Variations on a Line: Wilhelm Worringer's Northern Line (Gothic Line)

by Corry Shores
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Variations on a Line:
Wilhelm Worringer's Northern Line (Gothic Line)

What does Gothic got to do with you?

By looking within ourselves, we might discover a force of freedom thriving within us. It is not exactly that part of us which is like self-defiance, an element in our personalities that causes us to act in a self-sabotaging way against our best interests, or to recklessly act without thinking. However, it is very similar, and might best be described by considering first certain elements of this more readily conceivable careless freedom. For, unlike the reckless freedom, the other more freer freedom is not a reaction. It does not react against ourselves or against things, people and events in our lives. So consider for example that force in us that might drive us to spontaneously go on a drinking binge after just losing a job. It cannot be this other freer freedom, because it reacts against an unfavorable event, an unfair boss, or a self-pitying and self-despising self. Yet it is a sort of defiance. And maybe the freer freedom is defiance without there first being something that we are defying against. Of course we are born into power structures, but our actions can have the spirit of pure, non-reactive defiance. Perhaps this is what we see in the moments of great artistic creation, a sort of joyful defiance, a continual denying that there ever was a restriction in the first place. Now imagine we try to express this force in the act of drawing a line. But also consider if we first drew a curve with supreme control over our hand, to make it as perfect as possible. And also imagine that we at another time were violently impulsive, and drew an erratic line. But the third case is a line inspired by the freer freedom. Like the nicely-drawn curve, the free line would not be a messy chaos. But also, the free line will not be as regularized. And like the erratic impulsive line, the free line will be liberated from the expectations set by how the line was being previously rendered. In a sense it lives at the tiny infinitely small point of the absolute present moment, never fully bound to the immediate or passing past. But unlike the erratic line, the free line will not be defiant in an artificial or reactive way.

So in one sense the free line is drawn in the infinitely small present moment. But in every such infinitely small moment, the line is tending toward extending into infinity. That is because at no moment does it suggest or move toward an organic completion. How is this so? Consider lines that make a labyrinthine pattern.

Such labyrinthine patterns make us think that there is no beginning or end. Another example is a Gothic cathedral.

Only the vertical lines are emphasized, which gives us an impression of going up to infinity.

Worringer calls the free line the "Northern line." If we drew our lives as a northern line, we would not be bound to our pasts, or adjust our actions so that they properly react to something else. We would live in the present not in a thoughtless or careless way, but in the sense of making this moment the seed of an infinite future of continued freedom. Such a 'northern life' is powerfully creative.

Brief Summary:

Worringer discusses certain styles that cultures have developed throughout history. There is a trend, called the Gothic, which ornaments its works with a liberated line, termed the "Northern Line". This line is continually undetermined and it strives for infinity.

Points relative to Deleuze
[Under continual revision]:

One of the places Deleuze refers to the northern line is in his Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation book. One element that is central to his notion of sensation is continual variation. So consider a part of a painting that we might characterize as being northern or Gothic; it would have lines that are in continuous variation. Visually speaking, this line will act on the other elements of the painting. But because it is in continual variation, then it expresses either explicitly or implicitly self-difference at every point. Thus there is an infinity of different influences it has on the rest of the painting. This prevents our eyes from ever satisfying their effort to make visual sense of what they see. There will never be an organic coherence, because the artwork will be infinitely fertile in the ways its parts can re-relate. This continual defiance to our efforts of recognizing or mentally representing what we see causes our impressions to be in continual variation. We have a sensation when we are confronted with an irreducible difference that forces itself upon us. Thus the northern or Gothic line can be an element of a painting which allows the artwork to continually affect us with its constant variation.

Selective Summary, from:

Wilhelm Worringer

Form Problems of the Gothic

Latent Gothic of Early Northern Ornament

Worringer will speak of "three principal stages in the process of adjustment of man to outer world" (43). He will focus on the Gothic stage, which he says does not correspond with the Gothic historical age. Rather, he examines the Gothic in terms of a "psychology of style" (43b). All the Western World is Gothic in this sense, so long as it is not immediately influenced by the antique Mediterranean culture. Thus Gothic refers to present times as well (44a).

