Duration (French: ''la durée'') is a theory of
time
Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, ...
and
consciousness
Consciousness, at its simplest, is sentience and awareness of internal and external existence. However, the lack of definitions has led to millennia of analyses, explanations and debates by philosophers, theologians, linguisticians, and scien ...
posited by the
French philosopher Henri Bergson. Bergson sought to improve upon inadequacies he perceived in the philosophy of
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer (27 April 1820 – 8 December 1903) was an English philosopher, psychologist, biologist, anthropologist, and sociologist famous for his hypothesis of social Darwinism. Spencer originated the expression " survival of the fi ...
, due, he believed, to Spencer's lack of comprehension of
mechanics
Mechanics (from Ancient Greek: μηχανική, ''mēkhanikḗ'', "of machines") is the area of mathematics and physics concerned with the relationships between force, matter, and motion among physical objects. Forces applied to object ...
, which led Bergson to the conclusion that time eluded mathematics and science.
[Henri Bergson, ''The Creative Mind: An Introduction to Metaphysics'', pages 11 to 14.] Bergson became aware that the moment one attempted to measure a moment, it would be gone: one measures an immobile, complete line, whereas time is mobile and incomplete. For the individual, time may speed up or slow down, whereas, for science, it would remain the same. Hence Bergson decided to explore the inner life of man, which is a kind of duration, neither a unity nor a quantitative
multiplicity
Multiplicity may refer to: In science and the humanities
* Multiplicity (mathematics), the number of times an element is repeated in a multiset
* Multiplicity (philosophy), a philosophical concept
* Multiplicity (psychology), having or using mult ...
.
Duration is ineffable and can only be shown indirectly through images that can never reveal a complete picture. It can only be grasped through a simple
intuition
Intuition is the ability to acquire knowledge without recourse to conscious reasoning. Different fields use the word "intuition" in very different ways, including but not limited to: direct access to unconscious knowledge; unconscious cognition; ...
of the imagination.
[Henri Bergson, ''The Creative Mind: An Introduction to Metaphysics'', pages 165 to 168.]
Bergson first introduced his notion of duration in his essay ''
Time and Free Will
''Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness'' (French: ''Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience'') is Henri Bergson's doctoral thesis, first published in 1889. The essay deals with the problem of free will, w ...
: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness''. It is used as a defense of
free will
Free will is the capacity of agents to choose between different possible courses of action unimpeded.
Free will is closely linked to the concepts of moral responsibility, praise, culpability, sin, and other judgements which apply only to ac ...
in a response to
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant (, , ; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and ...
, who believed free will was only possible outside time and space.
Responses to Kant and Zeno
Zeno of Elea
Zeno of Elea (; grc, Ζήνων ὁ Ἐλεᾱ́της; ) was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher of Magna Graecia and a member of the Eleatic School founded by Parmenides. Aristotle called him the inventor of the dialectic. He is best known ...
believed reality was an uncreated and indestructible immobile whole. He formulated
four paradoxes to present mobility as an impossibility. We can never, he said, move past a single point because each point is infinitely divisible, and it is impossible to cross an infinite space. But to Bergson, the problem only arises when mobility and time, that is, duration, are mistaken for the spatial line that underlies them. Time and mobility are mistakenly treated as things, not progressions. They are treated retrospectively as a thing's spatial trajectory, which can be divided ''ad infinitum'', whereas they are, in fact, an indivisible whole.
Bergson's response to Kant is that free will is possible within a duration within which time resides. Free will is not really a problem but merely a common confusion among philosophers caused by the immobile time of science. To measure duration (''durée''), it must be translated into the immobile, spatial time (''temps'') of science, a translation of the unextended into the extended. It is through this translation that the problem of free will arises. Since space is a homogeneous, quantitative
multiplicity
Multiplicity may refer to: In science and the humanities
* Multiplicity (mathematics), the number of times an element is repeated in a multiset
* Multiplicity (philosophy), a philosophical concept
* Multiplicity (psychology), having or using mult ...
