About this title: Originally published in 1911, Henri Bergson's treatise on evolution challenges and elaborates on the philosophy of the time, particular the theoretical models of Aristotle and the natural selection model of Darwin. Concerning himself with issues like the relation between plants and animals and the "thought" behind biological change, Bergson sees the various forms of animals as being one organism that does not have to choose which new direction to go in, it simply splits and goes both ways. The evolution of man is marked by his ability to think without acting, while in nature thinking and ...
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Description: Good. 1998-Paperback----Used-Good-Hall Street Books proudly ships from Brooklyn, NY. All orders are processed and shipped within 24 hours, M-F. 100% money back No-Worry guarantee with expedited delivery and delivery confirmation available. read more
Edition: Modern Library
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Modern Library, NY
Date Published: 1944
Description: Very Good in Very Good jacket. 12 vo. Dj w/rubbing, lite wear, unclipped price; Ownr's name; 453 pages with some underlining; (#231 in series, lists to 403 n dj reverse) read more
Edition: First Thus
Binding: Green Cloth
Publisher: The Modern Library, New York
Date Published: 1944
Description: Very Good. No Jacket. Hardcover. 12mo-over 6¾"-7¾" tall. Minor edge and corner wear, no dj, lightly scuffed and scratched, corners are gently bumped and rubbed, some shelf wear, some writing and underlining throughout the book, overall a nice used first Modern Library edition! Green cloth with gilt on black lettering on the front board and spine. 453 historical and thought-provoking pages! "The history of the evolution of life, incomplete as it yet is, already reveals to us how the intellect ... read more
Description: Used; Acceptable. Publisher: A Modern Library BookDate of Publication: 1944Binding: Hard CoverCondition: Poor/PoorDescription: Ex-Library Pages aged and unmarked. Front binding separated from pages. Boards bumped. DJ unclipped, chipped, library sticker on lower spine. Mylar cover. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Modern Library; NY (c.1944).
Description: Very Good minus in Good jacket. Regular size Modern Library # 231. NAP. Hardcover, tinted top edge. Spine 8 (toledano). 1959 price clipped dj lists 385 titles. ** faults: previous owner name, bookplate. Edge at spine ends soft, corner tips rubbed. Dust jacket has creased tears, small chips. VG minus / good dj. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co, N Y
Date Published: 1911
Description: Good. No Jacket. Good + No Jacket 407pp. COVERS: Corners rubbed. Spine sunned. Stained. HINGES: Cracked. END PAPERS: DJ Clippings taped in. Owner's name. Lang: English. Vols: 1, Wt: 2lbs. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Modern Library, New York
Date Published: 1944
Description: Very Good in Good dust jacket. Square, tight binding and hinges. Clean but age-darkened pages. Cloth over boards is edge rubbed. DJ has shelf wear, scuffing, edge wear. 453 pp. Philosophical work about human evolution, intelligence, the meaning of life, and other topics.; 7.25" (18.5 cm) Tall. read more
Edition: First Edition Thus
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Modern Library, New York
Date Published: 1944
Description: Very Good in Very Good jacket. Small 8vo. Copyright 1944, Random House, Inc. This is the Modern Library edition, number 231 in the series. A VERY GOOD copy in VERY GOOD, unclipped Dust Jacket. Small owner name penned on FFEP and 3 pages with a few ink linings, otherwise unmarked. Cloth cover clean and square, corners and spine ends rubbed with slight fraying. Dust jacket is clean and has price intact on front flap. It is moderately edgeworn with small chips and some short tears at spine and ... read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Henry Holt and Company, New York
Date Published: 1913
Description: Fair/No Jacket. … Hardcover, fair condition, w. ltly rubbed brds, sme lt marks and spots. Sme lt stains at sp base, bottoms. Smwht compressed and frayed sp, bumped and frayed corners. Sme wear on brd bottoms. Tanned, soiled p. edges. Smwht tanned eps, pp. Ins r. hinge split. Unmarked. read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Dover Publications
Date Published: 1998
ISBN-13:9780486400365ISBN:0486400360
Description: Fine. No dust jacket as issued. It is virtually new. I haven't read it. It is in excellent condition. No markings on it. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 432 p. Audience: General/trade. read more
"Bergson has this writing style that's amazingly clear and simple, until you get 80 pages in and realize he's just destroyed 2000 years of philosophy."