Worringer begins by describing the art of the Northern European peoples at the fall of the Roman Empire. (45d) The art does not represent nature. It is purely ornamental. There is a "purely geometrical play of line" (although he will later clarify this sort of playfulness). (46ab)

They begin to develop their own language of the line, their own "linear fantasy called intertwining band ornament or braid ornament" (46bc).

The lines form various fantastic and intriguing arrangements. Early primitive lines are abstract and geometrical, without any organic interpretation. (47a) Nevertheless, they express an extreme liveliness. (47b) He says that this line style we see above is a clash between "the abstract character of primitive geometric ornament" and "the living character of Classical organically tinged ornament" (47b.d) These two other styles shown respectively.

So, classical ornament has organic clearness and moderation, and it seems to spring "without restraint from our sense of vitality." And also, "It has no expression beyond that which we give it" (48b). But by contrast, northern ornament seems to take on a life all its own, and in fact seems to act upon us ourselves.

The expression of northern ornament, on the other hand, is not immediately dependent upon us; here we face, rather, a life that seems to be independent of us, that makes exactions upon us and forces upon us an activity that we submit to only against our will. In short, the northern line is not alive because of an impression that we voluntarily impute to it, but it seems to have an inherent expression which is stronger than our life. (48bc, boldface mine)

The elaborate his idea of the northern line, he illustrates with common experience. We are to pick up a pencil and draw a line.

What do we notice? Worringer suggests we sense two things. One is "the expression dependent upon us" and the other is the "expression of the line seemingly not dependent upon us" (48d). Perhaps in one way, we see that we drew it; we see that it is a line from our hand not that that of someone else. But perhaps in another way, we see a geometrical form that we were trying to render. The line, as a line, expresses something that is geometrically real even without such an attempted instantiation.

He also has us draw the line in "fine round curves". When we do so, we feel the movement of our wrist. But to that motion we also accompany to it our "inner feeling". We sense that the line grows spontaneously from the play of our wrist, and this gives us a pleasant sensation. "The movement we make is of an unobstructed facility; the impulse once given, movement goes on without effort." (48d). This pleasant feeling is a "freedom of creation," and we transfer it

involuntarily to the line itself, and what we have felt in executing it we ascribe to it as expression. In this case, then, we see in the line the expression of organic beauty just because the execution corresponded with our organic sense. (48-49)

But consider if we see a line made by someone else. We will still involuntarily feel inside us the impressions one has if drawing such a line. (49a)

Gothic lines may have this "organic expressive power", like we see in Classical ornament. But it has another such expressive power. Worringer has us imagine drawing a line more excitedly.

If we are filled with a strong inward excitement that we may express only on paper, the line scrawls will take an entirely different turn. The will of our wrist will not be consulted at all, but the pencil will travel wildly and impetuously over the paper, and instead of the beautiful, round, organically tempered curves, there will result a stiff, angular, repeatedly interrupted, jagged line of strongest expressive force. It is not the wrist that spontaneously creates the line; but it is our impetuous desire for expression which imperiously prescribes the wrist's movement. The impulse once given, the movement is not allowed to run its course along its natural direction, but it is again and again over whelmed by new impulses. When we become conscious of such an excited line, we inwardly follow out involuntarily the process of its execution, too. (49b.d, boldface mine)

But when we follow someone else's wild line, we do not feel pleasure. It seems more like "an outside dominant will coerced us" (49cd). What we feel seems like the forces of the ruptures in the line's incoherent discontinuity.

