The implication of movement: from Bergson to Bohm

Abstract

In Creative Evolution (1907), Henri Bergson’s concept of the cinematographical mechanism of thought serves as a model allowing him to deconstruct an epistemology originating in ancient Greece. Within this epistemology, the “becoming” that Bergson writes of is seen primarily as the degradation of a form rather than that which breathes life into forms. While he first admits the practical benefits derived from the cinematographical character of our knowledge, Bergson then advances his line of argument by questioning the specificity with which such a knowledge can attain insight into the nature of this “moving reality” itself: In order to advance with the moving reality, you must replace yourself within it. Install yourself within change, and you will grasp at once both change itself and the successive states in which it might be immobilized. (2001, 297)