Lendle

This digital book includes an annotated bibliography on works by Henri Bergson (added 2011).


Published 1911
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER I

THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE—MECHANISM AND TELEOLOGY

Of duration in general—Unorganized bodies and abstract
time—Organized bodies and real duration—Individuality and
the process of growing old

Of transformism and the different ways of interpreting it—Radical
mechanism and real duration: the relation of biology to
physics and chemistry—Radical finalism and real duration:
the relation of biology to philosophy

The quest of a criterion—Examination of the various theories
with regard to a particular example—Darwin and insensible
variation—De Vries and sudden variation—Eimer and
orthogenesis—Neo-Lamarckism and the hereditability of
acquired characters

Result of the inquiry—The vital impetus


CHAPTER II

THE DIVERGENT DIRECTIONS OF THE EVOLUTION OF
LIFE—TORPOR, INTELLIGENCE, INSTINCT

General idea of the evolutionary process—Growth—Divergent
and complementary tendencies—The meaning of progress and of
adaptation

The relation of the animal to the plant—General tendency of
animal life—The development of animal life

The main directions of the evolution of life: torpor, intelligence,
instinct

The nature of the intellect

The nature of instinct

Life and consciousness—The apparent place of man in nature

CHAPTER III

ON THE MEANING OF LIFE—THE ORDER OF NATURE
AND THE FORM OF INTELLIGENCE

Relation of the problem of life to the problem of knowledge—The
method of philosophy—Apparent vicious circle of the method
proposed—Real vicious circle of the opposite method

Simultaneous genesis of matter and intelligence—Geometry
inherent in matter—Geometrical tendency of the intellect—Geometry
and deduction—Geometry and induction—Physical laws

Sketch of a theory of knowledge based on the analysis of the
idea of Disorder—Two opposed forms of order: the problem
of genera and the problem of laws—The idea of
“disorder” an oscillation of the intellect between the two
kinds of order

Creation and evolution—Ideal genesis of matter—The origin
and function of life—The essential and the accidental in the
vital process and in the evolutionary movement—Mankind—The
life of the body and the life of the spirit


CHAPTER IV

THE CINEMATOGRAPHICAL MECHANISM OF THOUGHT AND THE
MECHANISTIC ILLUSION—A GLANCE AT THE HISTORY OF
SYSTEMS—REAL BECOMING AND FALSE EVOLUTIONISM

Sketch of a criticism of philosophical systems, based on the
analysis of the idea of Immutability and of the idea of
“Nothing”—Relation of metaphysical problems to the idea
of “Nothing”—Real meaning of this idea

Form and Becoming

The philosophy of Forms and its conception of Becoming—Plato
and Aristotle—The natural trend of the intellect

Becoming in modern science: two views of Time

The metaphysical interpretation of modern science: Descartes,
Spinoza, Leibniz

The Criticism of Kant

The evolutionism of Spencer

INDEX