Canalization and Creative Evolution: Images of Life from Bergson to Whitehead and Beyond

Abstract

When Whitehead famously wrote that the status of life in nature constituted the modern problem of both philosophy as well as science, he may well have had Bergson in mind. Indeed, Bergson’s Creative Evolution stands as one of the most serious engagements with the problem of life in recent philosophical history. In this paper I unearth a striking line of development that runs from Bergson through Whitehead and into modern embryology. It is well known that life is to be thought, according to Bergson, as a kind of impetus, a drive or force. But Bergson insisted that this was only an image borrowed from psychology — the best one available, but an image no less. This is because life, on the Bergsonian account, exceeds any of the conceptual frames through which it can be determined. We thus require an image by which to imagine it. It is for this reason that so many images populate and animate Bergson’s philosophy of life. In this paper I isolate one in particular, that of the canal, or of canalization. The fact that this image managed to find its way, through Whitehead’s Process and Reality, into modern embryology via the work of C. H. Waddington has still yet to receive the scholarly appreciation warranted by it.