Creative Evolution

The fullest expression of the distinguished French philosopher's ideas about the meaning of life. In propounding his distinctive theory of evolution, Bergson considers nature and intelligence, examines mechanisms of thought and illusion, and presents a criticism of philosophical systems from those of the ancients to those of his 19th-century contemporaries.

INTRODUCTION
  CHAPTER I THE EVOLUTION OFLIFE-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 oposed 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 anaysis 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 evolution of Spencer
INDEX