Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of ConsciousnessBergson, Henri
Philosophy
Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness
Bergson, Henri
Consciousness; Free will and determinism; Space and time
addition of some new note. If we assert that it is always the _same_
sensation, the reason is that we are thinking, not of the sensation
itself, but of its objective cause situated in space. We then set it
out in space in its turn, and in place of an organism which develops,
in place of changes which permeate one another, we perceive one and
the same sensation stretching itself out lengthwise, so to speak,
and setting itself in juxtaposition to itself without limit. Pure
duration, that which consciousness perceives, must thus be reckoned
among the so-called intensive magnitudes, if intensities can be called
magnitudes: strictly speaking, however, it is not a quantity, and as
soon as we try to measure it, we unwittingly replace it by space.
[Sidenote: Time, as dealt with by the astronomer and the physicist,
does indeed _seem_ to be measurable and therefore homogeneous.]
But we find it extraordinarily difficult to think of duration in its
original purity; this is due, no doubt, to the fact that we do not
_endure_ alone, external objects, it seems, _endure_ as we do, and
time, regarded from this point of view, has every appearance of a
homogeneous medium. Not only do the moments of this duration seem to
be external to one another, like bodies in space, but the movement
perceived by our senses is the, so to speak, palpable sign of a
homogeneous and measurable duration. Nay more, time enters into the
formulae of mechanics, into the calculations of the astronomer, and
even of the physicist, under the form of a quantity. We measure the
velocity of a movement, implying that time itself is a magnitude.
Indeed, the analysis which we have just attempted requires to be
completed, for if duration properly so-called cannot be measured,
what is it that is measured by the oscillations of the pendulum?
Granted that inner duration, perceived by consciousness, is nothing
else but the melting of states of consciousness into one another, and
the gradual growth of the ego, it will be said, notwithstanding, that
the time which the astronomer introduces into his formulae, the time
which our clocks divide into equal portions, this time, at least, is
something different: it must be a measurable and therefore homogeneous
magnitude.--It is nothing of the sort, however, and a close examination
will dispel this last illusion.
[Sidenote: But what we call measuring time is nothing but counting
simultaneities. The clock taken as an illustration.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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