"This book was a turning point in my attempts to come to grips with the God of the Bible and evolution. Not that Bergson talks about the God of the Bible, but he does a good job destroying evolution as something that can happen on its own. What we see as creatures changing from one form to the other is really part of a continuous movement. To freeze it and say "this is a protohuman and this is a human" (and to do that with any life form) is to stop an arrow in flight and say "now it is here, now it is there" and fail to realize the arrow is in flight.
It was an understanding I had to return to after yet another trek through yet another one of the intellectual extremes: fundamentalism. Pendulum, meet gravity."
"This book must be read slowly and deliberately -- do so and it will give you an insight into the brilliance of one of the most revolutionary and extraordinarily perceptive philosopher scientists of the 20th Century, IMO. Bergson changed the way scientists see the world by introducing his conception of an "original impetus", which began simply (if "intelligently") and evolved matter into living, increasingly complex lifeforms and concurrently evolved an increasingly complex consciousness within it -- as an "imperceptable thread" (my wording) ultimately called the elan vital. In my case, after reading carefully and filling the book's margins with notes, Professor Bergson seems to be proving (showing) that all science up until his time (circa 1930's) was concerned with objects as they were at a particular moments, whereas in fact these objects were and are in a state of continual "being" (duration), making their actuality or essence unknowable. He chronologically takes us through the writings of Plato and Aristotle (the natural trend of the intellect)-- Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz (becoming in modern science) -- and even through the Criticism of Kant and the evolutionism of Spencer. Bergson thoroughly critques each philosophy and shows us why they are not dealing the world as it really is. Through this he weaves his own philosophical system based on Creation and Evolution by (quote): ". . . showing us in the intellect a local effect of evolution, a flame, perhaps accidental, which lights up the coming and going of living beings in the narrow passage open to their action: an lo! . . . (making) of this lantern glimmering in a tunnel a Sun which can illuminate the world. "Boldly (Kantian and Spencerian science) proceeds with the powers of conceptual thought alone, to the ideal reconstruction of things, even of life. . . . But the essence of things escapes us, and will escape us always; WE MOVE AMONG RELATIONS; THE ABSOLUTE IS NOT IN OUR PROVINCE; WE ARE BROUGHT TO STAND BEFORE THE UNKNOWABLE. " . . . BUT AN INTELLECT BENT UPON THE ACT TO BE PERFOMED AND THE REACTION TO FOLLOW . . . WOULD DIG TO THE VERY ROOT OF NATURE AND MIND." In simpler words, the observation of any object changes reality for that object. It is only real as a moving "being", animated by an original impetus and kept real by an "elan vital" which cannot be known because "being" cannot be defined. What we call "real things" are illusions which beomce "real" to us only when we stop their duration. Heidegger spends thousands of pages unsuccessfully trying to define "being", which ultimately he can only label as "dasein". What we observe as the real world is matter and consciousness evolving concurrently from simple to complex as they move through space and time. This means that the original impetus, the spark, the first flame, began neither in space nor time. Later quantum physics would support Bergson's insight, considering that an electron (as one example) cannot be seen without turning it into something else, or ever stranger, disappearing into what can only be other universes parallel to our own. IMO, this means a creative force must exist that animates matter and consciousness; and that could only have originated in that Singularity outside time and space which I in my particular need call the thought of "God". You can call "it" what you will: the Tao, Bhudda, Nature, et al. In my possession is a 1932 edition of "Creative Evolution" which had lingered on a library shelf over eighty years but had been checked out only three times after 1970. Sometimes I wonder where are my fellow philosophers and why I seem in my pained isolation to be the last of the 20th Century philosophers of mind. But that is because I am a crazed crackpot in the collective mind of those who measure men by their wealth. My contemporaries are in the universities, religious orders and lecture tours, where they belong. Yet even I am animated by the elan vital. Even I am part of the "God" finally perceived by Henri Bergson. "Creative Evolution" was a sensation when it first appeared in 1932, the work of an already distinguished Professor Bergson of the College de France. It gave the world at last a new and scientific conception of the God long intuited by prophets, priests, poets, writers and grizzled, scarred, aging gray bearded philosophers like myself, dumb beasts of intellectual burdens, who desperately need a new physics to help us embrace an unknowable God created out of a Singularity and connecting our minds and bodies to what the Apostle Paul called Love.
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