Canalization and Creative Evolution

Abstract

Whitehead famously wrote that the status of life in nature constituted the modernproblem both of philosophy and science. But Bergson could just as easily have penned thosewords. Indeed, his Creative Evolution stands as one of the most serious engagements with theproblem of life in recent philosophical history. Life, for Bergson, was to be thought of as a kindof impetus, a drive or force. But he insisted that this was only an image borrowed frompsychology, the best one available, but an image no less. This is because images are essential tothe organization of scientific discourse and practice. We think through them, use them not onlyas explanatory aids, but as callipers first: without them, we are unable to grasp and articulate ourobjects of study, even before the endeavour to communicate what it is that we have managed tograsp. Perhaps most famous of the various images that animate Creative Evolution is that of thecanal, or canalization. It is striking that this image managed to find its way, through Whitehead’sProcess and Reality, into modern embryology, where it continues to serve as an image for theway epigenetic landscapes operate in order to bring about, or canalize, a small number of endresults form a large number of developmental potentialities.This paper briefly traces the history of that image from out of Bergson’s philosophy oflife, through Whitehead’s creative metaphysical appropriation of it, and into the embryology ofC.H. Waddington. In order to make sense of that history, I do three things: first, I situate theimage of the canal in Bergson’s Creative Evolution, elucidating its context and aims; second, Idemonstrate its utility for Whitehead’s metaphysics, the new purposes for which it was deployed;and third, I argue that it was this latter reconfiguration of the concept that prepared it for itsenlistment as a key moment in embryological explanation.I claim that the canal occupies a privileged position in Bergson’s philosophy of life, for itis an image of life that is turned against itself as an image, meant to demonstrate the limits ofimagistic thought. I conclude the paper with a series of comments on this suggestion: that it wasthe image of the canal that found its way into modern embryology tells us something importantabout the relation between science and philosophy, or between image and imagination, matterand life. On these points, Bergson and Whitehead converge on a novel philosophy of nature thatis capable both of responding to scientific discoveries as well as of accommodating them withinan enlarged process-oriented metaphysics.