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Lessons for the Relationship of

Philosophy and Science From the
Legacy of Henri Bergson
Adam Riggio
Published online: 19 Feb 2015.

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From the Legacy of Henri Bergson, Social Epistemology: A Journal of Knowledge, Culture and Policy,
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Social Epistemology, 2015

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02691728.2014.971916

Lessons for the Relationship of

Philosophy and Science From the
Legacy of Henri Bergson

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Adam Riggio

One of the many narratives of twentieth century philosophy regards the relationship of
philosophy to science: the opinions and arguments over whether philosophy as a discipline should be an assistant, critic, or master over science, and what particular ways
philosophy could articulate these roles. One can interpret most of the major conflicts
and disciplinary divisions of philosophy as having to do with its relationship with
science. The conceptual roots of the general acceptability of a convergence of science
and metaphysics would appear to lie in the focus of both subjects, broadly conceived:
investigating the nature of existence. Yet, after the rise of post-modernism in many
humanities fields, dialogue between philosophy and science on many important issues
has become impossible, scientifically-minded intellectuals having no expectation that
humanities can contribute usefully to the disciplines of science.
Keywords: Henri Bergson; Philosophy and Science; Memory
One of the many narratives of twentieth century philosophy regards the relationship of philosophy to science: the opinions and arguments over whether philosophy as a discipline should be an assistant, critic, or master over science, and what
particular ways philosophy could articulate these roles. One can interpret most of
the major conflicts and disciplinary divisions of philosophy as having to do with
its relationship with science. The conceptual roots of the general acceptability of a
convergence of science and metaphysics would appear to lie in the focus of both
subjects, broadly conceived: investigating the nature of existence. Yet, after the rise
of post-modernism in many humanities fields, dialogue between philosophy and
science on many important issues has become impossible, scientifically-minded
intellectuals having no expectation that humanities can contribute usefully to the
Adam Riggio, Philosophy, McMaster University, Apt 601, 223 Jackson Street West, Hamilton, ON L8P 4R4,
Canada. Email: adamriggio@gmail.com
2015 Taylor & Francis

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A. Riggio

disciplines of science. This was the primary motivation of the Sokal Hoax, the contention, held with certainty, that the humanities were without rigor and could only
contribute empty stereotypes of ideology (Guillory 2002, 473475). Indeed, the
conceptual innovations of contemporary physics threaten metaphysics with obsolescence (Maudlin 2011, 120127).1 The existence of this contention has not prevented an important sub-discipline of the humanities, social epistemology, from
blending the boundaries of philosophy and social science to explore the nature of
science itself as a human phenomenon. Such new projects do not aim to validate a
post-modernist or anti-Western ideology, as was the contention of the Hoax, but
to describe the genuinely blurry boundaries of disciplines and interests in the contemporary ecology of knowledge (Collier 2012).
But the relationship of science and philosophy remains tense, even though their
stark separation is a product of only the last hundred or so years. Throughout the
1800s, the controversial view was that philosophy was separate from science, and it
was no big deal for scientists to write philosophy while philosophical specialists
similarly contributed to scientific discourses. One of the last major figures of this
era was Henri Bergson, who wrote as if philosophy and science were natural partners, different paths on the same search for truth. Yet, his stumbles in professional
and political conversation with Albert Einstein destroyed his career, and an additional casualty was to crack what was likely the first major schism between philosophy and science in the public eye. This essay is not a scholarly exegesis of
Bergsons philosophy, and does not aim to be a complete overview of his works. I
take Bergson as a case study, and examine his philosophy insofar as some elements
of it could have served as conditions for the disagreement with Einstein that was
the centerpiece of his reputations fall. This conflict was a Science War before the
now-commonplace nomenclature for a Science War even existed. I inquire how
Bergson incorporated scientific developments into his philosophy, and how his
own mistakes in philosophical and public life contributed to a notion that doing
so was illegitimate, hoping to reveal some subtle aspects of a Science War in this
prototypical case.

