Bergson and Darwin: From an Immanentist to an Emergentist Approach to Evolution

At first glance it seems impossible to connect Bergson and Darwin. The French philosopher distinguishes between “the metaphysics of life” and “the knowledge of the living” (la métaphysique de la vie et la connaissance du vivant) (PM, 28).1 He defends a metaphorical conception of evolution as an expression of some psychological force, which has nothing to do with physics (CE, 257). This is evolution as “a current passing from germ to germ,” “an immense wave, which starting from a centre spreads outwards,” as élan vital (CE, 27, 266). He asserts that we live the creativity of life as an internal feeling “by sympathy” and that we cannot think it in terms of “pure understanding” (CE, 164). Indeed, our intelligence (l’intelligence) “rejects all creation” (ibid.). It proceeds by abstraction, separation and elimination. Science is a dimension of intelligence, and the life sciences are characterized by a “natural inability” to understand life (CE, 166). He criticizes the Darwinian interpretation of evolution as mechanistic and artificial, because it is focused on chance and natural selection. The British naturalist is fighting against Creationism. He seems to reject all use of teleological explanations that appeal to divine design or to an internal vital force. He attempts to explain life with the help of natural selection, which is, in his terms, a “hypothesis” that can explain some large and independent “classes of facts” (AP I, 9). Hence, he seems to present a “well tested theory.”