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[The following is summary; my commentary is in brackets.]
Bergson, Time and Free Will
Chapter II, "The Multiplicity of Conscious States," "The Idea of Duration"
Part XIX: Duration, Succession and Space
§65 "Succession cannot be Symbolized as a Line without Introducing the Idea of Space of Three Dimensions"
Previously Bergson claimed that we often place duration into temporal succession. But, by doing so, we spatialize time. Now he offers a compelling illustration.
Imagine a straight line. It goes on forever both directions. The line is a geometrical abstraction of sorts. But on the line is a "material" point. Call 'him' A. Point A moves along the line. Now imagine this is a self-conscious point. He feels himself moving. So he feels himself changing. He perceives a succession of his movement.
Now we wonder, what would be required for the self-aware point to perceive his movement as a line? He only feels himself moving. But now point A wants to know the form of his movement. To learn that he is moving in a straight line, he will need to have a perspective on a large region of his motion. So he will need to rise-up somehow above his line of movement "and perceive simultaneously several points of it in juxtaposition." (103ab) But if he were to do so, he would form the idea of space. And if he were to juxtapose two points from different moments, then they are taken as if they were simultaneous. So he will no longer detect his movement in pure duration. Rather, his motion displays itself in space only.
Bergson's broader point is that some philosophers reduce space to time, but they do so erroneously. In this case, some argue that pure duration is similar to space, except duration is has a far simpler nature. Yet, to make their case, they place psychic states side-by-side to form a chain, which spatializes moments. Somehow they do not notice that in order to perceive the succession of moments as a line, "it is necessary to take up a position outside it, and take account of the void which surrounds it, and consequently to think a space of three dimensions." (103c)
However, we already agreed that conscious point A does not yet possess the idea of space. Thus his succession of mental states cannot take-up a linear form. Rather, our sensations will "add themselves dynamically do one another and will organize themselves, like the successive notes of a tune by which we allow ourselves to be lulled and soothed." (103-104) Thus pure duration could very well be a succession of qualitative changes that "melt into and permeate one another." The moments of such a succession would not have precise outlines. Nor would they have external relations to one another. And, there would be nothing about them that allows us to relate them to number: "it would be pure heterogeneity." (104ab)
Bergson will not right now develop this last point. He will conclude instead that even the least attribution of homogeneity to duration introduces spatiality into it. (104b)
[Directory of other entries in this series.]
Images from the pages summarized above, in the English Translation [click on the image for an enlargement]:
Images from the pages summarized above, in the original French [click on the image for an enlargement]:
Bergson, Henri. Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness, Transl. F. L. Pogson, (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 2001).
Available online at:
http://www.archive.org/details/timeandfreewill00pogsgoog
French text from:
Bergson, Henri. Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience. Originally published Paris: Les Presses universitaires de France, 1888.
Available online at:
http://www.archive.org/details/essaisurlesdonn00berguoft
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