One Unmitigated Success: Matter and Memory

What is the relationship of mind to matter? Despite how few philosophers actually
believe in pure dualism, this division has become such a cliche of the discipline
that introductory survey courses treat the question as perfectly sensible. Bergson
conceives such a question as about the relation of matter with the action of thinking and recollection, the answer as rooted in the convergence of bodies and images
in memory. Bergson does not conceive of mind and matter as different substances,
as per philosophical tradition.2 Mind is constituted through the material affects of
our bodys history as action and interaction changes us; that history itself is memory (Bergson 2004, 1213). When Bergson writes that the past is real, he means
that a bodys history is just as much a part of it as we commonly think our arms

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Social Epistemology

and kidneys are parts of us. Any living body is only capable of action in the world
insofar as its ability to recollect literally sorts and brings to the present the relevant
parts of ones memory/history (Bergson 2004, 88).
This innovative conception of the human relation to memory and history is
justified through a long, clear, and tightly reasoned argument that runs for most
of Matter and Memory, but equally important to that argument is Bergsons reference to empirical research on the action of the brain and perceptual system. His
argument for the brains role as a perceptual sorting mechanism whose function is
to connect properly a present situation with relevant parts of ones history instead
of a simple storage system is justified by multiple and varied references to neurological and psychological studies that were at the forefront of his days science. He
cites and paraphrases studies of aphasia from the top French and German scientists
of his time, to describe the brain as properly matching perceptions with history. In
the case of aphasia, the brains sorting goes wrong for linguistic parts of ones history (Bergson 2004, 99100). Bergson is intimately familiar with another neural
disability the study of which was at the cutting edge of his eras science, as a footnote references a strange, newly discovered condition that in the German literature
is called Dyslexie (Bergson 2004, 101). Studies of apraxia, the disorder of practical action at the level of motor planning, help ground his account of how every
perception extends into some kind of bodily movement (Bergson 2004, 110112).
This firm foundation in the empirical science of his time lends credence to his
argument: he is talking about the physical system of the human organism and
arguing for a very peculiar and unintuitive account of its relationship with memory, history, and the past. Throughout Matter and Memory, Bergson conducts
himself in a manner that we today would consider a model of the scientificallyinformed philosopher: a builder of innovative arguments and concepts that break
decisively from tired stereotypes and out of date common sense about reality, a
philosophical articulation of a detailed, nuanced, and attentive understanding of
contemporary scientific discoveries. So as I follow Bergson into the twentieth century, I must ask the following questions about the transformation of his relationship with science: What went wrong? And how?

Bergsons Concept of Intelligence

Regarding his use of his times science, Bergsons methods in 1907s Creative
Evolution have not changed from those from Matter and Memory. The key difference from our perspective today is that Bergson is no longer writing about psychology, a science where many hypotheses and discoveries of his time have borne
out to be largely correct. He instead writes of evolutionary theory, biology, and
ethology, sciences where the cutting edge of the 1900s have largely been left
behind. Contemporary Bergson scholarship reads Creative Evolution as developing
subtle concepts of change as a continuous process of becoming whose durations
constitute time, conceived as real change, the creation of qualitative differences.

