1. In the “Modern Science” section of the reading, Bergson first compares the goals of ancient and modern science. Ancient science was essentially concerned with the pregnant moment: the “ideas of Plato or of Aristotle correspond to privileged or salient moments. They…characterize a period of which they express the quintessence” (110). Modern science, on the other hand, strives to describe something at every possible point in time. That is to say, it tries to break up time into an infinite number of pieces and be able to describe each one through empirical laws. Bergson relates this shift in scientific thought to the invention of photography and film. Instead of painting a horse galloping as our eye sees it, we photograph it many times and treat all instances as equal. Instead of thinking about the falling of an object, scientists ignore any specific fall and try to develop an equation to predict the position of any falling object at any time (110). Modern science works toward a functional end, and to do so it depends completely on discrete units of time on which to calculate. This first section is almost entirely intuitive and does not challenge our normal view of time. Bergson takes a relatively long while to prove something we all know: science is interested in quantitative results and it relies on strict calculation to get those results. By doing so, he lays the groundwork for his real argument that follows.
2. Objections to Bergson’s case for time being an indivisible flow are almost all related to science somehow. Any non-scientific objection can easily be chalked up to a natural resistance to a change in our conditioned view of the world. In addition to being counterintuitive, indivisible time seems to make any scientific question impossible to answer. It seeks to destroy the functional division of time that governs our lives. By binding science so strongly to the interval measurement of time, Bergson can reconcile science and fluctual time and remove science as an opponent to it. He first explains that fluctual time has no meaning to science. Modern science “always considers moments, always virtual stopping-places, always, in short, immobilities. Which amounts to saying that real time, regarded as a flux…escapes the hold of scientific knowledge” (113). Science cannot exist without points in time to calculate on. Here, just when any scientist is apt to be at their most extreme opposition to a continuous view of time, Bergson quite brilliantly explains that in fact, his view of the world and science can coexist. Precisely because of the modern scientist’s inattention to specific instances, science and fluctual time are not mutually exclusive. In his words, what “is important to the physicist is the number of units of duration the process fills; he does not concern himself about the units themselves and that is why the successive states of the world might be spread out all at once in space without his having change anything in his science or to cease talking about time. But for us, conscious beings, it is the units that matter” (114). Correct proportions are the only things that matter in calculations, so science can continue unchecked even if everyone embraces the true nature of time. Bergson seems to be making a sort of covert compromise by indicating that it is acceptable for the functionally useful façade of divisible time to continue as long as we all realize that it is only a construction and that in reality time never stops. Suddenly his ideas do not seem quite so difficult to consider.
3. Bergson’s most interesting idea in this section involves a reversal of the usual view of the constancy of time. It is easy to imagine that although time fluctuates quite a bit based on our experience—time flying during fun or slowing to a crawl during a boring activity—there is some external clock that ticks away at a constant pace. He begins with the example of waiting for a sugar cube to melt: “While the duration of the phenomenon is relative for the physicist,…this duration is an absolute for my consciousness, for it coincides with a certain degree of impatience which is rigorously determined” (114). Certainly this makes sense; a person looking at the amount of time over which the event took later sees only a number. Their experience of it takes only as long as their eyes are on the page or their mind is on the matter. Bergson dwells on his complete lack of power to influence the period of the melting. His experience of that time (the “psychical duration” as he calls it) is absolutely forced upon him. Though this makes little sense looking from a scientific perspective, it has a kind of undeniable visceral truth. To me, to everyone, the only absolute time is the time each person experiences. Every other time is only imagined and can be purposefully distorted to any amount, whereas our experienced time is out of our direct control.
4. Bergson goes further with this idea and relates it to art. Considering a child putting together a jigsaw puzzle of a painting, he posits that because the child will get better at finishing the puzzle after multiple experiences, its completion time will move toward instantaneous. The time taken is variable and not absolute. On the other hand, an artist making a painting is creating something. The act of creation “is not an interval that may be lengthened or shortened without the content being altered” (115). The puzzle will never change no matter how long it takes to put it together, but the real painting must take a certain amount of time or it would not be the same painting. That is to say, the act of creation in itself creates absolute time. “Time is invention or it is nothing at all” (115). This theory values art and creation highly and is perhaps a criticism of our abandonment of genuine art for a manufactured third-person timescale. Bergson seems fed up with the fake construction of an interval-based existence. His ultimate point is simple: It “will appear the necessity of a continual growth of the universe, I should say of a life of the real” (116). Almost paradoxically, this call for a life of the real harkens to the original quest of science for absolute truth. According to Bergson, our quest has sadly led us farther away from truth rather than closer to it.
2 comments:
Jamal, in paragraph 2, dissects the matter of time brought about by Bergson. Bergson’s complete frustration to influence time waiting for a melting ice cube, reminds of us our inability to control time. However, we can alter the waiting experience as though it took less time by preoccupying ourselves with something else. I agree with Jamal’s comment “the only absolute time is the time each person experiences.” The clock and ticking hands are a mere human fabrication in trying to standardize nature and life. As Bergon states “time is invention or it is nothing at all” (341). With science and physics, humans try to break down the passing day into hours, minutes, seconds, and nanoseconds. But these numbers are nothing more than units of measure. Only experiences that make up our day can really define our lives.
-Benjamin Louie
Jamal has placed together a great set of paragraphs that dissect Bergson’s argument step by step. It was hard for me to comment or critique this piece, but at the end of his fourth paragraph, he mentions a paradox in Bergson’s conclusion regarding a “quest for science” in the “life of the real.” I feel that Jamal should to further in analyzing this because it redefines what real science is. Bergson states that “the true continuation of science” has to do with the experiences of people and has nothing to do with the “scholastic” efforts of Galileo and Aristotle (120). For this we can see that this paradoxical reference to science takes a stab at physics, which makes it seem like a big lie that has distracted science and the progress of mankind from what is really important—our experiences. Jamal is correct in stating that this paradox leaves the reader with a feeling of sadness or a tone nostalgia for the pre-physics era of science.
-Christopher Melgaard
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