ABSTRACTWhen it comes to explaining life and living organisms, it is as insufficient to see in Descartes a proponent of radical mechanicism and in Kant a proponent of radical finalism, as it is to see in Bergson nothing other than an opponent of mechanicism. In fact in Creative Evolution Bergson “dreams” of a “mechanism of transformation” that should consist of a reform of mechanicism, the conditions of possibility of which are based not only on the progress of chemistry, but first (...) of all on the progress of mathematics, and more precisely of infinitesimal calculus, the only method able to objectively grasp movement. (shrink)

What status should be given to the calculations and especially the figures proposed by Henri Bergson to explain the functioning of recognition in Matter and Memory? This article suggests that these calculations and figures are not just convenient metaphors; reality is not devoid of numbers (e.g., numbers of vibrations, and numbers of memories), and nor is it devoid of more or less extended planes. Therefore, it is possible to suppose that, after having arithmetized the facts of consciousness with the help (...) of special numbers in Time and Free Will, Bergson geometrizes the spiritual and material being in Matter and Memory. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article examines Bergson’s critique of intensive magnitude in Time and Free Will. I demonstrate how his rejection of a different kind of quantity that is ordinal and does not allow measurement, and the underlying strict dualism of quantity and quality, is inconsistent with both the letter and the spirit of his later philosophy. I dismantle two main strategies for explaining these inconsistencies. Furthermore, I argue that Bergson’s simplistic conception of quantity in terms of homogeneous multiplicity, which is operative (...) in his rejection of an alternative conception of quantity, lacks justification in the face of the transformations that the concept of quantity underwent in the history of mathematics and physics. (shrink)