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A. Riggio

These genuinely valuable concepts do underlie the books arguments, but its explicit topic is a critique of evolutionary theory that subsequent developments in biology have rendered obsolete. This essay is not about the philosophically productive
elements of Bergsons thought, but understanding how the public reception of his
philosophy and his interactions with global intellectual communities ruined his
reputation in a proto-Science War.
Bergson draws major philosophical conclusions about the nature of life from
studies of the behaviour of insects, particularly from the contrast of their mechanistic behaviour with the self-conscious foresight and planning of humans and
other mammals. In particular, he describes a particular species of Hymenoptera
that is able to sting a caterpillar in the exact proper place on its body to leave it
paralyzed but still alive, the best state in which to feed such a caterpillar to its larvae. The wasp does not have the cognitive faculty for planning, and the accuracy
rate of the sting is too high to accommodate the error frequencies typical of
self-consciously planned behaviour, or in Bergsons terminology, intelligence.
Intelligence, to which he sometimes refers as intellect, he defines in his technical
terminology as the faculty of knowledge that acts in the world by building maps of
it, plotting bodies, movements, and their relations among each other in an imagined or diagrammed representative space, and planning action using the knowledge
of the map (Bergson 1998, 173175). Beyond this planning aspect alone, Bergsons
faculty of intelligence uses these maps assembled from phenomena represented
through analysis into discrete units to manipulate the matter of the world so that
it moves according to the structure of the maps we have built. Mammals learn
about the world by mapping it, then act to make the world better resemble the
maps (Bergson 2007, 6166).
Instinct, by contrast, is a natural sympathy of an acting body with the body
upon which is acts, a practical unity of the two bodies in a movement that constitutes a relation between them. In this case, that movement is a poisoning sting of
a wasp to a caterpillar. The term sympathy has no moral content in this context,
but is only about how a motion executed in accord with an object achieves that
accord without the power of foresight (Bergson 1998, 176). Intelligence is the
mode of knowledge of bodies that learns by analysis, breaking a continuous
motion into discrete phases and stages, and similarly discrete periods of transition
between such phases (Bergson 1998, 313314). This analytic process, says Bergson,
creates knowledge useful for worldly practice, practical action being the motive for
which knowledge evolved in the first place (Fujita 2007, 118).3 Yet, analyzing the
continuous motion of the world into mathematically discrete chunks falsifies the
way the world actually is (Montebello 2007, 9394). According to Bergsons
thought, the world is durational, a single, vastly complex movement, a smooth
movement of many and varied internal changes, just as experience is itself a single
smoothly moving continuum of motion constituting a multiplicity of changes
(Bergson 1998, 13). As far as Bergson is concerned, philosophy and the Western
scientific worldview in general have been misstepping on this matter consistently
ever since Zenos paradoxes. He considers the paradoxes the most obvious case of

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the analytic method of intelligence misapplied. The fundamental mistake of Zeno,

and for Bergson all Western philosophy afterward, was to think a continuous
movement was composed of discrete parts (Bergson 2001, 113114). In the words
of the older Bergson, Zenos (and philosophys) mistake was to think that the
practically useful knowledge gained through analysis captured the true nature of
the world. It is critical to remember that because this mistake lies with Zeno, its
inheritors are not only future philosophers, but future scientists: the mistake was
made long before the various special sciences slowly spun away from philosophy
proper, so is common to the development of both science and philosophy. Positive science is, in fact, a work of pure intellect (Bergson 1998, 195), the entire
institution essentially stuck in a single mode of knowledge, thanks to the heritage
of Zeno: analysis of the continuous whole of reality into falsely discrete units.

Intuition: Self-Conscious Sympathy

If the mammalian mode of knowledge is inherently in the form of intelligence,
then a central problem for Bergson is how to progress the powers of human thinking beyond its methods of analysis into discrete units and phases. His answer is a
kind of union of instinct and intelligence: intuition, the physical sympathy of the
faculty of intelligence with the movement of the universe itself. Yet, the nature of
intelligence, as Bergson divides the world, appears anathema to any sympathy
resembling instinct. Action, following the method of intelligence, only occurs after
gathering and analyzing knowledge, where intuition constitutes breaking from
regimes of facts and knowledge to which we have habituated ourselves (Gunter
1978, 170). Intuition is a means to catch the bird in flight: to follow motion,
duration, change of all kinds without deforming them, by analyzing movements
and changes into static, discrete parts (Gunter 1976, 245). Intuition is the perception of motion or duration on its own terms, experiencing everyday reality in the
very mobility which is its essence (Bergson 2007, 19). The analytical and mathematical techniques of humanitys version of the faculty of intelligence generate
practically useful knowledge. Yet, when we use these techniques to consider the
truly fundamental nature of reality (which Bergson takes to be philosophys raison
detre), they lead us only to false problems, like Zenos paradoxes. Only intuition,
says Bergson, can guide us to the true problems of existence (Deleuze 2004, 22).
To gain knowledge by intuition is matter of two processes: first, as in instinct, a
literal oneness with nature, uniting your own perception of the world with the
worlds own movement; second, the contribution of intelligence, being able to
articulate that knowledge as clearly as you may describe an ordinary street scene in
your neighbourhood (Bergson 2007, 104105). Because intuition is fully knowledgeable sympathy with movement itself, for Bergson reality itself is the continuity
of motion from one radically creative break to another.
Here one can see the seeds of Bergsons destruction. I will start with his
conception of evolution, as it was on this project that these aspects of duration

