Evolution of Consciousness and Evolution of Life

Introduction

In the beginning of Creative Evolution, Henri Bergson submits to us a strange analogy:

Continuity of change, preservation of the past in the present, real duration—the living being seems, then, to share these attributes with consciousness. Can we go further and say that life, like conscious activity, is invention, is unceasing creation?¹

The answer to this question comes very quickly:

Regarded from this point of view, life is like a current passing from germ to germ through the medium of a developed organism . . . 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. Now, the more we fix our attention of this continuity of life, the more we see that organic evolution resembles the evolution of a consciousness, incommensurable with its antecedents.²

Of course, we can conclude that this analogy is nothing but a pure anthropomorphism. How can we compare the continuity of genetic energy with the human stream of consciousness? Are we not fantasizing, in the strict Bergsonian meaning of the word? Are we not instinctively putting some human attributes in Nature in order to explain its properties? But in The Origin of Species Darwin deals with a very similar analogy. As a man selects profitable variations for his own good, Nature also selects favorable variations "for and through the good of each being."³ Are we not attributing to it some active or "divine power"? Are we not putting a will in Nature, like in human consciousness? Darwin examines the question in the sixth edition of the book. The insightful answer that he gives is that "Nature" personifies the action of a very great number of natural laws, then, the action of complexity. It is, therefore, an objective complexity such as "universal attraction," for instance, and not a subjective property.

Yet, in regard to the Bergsonian critique of natural life sciences in Creative Evolution, the answer does not suffice. Life explained—it is well known—is not life lived, and there is some internal analogy between life lived by all organisms in Nature, and duration in human consciousness. If I want to mix a glass of sugar and water, "I must wait until the sugar melts . . . It is no longer something thought, it is something lived. It is no longer a relation, it is an absolute."⁴ The fact of succession is not explained with the help of science.

If we admit now that "the universe endures," this problem is not only a psychological problem, it is also a biological problem, and we must accept that what we are living in our mind can perhaps give better information in order to understand duration in the universe, than all of our scientific explanations. Can we share this conclusion? I intend to show that if we agree with it, we are faced with two series of difficulties.

First, we must explain how, in the Bergsonian vision of the world, duration can be lived, not only by my consciousness, but also by any natural species in the universe. This requires a very great transformation in the conceptual framework of Bergsonian philosophy. We cannot admit anymore that duration is just an inside property. It moves outside of me, in the universe. This objectification of duration is new, in Bergsonian thinking. Where does it come from?

Second, if we accept that life is lived by all organic beings, we must conclude that life cannot be explained. Is this not a very difficult conclusion? It means that all of the explanations in the life sciences must endure the risk of being inaccurate and artificial. It prohibits all possible developments in order to understand better aging, embryology, and evolution.

Third, we would ask an ultimate question: what does the fact that life is lived show? Does it show that life cannot be explained, or does it show, first that the framework of the explanation of life has to change, and second (this is not the same point) that all explanation of life is accurate and precise, but incomplete? Fréd...