Evolution of Consciousness and Evolution of Life
Résumé
In the beginning of Creative Evolution, Bergson submits to us a strange analogy: "Continuity of change, preservation of the past in the present, real duration -the living being seems, then, to share these attributes with consciousness. Can we go further and say that life, like conscious activity, is invention, is unceasing creation? " The answer to this question comes very quickly: "Regarded from this point of view, life is like a current passing from germ to germ through the medium of a developed organism... The essential thing is the continuous progress indefinitely pursued , an invisible progress, on which each visible organism rides during the short interval of time given it to live. Now, the more we fix our attention of this continuity of life, the more we see that organic evolution resembles the evolution of a consciousness, incommensurable with its antecedents ." Of course, we can conclude that this analogy is nothing but a pure anthropomorphism. How can we compare the continuity of genetic energy with the human stream of consciousness? Are we not fantasising, in the strict bergsonian meaning of the word? Are we not instinctively putting some human attributes in Nature in order to explain its properties? But in The origin of species Darwin deals with a very similar analogy. As a man selects profitable variations for his own good, Nature is also selecting favorable variations "for and through the good of each being ". Are we not attributing to it some active or "divine power"? Are we not putting a will in Nature, like in human consciousness? Darwin is examining the question in the sixth edition of the book. The insightful answer that he gives is that "Nature" personifies the action of a very great number of natural laws, then, the action of complexity. Therefore, it's an objective complexity such as "universal attraction", for instance, and not a subjective property. Yet, in regard to the bergsonian critic of natural life sciences in Creative Evolution, the answer doesn't suffice. Life explained- it is well known- is not life lived, and there is some internal analogy between life lived by all organisms in Nature, and duration in human consciousness. If I want to mix a glass of sugar and water, "I must wait until the sugar melts...It is no longer something thought, it is something lived. It is no longer a relation, it is an absolute. " The fact of succession is not explained by the help of science. If we admit now that "the universe endures", this problem is not only a psychological problem, it is also a biological problem, and we must accept that what we are living in our mind can perhaps give better information in order to understand duration in the universe, than all scientific explanations. Can we share this conclusion? I will show that if we agree with it, we are faced with two series of difficulties. First, we must explain how, in the bergsonian vision of the world, duration can be lived, not only by my consciousness, but also by natural species in the universe. It needs a very great transformation in the conceptual framework of bergsonian philosophy. We cannot admit anymore that duration is just an inside property. It is coming outside of me, in the universe. This objectivation of duration is new, in bergsonian thinking. Where does it come from? Second, if we accept that life is lived by all organic beings, we must conclude that life can't be explained. Is it not a very hard conclusion? It means that all explanations in life sciences are enduring the risk of being inaccurate and artificial. It prohibits all possible developments in order to understand better ageing, embryology and evolution.