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A. Riggio

came to the forefront. When Gilles Deleuze revived interest in Bergsons thinking,
his reading of Creative Evolution focussed on the older mans conceptions of time.
But the book itself was conceived, composed, and promoted to the public as a
philosophical critique of evolutionary theory: every major scientific theory of the
time about the nature of lifenot only Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and vitalists like
Hans Driesch and Johannes Reinke, but the simple Darwinian orthodoxy of
Herbert SpencerBergson attacked. His opposition to Darwinism is most important for this essay, because Bergson attacked the idea that evolution operated gradually. To Bergson, a gradualist conception of evolution could not account for the
variety and radical changes in Earths animal forms, evident from fossil records.
There is radical contingency in progress, incommensurability between what goes
before and what follows, as each new species or form of life that develops, just as
in Bergsons conception of movement and intuition, constitutes a set of radical
breaks from previous regimes of life (Bergson 1998, 2829). The evolution of life
displays genuine change, departures in development that are totally unprecedented
in what came before.
The problem is that, subsequent to Bergsons death in 1941, empirical research
discovered that evolution is more complex than he realized. Reading Creative
Evolution today, one is struck that there is no mention of bacteria. Bergson conceives of the evolution of life on Earth as a series of radical breaks as organisms
deal with practical problems in different ways. He discusses how there was once a
common ancestor of plants and animals, and that this commonality lies in the
practical problem of gathering the energy to live. Whatever this common ancestor
looked like, its evolution could diverge, as the organisms that would eventually
become plants changed in a direction embracing torpor, or being rooted to one
place, while animals changed to embrace locomotion (Bergson 1998, 5962). For
Bergson, evolution works by means of these bifurcatory leaps:
The cardinal error which, from Aristotle onwards, has vitiated most of the philosophies of nature, is to see in vegetative, instinctive, and rational life, three successive
degrees of development of one and the same tendency, whereas they are three divergent directions of an activity that has split up as it grew. (Bergson 1998, 135)

Matter splits into inert and self-moving, living matter splits into torpor and locomotion, locomotive animals split into instinctual and intelligent, and we reach
today. Each of these bifurcations are divergences as the creatures develop different
qualities in their tendencies to motion.
Yet, biological scientists have since discovered, in piecemeal steps and grand
paradigm shifts, that for all these radical changes, bacterial evolution has laid the
ground for an underlying stability. Much of the experimentation in Earths biological history was completed by gradualist evolution among bacteria before multicellular species even developed. This is why, for example, various versions of
rhodopsin are the active chemicals in almost all animals and many bacteria with
eyes or light detectors of some kind (Morris 2003, 170173). Bacteria can change
their genetic code and cellular makeup very radically within a generation or less

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(as some can change their genetic code as individuals while still alive, effectively
changing species within their own lifetimes). As far as bacteria are concerned, there
is no difference between gradualist evolution and the bold leaps Bergson thought
necessary: a small, gradual change in genome can result in a qualitatively awesome
change for a bacterium. Continuing to evolve at such a frenetic pace for the three
billion years in which the life of Earths ecosystems was entirely bacterial can
accomplish an enormous amount. Animal and plant forms may change radically
from time to time, but the underlying architecture of the cellular frameworks has
largely remained constant, the outcome of billions of years of bacterial mutation
free from the compromises of life as part of a multicellular organism. Bergson
knew nothing about this, simply because most of this knowledge of bacteria was
developed only after his death.