We are made aware of all the suppressions of natural movement. We feel at every point of rupture, at every change in direction, how the forces, suddenly checked in their natural course, are blocked, how after this moment of blockade they go over into a new direction of movement with a momentum augmented by the obstruction. The more frequent the breaks and the more obstructions thrown in, the more powerful becomes the seething at the individual interruptions, the more forceful becomes each time the surging in the new direction, the more mighty and irresistible becomes, in other words, the expression of the line. (49-50, boldface mine)

The line forces its expression upon us. Thus we feel it as something autonomous and independent of us. (50a)

So consider when we were drawing the curved line. We felt physically a pleasure on account of there being no obstructions breaking the flow of our hand's movements. The parts of our wrist worked together to create a line that is self-consistent in its curving motion. With the erratic line, however, there seems to be unpredictable forces which break the flow, in fact prevent one from starting, and prevent any possibility of there being coherence in the motions or the line. Our hands drawing calmly seem to do so merely by means of our bodies acting automatically and with coordination among its parts. So when it is erratic, that suggests to us the forces causing the unpredictabilities do not come from the body, but rather from some psychic or spiritual source.

The essence of this inherent expression of the line is that it does not stand for sensuous and organic values, but for values of an unsensuous, that is, spiritual sort. No activity of organic will is expressed by it, but activity of psychical and spiritual will, which is still far from all union and agreement with the complexes of organic feeling. (50b, boldface mine)

Worringer clarifies that Gothic ornament and such a scrambled line made by an emotionally or mentally excited person are not at all the same things. However, Worringer will compare them to clarify what he means by the northern line. He says for example that the lines of northern cultures tell us that they were

longing to be absorbed in an unnatural intensified activity of a non-sensuous, spiritual sort one should remember in this connection the labyrinthic scholastic thinking in order to get free, in this exaltation, from the pressing sense of the constraint of actuality. (50d, boldface mine)

Worringer sees this supersensuous longing expressed in "fervent sublimity of the Gothic cathedral, that transcendentalism in stone" (51a). Such architecture exhibits "a complete degeometrization of the line for the sake of the same exigencies of spiritual expression" (51ab).

Pointing us to the left item in the image below, Worringer tells us that "primitive ornament is geometric, is dead and expressionless [Pl. III, C]. Its artistic significance rests simply and solely upon this absence of all life, rests simply and solely upon its thoroughly abstract character" (51b).

Worringer then says that the original dualism between man and world weakened the geometrical character of the line. This degrading of the geometrical line can take two courses. One is toward "an organic vitality agreeable to the senses," as with classical ornament. (51bc)

Or instead it can develop toward a "spiritual vitality, far transcending the senses," which we see in northern ornament (51c). Here we find the Gothic character.

He continues to claim that the Gothic has more expressive power.

And it is evident that the organically determined line contains beauty of expression, while power of expression is reserved for the Gothic line. This distinction between beauty of expression and power of expression is immediately applicable to the whole character of the two stylistic phenomena of Classic and Gothic art. (51cd, boldface mine)

The Infinite Melody of Northern Line

Worringer will further elaborate the distinction between Classical ornament and Gothic/northern ornament.

Classical ornament exhibits symmetry.

However Gothic does not. But instead of symmetry repetition is predominant. (52ab) Classical has repetition too, but like a mirroring. The repetitions have the "calm character of addition that never mars the symmetry" (52bc).

Gothic repetition, however, is more like a repetition of difference striving to rise to the nth power.

In the case of northern ornament, on the other hand, the repetition does not have this quiet character of addition, but has, so to speak, the character of multiplication. No desire for organic moderation and rest intervenes here. A constantly increasing activity without pauses and accents arises, and the repetition has only the one intention of raising the given motive to the power of infinity. The infinite melody of line hovers before the vision of northern man in his ornament, that infinite line which does not delight but stupefies and compels us to yield to it without resistance. If we close our eyes after looking at northern ornament, there remains only the echoing impression of incorporeal endless activity. (52-53, boldface mine)

Worringer then cites work from Lamprecht where he describes the laberinthine nature of the Gothic lines.

