In this paper, we argue that the French philosopher Henri Bergson was a hidden interlocutor in Susan Stebbing’s critique of Arthur Eddington in her Philosophy and the Physicists. First, we outline Stebbing’s critique of Eddington’s philosophical- physical writings with a particular emphasis on her case against Eddington’s account of the passage of time. Second, we provide evidence that Eddington’s philosophy is, at its core, Bergsonian and make the case that Eddington was directly influenced by Bergson’s philosophy of la durée. Third, (...) we lay out Stebbing’s critique of Bergsonism in her Pragmatism and French Voluntarism and identify important similarities with her critique of Eddington over twenty years later. In doing so, we show that it is Eddington’s Bergsonism that she is attacking. Finally, we situate Stebbing’s criticisms of both Eddington and Bergson within two wider conflicts that emerged in early twentieth century British philosophy: one between an objectively describable time of physics and subjective temporal experience, and the other between science and intuition. (shrink)

This paper presents Jean Nicod (1893–1924) as a mediator in the dispute between Bergson and Russell. In La géométrie dans le monde sensible (1924), Nicod extensively discusses Bergson’s epistemology focusing on those aspects that Russell critically discusses in The Philosophy of Henri Bergson (1912) and Our Knowledge of the External World (1914). His aim is to establish a middle ground between synthesis and analysis: to show how most of the disagreements between Bergson and Russell can be resolved without compromising the (...) central principles of their thought. Throughout this paper, I explicate Nicod’s exposition of two points of contention between Bergson and Russell: (1) the nature of sense-data and analysis, and (2) the relation between geometry and the sensible world. I will also show that his attempt to reconcile synthesis and analysis results in an innovative account of representation inspired by an early reading of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. In the conclusion, I reflect on how Nicod’s proficiency to engage with two increasingly diverging philosophical programmes, namely early analytic philosophy and the French epistemological tradition, could have affected the development of early twentieth-century philosophy. (shrink)