Bergsons Conceptions of Philosophy and Physics

Not only was Bergsons explicit account of evolution thrown for a loop thanks to
what we now know about bacteria, his conception of time faced a similar challenge
in his own lifetime: the confrontation of Bergsons theory of time with Einsteins
relativity. But this confrontation is more complicated than it may first appear.
That initial appearance is a meeting of Einstein and Bergson on 6 April 1922 at
Paris Societe Francaise de Philosophie to discuss relativity, as he was launching
his book on the new physics, Duration and Simultaneity. The enthusiastic public
reception of Creative Evolution had made Bergson an intellectual celebrity with a
reputation rivaling Einsteins. The 6 April meeting became remarkable in typical
histories of French philosophy for striking a death blow to Bergsons career. His
discussion with Einstein supposedly showed that Bergson was incapable of understanding physics, even though Bergson never openly acknowledged any shortcomings on his part, writing that those in the scientific community who mocked his
work had simply failed to understand him (Canales 2005, 1184). Such apparent
arrogance did no diplomatic work, even though Bergson only meant to express
that many of his critics had never read his books. Einsteins dismissal of Bergson
(or rather how his dismissal was popularly received in the community of scientists
and scholars) is the earliest example of a Science War. In this case, there was open
hostility on the part of scientists to an attempt by an intellectual from the humanities to contribute to their discourse. Scholars like Bergson who would dare to take
part in science were held to be, in the words of Canales, retrograde, irrational,
and ignorant (2005, 1169).
Here is the basis of Bergsons side in the matter. Philosophical thought he held
to be a more genuine empiricism than mathematical science, because mathematics
reasons through the relationships of symbols that represent generalities, abstractions from the singular individual bodies of the world. Bergson understood the
symbolic representation of bodies in terms of the general as quantitative knowledge, where time is understood as just another dimension like space. Philosophy,

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in contrast, operates through intuition in the sense I described above: the sympathy by which one is transported into the interior of an object in order to coincide
with what there is unique and consequently inexpressible in it (Bergson 2007,
135). Here, was the realm of qualitative knowledge, the knowledge where time is
understood as duration. The mathematics of relativity, in part, map how simultaneity changes with the acceleration of one frame of reference in comparison to
another frame of reference. Bergson was not disputing this notion in his exchange
with Einstein, nor was this a goal of Duration and Simultaneity. With regard to
each of these frames of reference, Bergsons whole thesis consists in demonstrating that they can only be livable or lived in the perspective of a single time
(Deleuze 1988, 81). The mathematics of relativity theory could map relations
among various frames of references, but a person can only experience directly one
frame of reference at a time: her own. The kind of knowledge of time people typically look to scientific tools like different kinds of clocks to provide is of a very
different character from what is gained through Bergsons intuitive method.
Bertrand Russell, to choose one prominent example, wrote in 1912, our feeling of
duration or of the lapse of time is a notoriously unsafe guide as to the time that
has elapsed by the clock (Russell 2001, 16).4 This holds not only for measuring
elapsed time, but for any kind of knowledge of time that requires the measurement
of its quantity. Science and its mathematical methods discover knowledge of generalities through representing experience in quantitative ways.
Bergson never saw the purpose of intuition, or of philosophy, as providing precise quantitative measurements of the passage of time. Quantitatively measuring
times flow is to mathematize time, treating a continuous flow as if composed of
discrete units. Such mathematical conception is inadequate to the continuous character of the process of living (Olkowski 2012, 1821). Yet, Bergson did not consider science and philosophy opposed, but complementary. Knowledge could
proceed through two methods, mathematics with its abstract, quantified generalities, and philosophy with its intuitions of experience as it is lived, intuitions that
express sympathy with the movement of bodies themselves in the flow of time
confined to a single frame of reference. Mathematics are for problems of measuring discrete quantities, while philosophys intuitions are for knowledge of reality in
its continuous motion, as it is lived. If you want to measure elapsed time, build an
accurate clock. If you want to describe the relationship between two or more
frames of reference accelerating at different rates relative to each other, use the
mathematics of relativity theory. These are the methods that Bergson ascribed to
the faculty of intelligence: knowledge through observational measurement and
analysis. If you want to understand some aspect of the subjective experience of
time, then Bergsons intuitive method of sympathy with the object will work best.5
The passage of time in experience, in contrast to its measurement, is always the
same for everyone, no matter ones frame of reference. So Bergsons philosophy of
time and Einsteins relativity theory have entirely different domains. Einsteins scientific theory builds mathematical representations of how time and simultaneity

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vary by frame of reference. Bergsons philosophy developed a concept of duration

to describe the quality of times flow in experience.