Lamprecht speaks of the enigma of this northern intertwining band ornament, which one likes to puzzle over [PI. VIII]. But it is more than enigmatic; it is labyrinthic. It seems to have no beginning and no end, and especially no center; all those possibilities of orientation for organically adjusted feeling are lacking. We find no point where we can start in, no point where we can pause. Within this infinite activity every point is equivalent and all together are insignificant compared with the agitation reproduced by them. (53a.b, boldface mine)

In Gothic architecture, "the impression of endless movement results from the exclusive accentuation of the vertical." (53c)

From:
Wilhelm Worringer. Form Problems of the Gothic. New York: G.E. Stechert, 1920.
PDF available online at:
http://www.archive.org/details/formproblemsofth00worruoft

Fate of the Wild [77] Francis Bacon: Seated Figure, 1974.Deleuze on Bacon, Painting Series

by Corry Shores
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eaobjets.wordpress.com

Palazzo Reale

Credits found at the end.]

[The following is quotation. My commentary is bracketed in red.]

Fate of the Wild

Francis Bacon: Seated Figure, 1974

Gilbert de Botton Collection

(Thank you so very much Stampfli & Turci of eaobjets.wordpress.com and Palazzo Reale)

Painting 39 of Deleuze's Francis Bacon: Logique de la sensation. Tome II - Peintures

Painting [77] of the English translation, and

Painting [39] of the Seuil 2002 French

Man becomes animal, but not without the animal becoming spirit at the same time, the spirit of man, the physical spirit of man presented in the mirror as Eumenides or Fate [77]. (Deleuze 2003: 16ab)

L'homme devient animal, mais il ne le devient pas sans que l'animal en même temps ne devienne esprit, esprit de l'homme, esprit physique de l'homme présenté dans le miroir comme Euménide ou Destin. [39] (Deleuze 2002: 28bc)

[The faces of Bacon's figures are often deformed as though pushed-and-pulled in many divergent directions at once. These deformations result from one of Bacon's techniques. He randomly messes-up the figure in unintentional ways, like spattering or smearing the paint. This creates new opportunities to unfold the figure's rendition. But because Bacon develops the work in more than one direction at once, the face is warped, stretched, and mutilated. There are many forces chaotically intertwined in the figure's body. We might say that there is a zone of wilderness, like a jungle of forces, inhabiting the wildly twisted body. The forces are not explicit, yet they are fully there, fully expressed in the body's contortions. They are implicit involved intensities rather than explicit evolved extensities. They flare-up-and-about like the tongues of a wild fire. This is the wild spirit inhabiting intensified bodies, making them more like animal meat than human flesh.

When we view Bacon's paintings, we are affected in such a way that our bodies feel the same affect. Our bodies become disorganized. Its many organs which want to function harmoniously and organically now operate divergently, able only to communicate to each other the differences they are feeling. In a sense, we became animal, because we embody a wilderness. Hence when our bodies and faces become animal, it is not that they take-on specific animal shapes. As Deleuze writes, "the marks or traits of animality are not animal forms, but rather the spirits that haunt the wiped off parts, that pull at the head, individualizing and qualifying the head without a face" (Deleuze 2003: 15-16). So, we embody the spirit of the wild, of the animal.

(Again, thanks Stampfli & Turci of eaobjets.wordpress.com and Palazzo Reale)

That man becomes animal in this way is a fact. But likewise in the same process, animal becomes man. Their inter-becoming, then, is a 'common-fact'. Perhaps as our bodies express their inner wilderness, we give a human embodiment to the animal spirits. When the figure here looks in the mirror, he does not see the image of his body. Rather, he sees its physical spirit. What we observe in the painting is an animal-like creature that is taking-on the form of a Fury or of Fate.

(And once more, I would like to thank Stampfli & Turci of eaobjets.wordpress.com and Palazzo Reale)

The animal spirits, in this way, cross-into a human domain where they come to express a human rendition of destiny. So consider when we are torn-about by wild animal forces. Our bodies then embody the animal spirits of wildness just as much as these spirits take-on human form and express the human in its rawest state or 'fact'. The common fact then is the dual state-of-affairs arising when the human expresses the animal all while the animal thereby expresses the human.]

