Creative Evolution

In 1907, a French philosopher dared to rewrite Darwin. Bergson argued that evolution isn't the blind mechanical process Darwin described, but a creative surge driven by what he called the élan vital, the vital impulse that courses through all living things. Evolution, for Bergson, is not mere adaptation but continuous becoming, each moment overflowing into the next with genuine novelty. He challenges our understanding of time itself: duration, he insists, is not the tick of a clock but the subjective flow of consciousness, the irreducible texture of lived experience. Intuition, Bergson contends, reaches deeper than intellect, the analytical mind can only fragment and repeat, while intuition grasps the vital flux directly. This radical vision influenced Proust's memory and Mann's consciousness, reshaping how modernism understood time and being. A century later, Bergson's argument that life cannot be reduced to mechanism retains its power to disturb and inspire.