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The Wrecking of Henri Bergson: Popular Ignorance of a Subtle Thinker

So we have a harmonious picture here of two clearly defined domains of
knowledge: mathematical science specializing in understanding the quantitative
aspects of the universe, and philosophical intuition specializing in understanding
the qualitative aspects of experience, more specifically, how the flow of time operates in living systems. At this point, the highest forms of these living systems are
self-conscious human subjects, but philosophical intuition applies not only to
human subjectivity, but to the objective development of life. The respective
domains of philosophical intuition and mathematical science are not the subjective
and the objective, but life and matter. This delineation of philosophical intuitions
proper domain is why Bergson can legitimately discuss the psychology of human
memory, the evolution of life on Earth culminating (thus far) in self-conscious
humanity, and the implications of mystical subjective experience for broader
thought and society (Bergson 1935, 248249). Yet, Bergson found himself dismissed after his conflict with Einstein. The details of his own philosophical corpus
offer profound re-evaluations of the boundary of subjective and objective. Even so,
his description of philosophy as the domain of intuition, distinct from that of science as the domain of intelligence, was popularly perceived and remembered as
the sign of anti-intellectualism.
Bergson gave himself one specific problem, which was that he conceived of
mathematics as unable, conceptually, to comprehend the true nature of change
because mathematical measurements of time split what was properly a continuous
flow into discrete units like picoseconds, minutes, and decades. Conceiving time
this way, he reasoned, leaves one vulnerable to Zenos paradoxes based on the
impossibility of smoothly transitioning from one discrete moment to another.
Regarding this, he saw philosophy as superior to science (Bergson 2007, 610).
Even so, this moment of personal arrogance on philosophys behalf may be enough
to get scientists laughing for a while, but was not sufficient to account for the
vitriol that Bergson endured. Russell smeared Bergsons philosophy for an
anti-intellectualism that expressed the same social fabric which was the condition
for the popular embrace of the puppet fascist Vichy government and its antiSemitism (Russell 1961, 756757). This was a cruel insult to Bergson, who only
five years before the publication of Russells History, died from a chill picked up
while he stood outside in the rain for hours to register as a Jew with the Nazi
occupation force in Paris. Declaring Bergson an anti-intellectual is wildly inappropriate, given the incredible depth of research that went into his preparation for
Matter and Memory and Creative Evolution. It amounts to an almost-juvenile misreading of his distinguishing intuition from intelligence, completely ignoring the
technical meaning Bergson gives to the terms in his own works, which I have
already described. Yet, thanks in part to the popular success of Russells History,

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A. Riggio

this became the dominant image of Bergsons thought in English-speaking

philosophy forever after. Even in continental-influenced traditions, Bergson would
today be at most a footnote were it not for Gilles Deleuzes lifelong advocacy of
his philosophy. This animosity has a greater cause than the stereotypical hostility
of analytic to continental philosophers, as when Russell was writing his History in
the mid-1940s, this was a more broad analytic opposition to metaphysics in the
style of F. H. Bradley and the obscurantist style of Heidegger. The eclipse of
Bergson himself had little to do with this overhyped division, and more to do with
his conflict with Einstein instead.
Bergsons conflict with Einstein began with their disagreement over relativity
theory, and Bergsons own confusing statements in Duration and Simultaneity certainly gave no help to his case, nor did his attitude that his critics in the community of physicists simply did not understand him, even if the reason for their lack
of understanding was a refusal to read his works (Canales 2005, 1179). Russells
facile description of his philosophy as anti-intellectual certainly bears the marks of
a superficial skimming of the Bergson corpus at best. But what really drove
Bergson into total public obscurity from the heights where he once lived was the
disdain of Albert Einstein, who by the time of their encounter in the 1920s, was
already becoming, in the eyes of the public, the embodiment of physics itself. By
the time Einstein left Berlin, he had nothing to say to Bergson, and as far as the
history of philosophy is concerned, this was because Bergson revealed his stupidity
in misunderstanding relativity theory. Their scientific disagreement did play a role,
but their conflict was exacerbated by politics. After the First World War, the League of Nations appointed Bergson president of its organization, the International
Commission for Intellectual Cooperation (CIC), whose purpose was to promote
peace among countries through friendly intellectual exchange. Bergson personally
tried to court Einstein to play a more active role in the CIC, but he failed to curb
the anti-German public sentiments of most of the CICs members as the organization became increasingly France-centric, with an overwhelmingly French membership and its headquarters in Paris. As Einstein pointed out the hypocrisy of
continuing to allow nationalist sentiments to be so freely expressed in a body
nominally dedicated to international cooperation, Bergson continued courting him
to take a leadership role in the CIC, acting as if there was nothing untoward
happening in the organization. Bergson was unable to see the hypocrisy of the
organization of which he was president, even though Einstein was literally the only
German that the CIC had ever approached for membership (Canales 2005,
11731175).
Jimena Canales article, Einstein, Bergson, and the Experiment that Failed,
tells this institutional story in more detail than I can here. For now, it is enough
to be clear that the philosophical disagreement between Einstein and Bergson that
ultimately ruined Bergsons professional reputation was exacerbated by Bergsons
political naivete in handling the CIC, for which Einstein rightly punished him.
Canales cites Einsteins letters where he describes what he saw as Bergsons
misunderstanding of relativity theory in explaining why he left the CIC, but even