Deleuze, Gilles. Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation. Transl. Daniel W. Smith. London/New York: Continuum, 2003.

Deleuze, Gilles. Francis Bacon: Logique de la sensation. Paris: Seuil, 2002.

Deleuze, Gilles. Francis Bacon: Logique de la sensation. Tome II - Peintures. Paris: Editions de la différence [Littératures], 1981.


Images obtained quite gratefully from:

http://eaobjets.wordpress.com/2008/05/16/francis-bacon-at-the-palazzo-reale-milano/

Stampfli & Turci of espaces arts & objets.

Authors here say the image was provided courtesy of Palazzo Reale:

http://www.comune.milano.it/dseserver/webcity/portale/palreale.nsf/index.htm?readForm&settore=MCOI-66DHPH_HP

The Laws of Fact and the Facts of Law TF §86 For Dynamism Facts More Real Than Laws: Mechanism Reverses This Attitude. Bergson. Time and Free Will

by Corry Shores
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The Laws of Fact and the Facts of Law

Henri Bergson

Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness

Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience

Ch.III

The Organization of Conscious States; Free Will

De l'organization des états de conscience: la liberté

Part XXIX: Dynamism and Mechanism

Previously Bergson distinguished mechanism and dynamism. We find in our world complex arrangements and rearrangements of materials. Mechanism holds that any given arrangement could not have been otherwise. It was determined to be so on account of previous states and the fixed laws that governed their rearrangement. So even if more complex forms evolve, they would still be predictable from previous states, if we had enough knowledge of these prior conditions. Dynamism starts with the idea that consciousness can produce free actions. The less consciousness is a fact, the more inertia is a factor [so the more determined laws of physics prevail].

§86 For Dynamism Facts More Real Than Laws: Mechanism Reverses This Attitude. The Idea of Spontaneity Simpler Than That of Inertia

Bergson will now show that mechanism and dynamism are based on two very different assumptions regarding the relations between laws and the facts that these laws govern.

[Consider if we saw the spontaneous creative behaviors of an artist at work. We might there regard her consciousness as acting independently of mechanistic laws]. Dynamists think they discover facts that elude the governance of laws. Hence they "set up the fact as the absolute reality, and the law as the more or less symbolical expression of this reality" (141a). Mechanists however find laws operating within those facts. For them, "it is the law which becomes the genuine reality" (141a).

Bergson will now explain why mechanism assigns a higher reality to law, while dynamism assigns higher reality to fact. It is because they define the term simplicity in different ways.

For mechanists, a principle is simple when its effects can be foreseen and even calculated. [Inertia is a principle that can be explained by laws of physics. So] under this definition of simple, inertia is seen as a simpler principle than freedom. [Also, homogeneous conditions allow for clearer analysis and prediction, hence] the homogeneous would be simpler than the heterogeneous. [A mathematical abstraction of a real physical situation will give a consistent outcome, while the actual experiment of this situation will produce a margin of error. Thus for mechanists,] the abstract is simpler than the concrete.

Dynamists however would note that we all have an immediate knowledge of our own free spontaneity. Then, we acquire the notion of inertia secondarily by defining it in terms of what we already know, our own freedom. So inertia is a derived concept, and freedom is the immediately intuitable notion from which inertia is derived. (142a) So let's see how dynamists would look at the primitive notions in mechanism (inertia, homogeneity, abstraction). The dynamist sees these ideas as really being derived from a combination of several richer notions. When combined, these notions in a sense neutralize each other "just as darkness may be produced by the interference of two lights" (141d)

But under both views, we define the inertia of matter by saying that because of inertia, matter "cannot move or stop of its own accord, that every body perseveres in the state of rest or motion so long as it is not acted upon by any force" (142a-b). We see that [because the motion of a body changes only by means of something acting upon it,] activity is inherent to the idea of inertia. [Now, if for example we like the dynamists saw concrete facts as what is simple and primary, rather than abstract laws, then we might say that nothing can predetermine the changes of those states. So we would view human action as being free and spontaneous. But if instead we prioritized abstract laws, we would say that resulting states were the necessary consequence of the laws governing the prior states. Hence under this mechanistic view we would regard human action as determined. Thus Bergson writes that] "It is therefore natural that, a priori, we should reach two opposite conceptions of human activity, according to the way in which we understand the relation between the concrete and the abstract, the simple and the complex, facts and laws" (142b).

