Bergson’s Creative Evolution theory was created to help tackle the major dilemmas of Darwinism. What Bergson tried to do here was to enlighten us to the fact that Darwinism gave us no proper explanation for the source of new genetic information from which natural selection could select. Bergson’s theory projected an idea that used a non – Darwinian mechanism to produce new genetic information that allowed well documented mechanisms, like natural selection to function. (Bothamley, Jennifer. 2002. Dictionary of theories. Canton, MI: Visible Ink Press) In effect what Bergson is doing is trying to make a philosophy that combines an explanation for both the connection of all living beings and the discontinuity of the quality of evolutionary process.
Bergson had many problems with Darwin’s theory of evolution particularly that of irreducible complexity. That is, a multi cellular organ is a functional thing, a whole, made up of coordinated parts and if one or any of these parts varied, the functioning of this whole would be impaired. (Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution, page 98) From this Bergson concluded that due to this irreducible complexity, every single stage of any animals development, all of its parts must have varied ‘contemporaneously’ for effective functioning to be preserved. (Goudge, T. A. 1967. Henri Bergson in Encyclopedia of philosophy. Vol. 1. New York: Macmillan) However for Bergson it was completely implausible to suggest, as Darwin did, that such functions could have been random, He thought that some higher power, as it were, other than the mechanism of natural selection must have been at work, in order to preserve stability of functioning through consecutive alterations of form.
Darwinism for Bergson had failed to show why life evolved in the specific direction of greater complexity. Bergson viewed that, “The animate forms that first appeared were therefore of extreme simplicity. They were probably tiny masses of scarcely differentiated protoplasm, outwardly resembling the amoeba observable to-day,” (Henri Bergson. "The Divergent Directions of the Evolution of Life -- Torpor, Intelligence, Instinct", Chapter 2 in Creative Evolution, Page 98, they were simple in character and adapted to their environments, why did the evolution process not stop here? But instead life continued to complicate itself. For Bergson in Creative Evolution, the mechanism of Natural selection did not answer the problem that something must have driven the evolutionary process on to higher and more complex levels, that driving force for Bergson was his élan vital.
Thanks Terence that’s a really interesting post, and it’s one that I think shows a good representation of Bergson’s ideas in another context.
ReplyDeleteI have a couple of questions for you to think about in this context, which I think will be useful in thinking of the evolutionary problem.
1. How does Bergson account for the jump from matter to the inanimate? This is precisely what vitalism is, a ‘higher power’ as you say which provides the spark for matter to work, is there really an interconnection of all living beings. Why the distinction between non-living matter and living vitality.
2. For evolution to work it takes time, tons and tons of time. If there was no different forms of species subject to minimal differences over times then there would be no difference and hence no evolution. Different species imply quantity and numeracy, if there was diversity, and hence a repetition of mechanical space then there would no difference between say me and the original tetrapods!!! If you think for example of flowers, they have spread as much pollen as possible in order to give themselves the best chance of reproduction.
3. Evolution as Daniel Dennett says is ‘mindless,’ it is just blind mechanical repetition, it doesn’t need any divine ‘skyhook’, whether duree or otherwise, to do its work for it.