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11

her reference to physics is politicized, becoming more metaphor than mathematics.

She quotes a letter from Einstein to Marie Curie, Do not think for a moment that
I consider my own fellow countrymen superior and that I misunderstand the othersthat would scarcely be consistent with the theory of relativity (Canales 2005,
1175). Not only did Bergson value concrete experience over the abstract generalities of mathematical science, the essence of Einsteins conflict with him was that
the experience Bergson valued was specifically his own. Bergsons behaviour as
CIC president displays his self-centered attitude: he cannot understand how he
could offend Einstein, how his intentions for peaceful cooperation across national
boundaries could be subverted by the prejudices of those who surrounded him,
and how his devotion to his intentions blinded him to the nationalism of his colleagues. Bergsons collision with Einstein need not have sealed his reputations end
and marginalized his philosophy for decades. If only he had been able to understand why others misunderstood him.

What We Can Learn From the Wreckage

Henri Bergson sparked one of the first modern Science Wars. My case study
regarding Bergson offers three lessons in the relations for the future relations of
the sciences and humanities among their communities of practitioners and in the
perception of the general public: (1) Maintaining professional networks is more
important to the reception of an idea than the strength of the idea itself; (2) Political conflict can be more important in contributing to a reputation than a persons
work, but are often made invisible in professional histories; and (3) The relationship of the sciences and humanities disciplines can only be productive when
guided by a humble spirit. One way networks and philosophy integrate is seen
through the reception of Duration and Simultaneity. The public meetings in 1923
between Einstein and Bergson, the worlds biggest intellectual celebrities of the
time, to discuss the theory of relativity resulted in the two men entirely talking
past each other. But in the public eye, Einstein emerged far superior from their
conflict because experimental investigations confirmed relativity theorys hypotheses, and the science underlay remarkable new technological inventions. Bergsons
arguments were widely interpreted as an attack on Einsteins physics, because the
Frenchman was never clear until it was too late to salvage his reputation about his
own theory being a supplement to mathematical physics instead of competition.
The broadest aspect of what this situation can teach us is that the various sciences
all have their proper domains of application. You would not ask a physicist to
explain the ecological interactions of ant populations with different species of
fungi, and you would not ask a biochemist to explain the physics of neutron stars.
Experts in one domain must be humble when conversing with experts in other
domains.
Yet, the core of the lesson is how professional mistakes and liabilities exacerbated a philosophical communication breakdown. Einsteins most fiery frustration