[Directory of other entries in the Time and Free Will series.]

Images of the pages summarized above, from the English translation [click to enlarge]:

Images of the pages summarized above, from the original French [click to enlarge]:

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

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

The Evolution of Creation. Creative Evolution. Bergson. Ch.1 Part 5: Transformism

by Corry Shores
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The Evolution of Creation

Henri Bergson

Creative Evolution

Évolution Créatrice

Chapter 1

The Evolution of Life – Mechanism and Teleology

Chapitre Premier

De l’évolution de la vie. – Mécanisme et finalité.

5. Transformism

5. Du transformisme et des manières de l'interpréter

Previously Bergson argued that the sort of time that we undergo while aging is not the instantaneous mathematicized time that we find in calculus-based physics. And we do not age by gaining or losing parts. Our aging is creation occurring through duration.

§26 The Growth of Transformism

Bergson will explain why he adopts transformism. We see it already in germinal form in the natural classification of organized beings: general traits are subdivided into more specific ones. Ancestors pass-on their traits to their descendents. At the embryo stage, there is little to differentiate the various species. But they each diverge in their subsequent development. Yet we see that on account of evolution, the most complex and diverse forms begin from the simplest. So, different species begin their lives in a similar simple form, but then develop diverse complexities. This suggests that simpler organisms long ego evolved into the complex ones we see today. Recent experiments by H.de Vries suggest that random genetic mutations are more prevalent than we thought. So evolution may proceed faster than we once figured. And the evidence in support of transformism continues to grow.

§27 Let’s Transform into Transformists

For the sake of argument, Bergson assumes the opposite position: species arose through a discontinuous process. If this were so, we would still be able to classify species, as would all other facets of biological studies. It could still determine their kinship relations. Although, the relations would no longer be material connections; rather, they would be ideal kinships. However, paleontology tells us that different species emerged at different times. So the kinships would not have arisen simultaneously. Evolution theory as well establishes ideal kinships: “wherever there is this relation of, so to speak, logical affiliation between forms, there is also a relation of chronological succession between the species in which these forms are materialized” (26d). Now, let’s consider this possibility: the species result from the activity of some all-encompassing “creative Thought.” [Let’s imagine it as the mind of God for illustration. He thinks the idea for a species. But the attributes of one species are variations on those of its logical predecessors. So] the ideas for the species would also spring from each other, just as transformism sees this process occurring on earth. Or consider another possibility: there is a “plan of vital organization immanent in nature.” [It is as if Nature had already planned the path of variations her species would undergo.] This plan unfolds gradually. It results in the logical relations between successive species. But this too would produce the same outcome as a transformist perspective that sees the planned vital organizations as real affiliations that living individuals share [on account of their actual transformations into one another]. Or let’s consider one last possibility: there is some other cause for the successive variations between species, but we do not know what it is, and it yields the same outcome as would happen if the species actually had generated one another. But because all these instances presuppose that there will be the logical and chronological kinship relations, evolution is implicit in all these accounts. So transformism explains nature just as well as these theories. And given that scientific evidence currently supports it, we should probably adopt it.

