how great they were, but naturally I didn't believe it till I proved it for myself. Now, I am in awe of their accomplishments.

I wasn't kidding you about Jung's daughter. Jung said that about her himself. He seemed to think it was perfectly normal that she could do that.

Shasta,
It is a real pity that the History of Western Philosophy thread seems gone, that we had renamed Plato's Philebus mainly to interest you. I wonder how such could happen. We could continue discussing Plato there. On the other hand, this thread I would very much like to contain some more posts on our own metaphysics... I am about to phrase my own (inspired by Bergson++ of course).

Thanks and best,
Ron.

[Edit 10-10-99] Rectification: The History of Western Philosophy thread isn't gone, but archived. Pfuhh..!! Shasta, shall we ask them to reopen it?

The miracle of life, it feels, is that even if you don't live, you still live. My metaphysics is strongly influenced by Bergson, but also by my education in theoretical psychology (VU Amsterdam, 1977-1982) and last but certainly not least all the people I have met, the woman I turned inside out for in particular. The first model occurred to me in august 1982. This model is still intact and I will be lucky if I will recapture all that it meant and boil its structure further down into three independent but interactive dimensions, which are:

1) space and time
2) behavior and consciousness
3) source and object.


What goes around, comes around. Attention to conscious images of what is not here and not now is directed towards the object. The object is what is REAL, what will really be or what really was. This reality is behavior, how all things, organic and inorganic, natural and supernatural (not yet understood), behave.

The image of reality can be tested and evaluated here and now, but not (yet) there and then. The further the movement of differentiation of the image in our minds (consciousness) extends towards the object of (super)natural behavior, the more likely errors will be incorporated and the image will be definitely wrong. This is scary because in creating the image, a sense is maintained of being in the real, even though not here and now, which is our sense of duration. The image and the sense of the real turn out to be false. What happens then?

When behavior no longer matches consciousness, consciousness must match behavior. The movement of differentiation in the conscious image of behavior stops and it is as if reality itself falls apart. Usually that is when I get depressed. Then I realize that consciousness of behavior here and now can be completely adjusted and it is easy to do so. When I fear pain in the dentist's chair, I can ask myself: does it hurt now? And I answer: no it does not hurt now so don't behave as if it does. And once it does hurt, the pain will be over fairly quickly. This thought does not spring from my mind, but rather from the actual situation. The object of reality has come near me and corrects my consciousness through behavior that is in me but that I cannot call mine. I trust the dentist.

Thanks to all who participated in this discussion and we hope to see you in other book discussions on Seniornet.