Amazon.com: Creative Evolution: Henri Bergson, Keith Ansell Pearson, Michael Kolkman, Michael Vaughan: Books

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"Palgrave Macmillan is to be congratulated for reissuing these classic Bergson texts. This is a timely decision since Bergson was the great thinker of life and it seems, nearly one hundred years later, that we find ourselves once again required to conceive life. Keith Ansell Pearson and John Mullarkey have been at the forefront of the new conception of life, therefore no better editors for these volumes could be selected."--Leonard Lawlor, University of Memphis

'Long absent from the center of discussion in Western philosophy, Bergson has recently made a reappearance. The Centennial Series of his works undertaken by Palgrave Macmillan thus comes at an opportune time, making it possible for those interested in Bergson's ideas t have access to newly annotated versions of several of his chief writings, freshly introduced and discussed. It is particularly good to see the republication of Mind-Energy, a treasure trove of Bergsonian insights long out of print.' - Pete A.Y. Gunter, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, University of North Texas

Product Description

Henri Bergson (1859-1941) is one of the truly great philosophers of the modernist period, and there is currently a major renaissance of interest in his unduly neglected texts and ideas amongst philosophers, literary theorists, and social theorists.
Creative Evolution (1907) is the text that made Bergson world-famous in his own lifetime; in it Bergson responds to the challenge presented to our habits of thought by modern evolutionary theory, and attempts to show that the theory of knowledge must have its basis in a theory of life.

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Product Details

Hardcover: 352 pages
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan; annotated edition edition (August 7, 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0230517218
ISBN-13: 978-0230517219
Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.3 x 1 inches
Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)

Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #610,079 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Surprise Me!

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First Sentence:
THE existence of which we are most assured and which we know best is unquestionably our own, for of every other object we have notions which may be considered external and superficial, whereas, of ourselves, our perception is internal and profound. Read the first page

Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
cinematographical mechanism, cinematographical method, radical finalism, evolutionist hypothesis, science isolates, concrete duration, unorganized matter, cerebral state, nervous elements, universal becoming, vegetable cell, real duration, pure mechanism, nervous centres, accidental variations, geometrical order, psychical state, evolution movement, inert matter

Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
God of Aristotle, New York, Platonic Ideas

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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Surprise Me!

Citations (learn more)

This book cites 17 books:

On the Origin of Species (Penguin Classics) by Charles Darwin on page 66, page 68, and page 70
The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin on page 66, page 68, and page 70
The Origin Of Species: 150th Anniversary Edition by Charles Darwin on page 66, page 68, and page 70
An Introduction to Metaphysics by Henri Bergson in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant on page 303, and page 380

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100 books cite this book:

Bergson and His Philosophy (Large Print Edition) by J. Alexander Gunn on 31 pages
Philosophy and the Adventure of the Virtual: Bergson and the Time of Life by Keith Ansell-Pearson on 13 pages
History of Philosophy, Volume IX: Maine de Biran to Sartre by Frederick Copleston on 10 pages
Theosophical Quarterly Magazine 1913-1914 by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky on 8 pages
Jeb, the Modern Job: The Cloning of Johnny by M.D. Dnald C. Austin on 7 pages

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43 of 51 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars the light shining between Heraclitus and Bohm, October 27, 1999

By	Frank Bierbrauer (Cardiff, Wales, UK) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Creative Evolution (Paperback)

Henri Bergson's seminal ``Creative Evolution'' starts off with the flowing movement so prevalent in his philosophy of the organism, one idea flows into the next in a smooth undivided motion. Not only does Bergson explain his work with analogies and examples supported by the biology of the time, thereby distancing himself from the purely intellectual pursuit of most philosohpy, trapped in the world of the mind, but he demonstrates his thought in the very way of exposition he uses throughout the book. One feels his thought is produced like a Mozart symphony, all at once with no corrections needed. This aptly demonstrates the idea of duration and time he proposes in this book. His influence is profound in thinkers such as David Bohm and Alfred North Whitehead which so to speak ``run with it'' in the parlance of baseball. This is a book worth reading twice for its rich display of creativity and also to reread sections not followed the first time. One does feel however that at times the flow is interrupted by disturbances in his mode of thinking leading to disjointed reading. Nonetheless, not only does he open a whole new way of thought free of dualism and the old patterns of mechanism, but he also expalins the reason for mechanistic thought itself.

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13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Recommended for fans of Rupert Sheldrake's theories, August 13, 2007

By	Gregory Olsen "renaissance man" (San Ramon, CA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Creative Evolution (Paperback)

Bergson's thesis is that Darwinian and Lamarkian evolution are only half the story and that there is a creative urge inherent in life that defines the direction of evolution. It is distinguished from Creationism in that his system does not posit and eschaton or final perfect form, nor an external agent (God).

It has some similarity with biologist Rupert Sheldrake's theory of morphic fields. In his theory, there is an energy field (as yet undetected by modern physics) that controls the shape of organic molecules, i.e., one protein is shaped one way and the same collection of atoms gets shaped another way under the same pH and temperature.

Aldous Huxley mentions Bergson's theory of consciousness several times in his writings. Bergson thinks that consciousness pervades everything, and that intellect serves as a filter that presents only what is comprehensible to mental categories. This has several implications. One is the possibility for a monistic metaphysic. The other is that it leaves open the possibility of perceiving an alternate reality (what excited Huxley).

Chapter 3 is about his metaphysics, which are not very clearly expressed. There appear to be avenues unexplored by him. What are the consequences of matter being infused with consciousness? Magic? Why is it that intellect and geometrical thinking is what produces objects in perception? What is the mechanism.

What does have value is his theory that chaos is not the absence of repeatability, but is a stochastic process that can be understood as an aggregate of individual "wills." This is used to support his vital theory of evolution. That each organism "wills" its variation in seemingly random fashion, but at a higher order, it produces the regularity of genera.

Chapter 4 is a critique of various philosophic systems after establishing his "cinematographic" theory of perception. His basic point is that matter is in continual flux, yet we are only able to perceive it as a sequence of discrete states, hence the illusion of permanence.

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28 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars the opus of the advocate of vitality...., May 16, 2000

By	Craig Chalquist, PhD, author of TERRAPSYCHOLO... (Bay Area, CA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

This review is from: Creative Evolution (Paperback)

Despite Lord Russell's criticism that "intuition works best in bats, bees, and Bergson," in this work Bergson not only finishes the uprooting of the Western and Platonic disembodied intellect (a deconstruction taken only so far by Kant), he presents us with the spectacle of unbridled life creatively shaping, not only its world, but itself in accord with its own telos: the need for eyesight creating the eye, so to speak. Difficult in places but a treasure, although one could wish he gave more credit to Nietzsche's obviously great impact on him. Jungians would do well to peruse Bergson too.