SAT写作素材之 Henri Bergson’s The Creative Mind

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SAT作文素材 Henri Bergson’s The Creative Mind

Henri Bergson’s The Creative Mind: An Introduction to Metaphysics (1946) is a

collection of essays and lectures concerning the nature of intuition, explaining

how intuition can be used as a philosophical method. Intuition is described as a

method of 'thinking in duration' which reflects the continuous flow of reality.

Bergson distinguishes between intuitive and conceptual thinking, explaining how

intuition and intellect may be combined to produce a dynamic knowledge of

reality.

Bergson distinguishes between two forms of time: pure time and mathematical

time. Pure time is real duration. Mathematical time is measurable duration. Real

time is continuous and indivisible. Mathematical time is divisible into units or

intervals which do not reflect the flow of real time.

According to Bergson, real time cannot be analyzed mathematically. To measure

time is to try to create a break or disruption in time. In order to try to

understand the flow of time, the intellect forms concepts of time as consisting

of defined moments or intervals. But to try to intellectualize the experience of

duration is to falsify it. Real duration can only be experienced by

intuition.

In the intellectual representation of time, a succession of distinct states

or events is presented as a spatialized form of time. Time is conceptualized as

an ordered arrangement of defined events, rather than as an endless flow of

experience in an indivisible continuity. The intellect analyzes time as having

measurable duration, but the flow of real time can only be known by

intuition.

Bergson says that reality has extension as well as duration. However, space

is not a void or vacuum which is filled by reality. Things are not in space,

space is in things. Thus, emptiness can only be conceptualized by suppressing a

space-occupying reality. Similarly, nothingness can only be conceptualized by

suppressing the awareness of being. According to Bergson, emptiness cannot be

directly perceived, it can only be conceptualized.

Bergson also argues that intellect and intuition are capable of different

kinds of knowledge. Scientific principles are intellectual, while metaphysical

principles are intuitive. However, science and philosophy can be combined to

produce knowledge that is both intellectual and intuitive. Such knowledge can

unify divergent perceptions of reality.

The existence of time may explain the indeterminateness of things. Time as

duration may explain why indeterminate things may later be able to be

determined. Things that can be determined may also become indeterminate. If time

did not exist, all things could (theoretically) be determined simultaneously.

The indeterminateness of things means that the outcome of some events may

change, and that there may be freedom of action. Freedom can be experienced by

direct intuition.