1. In the selection from Bergson’s work “Creative Evolution”, he theorizes on the function and basis of human intellect. “The function of the intellect is to preside over actions. Now, in action, it is the result that interests us; the means matter little provided the end is attained” (99). Bergson gets his idea across by using the analogy of a person lifting their arm. This action requires several steps to complete, yet the human mind does not consider all the muscles contractions and tensions required – it just envisions the end result. The rest – the steps involved to produce the action – “elude our consciousness or reach it only confusedly” (99). Bergson finds that human perception is based on distinguishing qualities such as color and sound from different persons, objects, and motions. What does it say about human intellect if the main function of it is simply presiding over actions? What then drives the actions themselves, and do we have control over this seemingly arbitrary force? This, combined with his idea that the steps involved in an action either completely elude our conscience or confuse us, and we could assume that, while not outright faulting humans, Bergson does not think as highly of the human mind as others would have you believe. Further, if the human intellect is only concerned with the end result for such frivolous actions as raising an arm, does this apply to more serious concerns and actions? For some, if not many, this would seem true.
2. It seems as though Bergson is criticizing the way the human mind perceives things. With the human arm analogy, Bergson notes that the mind only thinks of the end result. It is as if nothing happens from when the arm leaves point A and arrives at point B. Bergson, though, states “the body is changing form at every moment; or rather, there is no form, since form is immobile and the reality is movement. What is real is the continual change of form: form is only a snapshot view of a transition” (101). He finds reality to be fluid and continuous, and since our perception chops up this reality into different forms and re-presents it, our mind is essentially tricking us. Bergson’s main idea is his comparison of this way of perception to a cinematograph. Our mind works much the same way as a cinematograph, which for instance could take several pictures of soldiers in formation and then animate it to suggest or recreate the action of marching. “We take snapshots, as it were, of the passing reality, and, as these are characteristic of reality, we have only to string them on a becoming…situated at the back of the apparatus of knowledge, in order to imitate what there is that is characteristic in this becoming itself”(103). With that said, maybe Bergson isn’t criticizing the way the human mind perceives things – after all, how could this be helped? It simply is. Rather, perhaps Bergson is criticizing cinema/film.
3. Bergson also talks about the motion of an arrow, specifically the break down or “spatializing” of its path (the same diagram we saw in class). He says that you cannot break up the movements of the arrow mathematically, that it is one constant motion, never stopping. There is only a starting point, point A, and an ending point, point B. This is related to the idea of a human being progressing through life. Bergson notes that we imagine stops on the evolution of life – infancy, adolescence, maturity, old age. Like the arrow though, Bergson feels life travels along a path, never stopping along the way, but constantly changing: “The reality, which is the transition from childhood to manhood, has slipped between our fingers…[becoming] is the reality itself” (106). To see – for lack of a better word – correctly, Bergson says we must “escape from the cinematographical mechanism of thought” (106). Bergson believes that in life there are no distinguishable stops - or check points, in a sense - that can be applied from birth to death. Life is a constant state of transition. From this we could perhaps extract his own opinion about evolution itself: the human of today is not the end point of the evolution process, we are still in a state of transition/evolution (however slow and indiscernible it may be) and will undoubtedly look, act, and think different down the line.
Ethan Makhluf
4 comments:
In the second paragraph Ethan expresses some confusion over Bergson’s overall tone: is he criticizing the human mind or cinematography for misinterpreting life’s images? I was also unclear over Bergson’s overall message; however, I noticed some connections that Bergson makes between the human mind and art. He theorizes that the human mind “[seeks] to represent the general plan of each of these complex movements, that is to say the motionless design that underlies them” (101). This greatly reminded me of the “pregnant moment” that painters seek to represent in their work. Although it is understood that, let’s say, a beheading is an action that involves movement, a painter chooses to represent just one instance of that situation that shows the general idea, or plan, of the whole fiasco. Furthermore, Bergson speaks about how our minds perceive changes: “Our activity goes from an arrangement to a re-arrangement, each time no doubt giving the kaleidoscope a new shake, but not interesting itself in the shake, and seeing only the new picture” (103). This also reminded me of the painting The Battle of Lights, Coney Island by Joseph Stella because his image was so full of life it was as if it kept changing shapes. Some people saw it as one thing, others as another, but some kept saying that the more you look at it the more it “changes” shape is if it were moving. Overall, since photography and cinematography evolved from art, Bergson continues to progress the point that our minds (either fortunately, or unfortunately) are somewhat similar to those technologies.
Also, relating to what Ethan is talking about in paragraph three, although you can shake the kaleidoscope and stop it to see the image, movement is continuous and the kaleidoscope is always shaking but it is our minds that stop it. The question is, can we learn to control our mind? What would the world look like if we couldn’t see clearly? Or, do we even see clearly now?
I found Bergson's view of motion and time as misguided as Zeno's. It is arbitrary to look at a single action as indivisible. Lack of conscious perception of tiny parts does not negate the existence of those parts. Bergson says that "if the arrow leaves the point A to fall down at the point B, its movement AB is as simple, as indecomposable, in so far as it is movement, as the tension of the bow that shoots it" (104). I see no way in which this is a scientifically or functionally better viewpoint. Obviously the arrow's motion is divisible: we can make a movie of it and view each frame separately. Bergson acts as though Newtonian motion is as probabilistic as quantum motion. If a ball is only at the beginning and the end of its flight path, how can someone swat it out of the air consistently? He makes very interesting points about film and the inherentness of movement in life, but I fail to see how his ideas have an application as more than thought experiments.
I want to respond to two thoughts Ethan offers, both of which make brilliant leaps.
In his first paragraph he asks what it "says about the human intellect" that it is so oriented toward action and end results. He asks: "What then drives the actions themselves, and do we have control over this seemingly arbitrary force?" We talked in class about the weird description of movement being almost automatically produced by the 'plan' any given goal seems to require; we even noted the ambiguity of the word "drawn." Bergson suggests that we are mostly acting in response to stimuli, being drawn by things like magnets, to engage in automatic cause-effect kinds of acts. And he is going to be interested in a notion of free will, freedom, or creativity that allows unprogrammed action--the kind of creative or spontaneous response that couldn't have been predicted and actually changes something or leads to something new. Ethan is anticipating that Bergson will need to offer some other faculty than the "intellect" that could be responsible for this other kind of creative action, and Bergson will give us that in his notion of "intuition."
In his third paragraph, Ethan asks what we might extrapolate about Bergson's notion of "evolution." If forms are only 'snapshot views' of what in reality is in constant flux then that series that goes from caveman to us wouldn't be the kind of 'evolution' Bergson means. That kind of diagram (you know the ones where the guy gets taller and less hairy in each incarnation!) is a lot like a Muybridge series or a series of "mean images" that "condenses" a plurality that radically exceeds it. The stages of evolution as they get represented after the fact miss the possibility that every single mutation offered, all the ways things might have evolved. As Ethan picks up on, the kind of evolution Bergson will be most interested in is the kind that is always happening and could unfold in totally unpredictable ways from any given moment.
Alina's comment makes fantastic connections to things we've already talked about. It's an interesting question to compare the 'pregnant moment' with what Bergson talks about as a 'snapshot view' or a 'mean image'--what's the same and what might be some differences? And what a wonderful idea to connect the image of the kaleidoscope in Bergson to the Stella painting! That not only gives a really unique intepretation of the fragmented look of the painting but also offers an explanation for the sense of movement that people got from the painting, as if the pieces were not quite stable.
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