The philosophy of Henri Bergson, summarized. (I may have done this before but I can't find that post now, so we'll try again.) Time is real and important: it cannot without loss be treated in Einsteinian fashion as a particular dimension of space; Because time is real, novelty and free will are also realities: the future contains surprises that could not even in principle have been determined by calculation from the facts existing today; One must make a sharp distinction between intelligence and intuition. Intelligence is very useful — it is a survival mechanism for humans — but it cannot grasp the essence of reality, the movement of time. Intelligence geometricizes, which is why intelligent people often find themselves denying the first two propositions; As a philosophy of biology, Bergsonism asserts too that there is something about life that escapes mechanistic formula: that life and its evolution can never be explained as so much organic chemistry. Bergson populariz...