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12

A. Riggio

with Bergson lay in their political disagreements over the direction of the CIC,
because Einstein did not believe that Bergson genuinely failed to perceive the antiGerman and anti-reconciliation attitudes of his peers. His philosophy did not
cause this conflict to escalate to the level it did; his networks and professional
associations did. Because this discussion was not over scientific concerns, it is not
part of the textbook description of Einsteins conflict with Bergson. Yet, this political disagreement, apart from Canales scholarship, has been virtually forgotten in
standard accounts of Bergsons career. The textbook account sees the vitriol as
entirely philosophical in origin, because professional networks are not usually
taken to be significant causal factors for philosophical developments. Talking past
each other on relativity theory was a gentlemens disagreement; the political
dimension of their relationship made things personal. So the first lesson is that we
must not forget that problems and events which occur separately from intellectual
disagreements can be forgotten when writing the history of thought. As a result,
anger is misattributed and events are remembered unfairly, needlessly exacerbating
conflict between disciplines.
Another aspect of this conclusion has implications for research methods in philosophy and other humanities disciplines. Bergson assembled all the investigations
of his career as a single argument, taking decades to work through. It is an
argument with conclusions from previous publications being used as premises for
future investigations. Take the following two examples, simplified so that decadeslong arguments can fit into a single paragraph. The conclusion of Time and Free
Will that it is impossible to split a duration of time into discrete parts without
completely qualitatively altering the nature of that duration is a premise for his
argument in Creative Evolution that no science based on mathematical analysis can
comprehend time as it is lived in experience. His conclusions in Creative Evolution
that species evolved as experiments by a vital force (akin to gravity or electromagnetism) to diversify and intensify creativity is a premise for his argument in Two
Sources of Morality and Religion that the mystical prophecy of religious visionaries
is the leading creative force in the current state of biological evolution on Earth
because they embody that vital force. His argument against Zenos paradoxes in
Time and Free Will showed that any attempt to measure a continuous motion by
analysis into discrete elements would lead to absurdities, distinguishing philosophical intuition from mathematical science, and implying intuitions superiority in
the domain of living creatures physical and evolutionary movements.
Thanks to this distinction, Bergson conceived of philosophy as better qualified
than mathematical science over the domain of life. This is why he could critique
the evolutionary theories of the nineteenth century, and the result was his most
popular and intellectually successful book on its release, Creative Evolution. Yet,
empirical discoveries about the existence, prevalence, and evolutionary capacities
of the bacteria family of Earths organisms proved his valid argument from true
premises to be false. The premises of Time and Free Will about the phenomenal
experience of time were still true, and all the inferences he subsequently made
through every one of his major books through the following forty years were all

Social Epistemology

13

valid. But subsequently discovered facts, in this case about bacteria, turned out to
be relevant to the matter of his argument. Bergson sought to engage the disciplines
of science as equal partners to philosophy, a task which we can accomplish. But he
conceived of argument and intuition as the methods of philosophy, and these are
inadequate to contribute to scientific and empirical discussions. An argument, no
matter how comprehensive its scope, still requires input from intellectual networks
involving other disciplines. Philosophys practitioners must be aware that their
arguments and intuitions must be integrated with wider professional networks and
the ideas they can supply for the sake of further evidence and ongoing critique of
arguments and ideas within their own discipline.

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Acknowledgements
Thanks are due to Neil McLaughlin of McMaster University, John McLevey and
Allyson Stokes of University of Waterloo, and James Collier of Virginia Tech for
their thoughtful contributions, feedback, and encouragement in the preparation of
this essay.

Notes
[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

[5]

I am thinking in particular of the intuitively bizarre implications of quantum entanglement

on long-accepted accounts of causality. What appears intuitively true is no longer a sign of
the truth of a scientific principle, even though philosophers continue to rely on intuitions
and obviousness as unproblematic grounds for their arguments.
Of course there are notable exceptions to the separation of mind and matter, such as the
philosophy of Spinoza. However, these are minority opinions through much of the history
of philosophy, and are quite idiosyncratic in their understanding of substance, matter, and
mind compared to the majority of thinkers prior to Bergson.
I rely on secondary material to help me make succinct points about Bergsons philosophy
without getting too bogged down in textual analysis that would detract from my main
point. I take all of these interpretations as providing basically reliable accounts. After all, if
their interpretations were not plausible and reasonable, they would not have been published. Even the work of Deleuze, which adapts Bergsons thought to newer problems and
contexts, is based in a more comprehensive reading than I have space to engage in here.
Although multiple references to Russell occur throughout the essay, his specific relationship
with Bergson is not a central focus, only Russells nature as a reasonable weathervane of
popular intellectual opinion.
It would be worth remarking that Bergsons focus on intuition to gain knowledge of subjective experience is similar, at least by the sound of it, to Edmund Husserls phenomenology. It would be an interesting philosophical project to trace similarities and possible
mutual influences between the two, but that is not the project of this essay.

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