excerpts from bergson

From: Diane Hodges (dhodges@ceo.cudenver.edu)
Date: Fri Dec 03 1999 - 11:50:24 PST


i've been drubbling along in my read-reread of 'creative evolution'
and purling in paul's interpretations - thought some excerpts might be
interesting- seems it's always a
little of both and yet neither, nor, both/and, or, (not) -

"The universe endures. The more we study the nature of time, the more we
shall comprehend that duration means invention, the creation of forms, the
continual elaboration of the absolutely new. The systems marked off by
science endure only because they are bound up inseparably with the rest of
the universe...
There is no reason, therefore, why a duration, and so a form of existence
like our own, should not be attributed to the systems that science
isolates, provided such systems are reintegrated into the whole. But they
must be so reintegrated...: (13-14)

"Generally speaking, unorganized bodies, which are what we have need of in
order that we may act, and on which we have modeled our fashion of
thinking, are regulated by this simple law: the present contains nothing
more than the past, and what is found in the effect was already in the
cause."
(17)

"Wherever anything lives, there is, open somewhere, a register in which
time is being inscribed."
(20)

"The systems science works with are, in fact, in an instantaneous present
that is always being renewed; such systems are never in that real,
concrete duration in which the past remains bound up with the present.
WHen the mathematician calculates the future state of a system at the end
of a time "t", there is nothing to prevent him from supposing that the
universe vanishes from this moment till that, and suddenly reappears. It
is the t-th moment only that counts - and that will be a mere instant.
What will flow on in the interval - that is to say, real time - does not
count, and cannot enter into the calculation...If he divides the interval
into infinitely small parts by considering the differental dt, he thereby
expresses merely the fact that he will consider accelerations and
velocities,...numbers which denote tendencies and enable him to calculate
the state of a system at a given moment. But he is always speaking of a
given moment -a static moment, that is - and not of flowing time. "
(26)

"Science carries this faculty to the highest possible degree of exactitude
and precision, but does not alter its essential character. Like ordinary
knowledge, in dealing with things science is concerned only with the
aspect of repetition. Though the whole be original, science will always
manage to analyze it into elements or aspects which are approximately a
reproduction of the past. Science can only work on what is supposed to
repeat itself - that is to say, on what is withdrawn, by hypothesis, from
the action of real time. Anything that is irreducible and irreversible in
the successive moments of a history eludes science."
(35)

off to ponder this, as i think i understand why history repeats itself,
that is, why dominant institutions
are so resistant to change.
viva la liberation!
diane
   ' 'We have destroyed something by our presence,' said Bernard, 'a
world perhaps.'
     (Virginia Woolf, "The Waves")

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
diane celia hodges
university of british columbia, vancouver / university of colorado, denver

Diane_Hodges@ceo.cudenver.edu



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