§28 The Egg of Flow

If we take-up transformism, then we are no longer thinking of life abstractly. Life is not a category that umbrellas all living beings. Rather, life is a vibrant flow:

At a certain moment, in certain points of space, a visible current has taken rise; this current of life, traversing the bodies it has organized one after another, passing from generation to generation, has become divided amongst species and distributed amongst individuals without losing anything of its force, rather intensifying in proportion to its advance. So because succeeding species have a variation on previous ones, such a creative thinking would need to evolve the ideas of the species. [27d]

A un certain moment, en certains points de l'espace, un courant bien visible a pris naissance : ce courant de vie, traversant les corps qu'il a organisés tour à tour, passant de génération en génération, s'est divisé entre les espèces et éparpillé entre les individus sans rien perdre de sa force, s'intensifiant plutôt à mesure qu'il avançait. [28bc]

Now consider what happens when an ovum is fertilized. It will divide. The original fluids in the ovum will disperse and weaken. But new tissues emerge. There is some vital force that emerges where weakness should have appeared. These forces develop the creature, which then fertilizes another ovum, and thereby also imparting the vital forces.

life is like a current passing from germ to germ through the medium of a developed organism. It is as if the organism itself were only an excrescence, a bud caused to sprout by the former germ endeavouring to continue itself in a new germ. 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. [28-29]

la vie apparaît comme un courant qui va d'un germe à un germe par l'intermédiaire d'un organisme développé. Tout se passe' comme si l'organisme lui-même n'était qu'une excroissance, un bourgeon que fait saillir le germe ancien travaillant à se continuer en un germe nouveau. L'essentiel est la continuité de progrès qui se poursuit indéfiniment, progrès invisible sur lequel chaque organisme visible chevauche pendant le court intervalle de temps qu'il lui est donné de vivre. [29b.c]

§29 Evolutionary Unpredictability

Consider also how the past contracts with the present by means of our memory [see this entry for more]. On the one hand, the past is a fixed collection. But it contracts with the newness of the present instant and crystallizes with it. This produces a new present that is qualitatively different from all preceding moments: “the past presses against the present and causes the upspringing of a new form of consciousness, incommensurable with its antecedents” (29a). [See §64 and §66 of Time and Free Will where Bergson illustrates this with the example of a melody.] We saw something similar with evolution. The whole past development of a species presses-upon its current alteration. If we know all the causes for its current form, we can explain why it has its given traits. Consider also how astronomers can predict the courses of heavenly bodies many years into the future, based on where they have been in the past. Chemistry assumes there are basic unchanging building blocks that rearrange themselves, and it too can predict outcomes for chemical mixtures. However, when a species evolves, it takes on a radically original and unique form. We cannot know before-hand what these strange traits will be. Bergson writes: “Of the future, only that is foreseen which is like the past or can be made up again with elements like those of the past” / “On ne prévoit de l'avenir que ce qui ressemble au passé ou ce qui est recomposable avec des éléments semblables à ceux du passé” (29c/30b). Hence even if we know everything about how the species came to take its current form, we cannot predict what will be its next change. [To illustrate, Bergson refers to James Baldwin’s concept of the genetic irreversible series: physics and chemistry can only explain evolutionary changes after they occur. Bergson also cites Time and Free Will where he explains why we cannot predict someone’s future free decisions, see §114 , §115, §116 , §117, §118, §119, §120, §121, §122, §123 ].

So we can only explain an evolutionary change after it occurs. This holds not just for the evolution of a species, but also for an individual, “and, more generally, of any moment of any living form” (30b). Variation is “produced every moment, continuously and insensibly, in every living being” (30bc). Hence “it might be said of life, as of consciousness, that at every moment it is creating something” (30c).

Images from the English translation [click to enlarge]:

Images from the original French [click to enlarge]

Bergson, Henri. L'Évolution Créatrice. Ed. Felix Alcan. Paris: Librairies Félix Alcan et Guillaumin Réunies, 1908. Available online athttp://www.archive.org/details/levolutioncreatr00berguoft

Bergson, Henri. Creative Evolution. Transl. Arthur Mitchell. London: MacMillan and Co., 1922. Available online at:http://www.archive.org/details/creativeevolutio00berguoft