, as opposed to what Bergson calls a heterogenous, qualitative multiplicity, duration becomes juxtaposed and converted into a succession of distinct parts, one coming after the other and therefore "caused" by one another. Nothing within a duration can be the cause of anything else within it. Hence
determinism, the belief everything is determined by a prior cause, is an impossibility. One must accept time as it really is through placing oneself within duration where freedom can be identified and experienced as pure mobility.
Images of duration
The first is of two spools, one unrolling to represent the continuous flow of ageing as one feels oneself moving toward the end of one's life-span, the other rolling up to represent the continuous growth of memory which, for Bergson, equals consciousness. No two successive moments are identical, for the one will always contain the memory left by the other. A person with no memory might experience two identical moments but, Bergson says, that person's consciousness would thus be in a constant state of death and rebirth, which he identifies with unconsciousness.
The image of two spools, however, is of a homogeneous and commensurable thread, whereas, according to Bergson, no two moments can be the same, hence duration is heterogeneous.
Bergson then presents the image of a spectrum of a thousand gradually changing shades with a line of feeling running through them, being both affected by and maintaining each of the shades. Yet even this image is inaccurate and incomplete, for it represents duration as a fixed and complete spectrum with all the shades spatially juxtaposed, whereas duration is incomplete and continuously growing, its states not beginning or ending but intermingling.
[Henri Bergson, ''The Creative Mind: An Introduction to Metaphysics'', pages 164 to 165.]
Even this image is incomplete, because the wealth of colouring is forgotten when it is invoked.
But as the three images illustrate, it can be stated that duration is qualitative, unextended, multiple yet a unity, mobile and continuously interpenetrating itself. Yet these concepts put side-by-side can never adequately represent duration itself;
''The truth is we change without ceasing...there is no essential difference between passing from one state to another and persisting in the same state. If the state which "remains the same" is more varied than we think, hen
Hen commonly refers to a female animal: a female chicken, other gallinaceous bird, any type of bird in general, or a lobster. It is also a slang term for a woman.
Hen or Hens may also refer to:
Places Norway
*Hen, Buskerud, a village in Ringer ...
on the other hand the passing of one state to another resembles—more than we imagine—a single state being prolonged: the transition is continuous. Just because we close our eyes to the unceasing variation of every physical state, we are obliged when the change has become so formidable as to force itself on our attention, to speak as if a new state were placed alongside the previous one. Of this new state we assume that it remains unvarying in its turn and so on endlessly.''
Because a qualitative
multiplicity
Multiplicity may refer to: In science and the humanities
* Multiplicity (mathematics), the number of times an element is repeated in a multiset
* Multiplicity (philosophy), a philosophical concept
* Multiplicity (psychology), having or using mult ...
is heterogeneous and yet interpenetrating, it cannot be adequately represented by a symbol; indeed, for Bergson, a qualitative multiplicity is inexpressible. Thus, to grasp duration, one must reverse habitual modes of thought and place oneself within duration by intuition.
Influence on Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze was profoundly influenced by Bergson's theory of duration, particularly in his work ''
Cinema 1: The Movement Image'' in which he described cinema as providing people with continuity of movement (duration) rather than still images strewn together.
Physics and Bergson's ideas
![Albert Einstein 1921 by F Schmutzer](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3f/Albert_Einstein_1921_by_F_Schmutzer.jpg)
Bergson had a correspondence with physicist Albert Einstein in 1922 and a debate over Einstein's theory of relativity and its implications. For Bergson, the primary disagreement was over metaphysical and epistemological claims made by the theory of relativity, rather than a dispute about scientific evidence for or against the theory. Bergson famously stated of the theory that it is "a metaphysics grafted upon science, it is not science".
Bergson's ideas concerning the
philosophy of time
Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some ...
were somewhat rediscovered after a paper
on Zeno's paradox was published in ''Foundations of Physics Letters'' and generated interest in 2003. The writer, Peter Lynds, was credited with producing an original new insight. However, it was noted in a journal article shortly after that the ideas in this paper were preceded by Henri Bergson, evidently unbeknownst to Lynds or his paper's referees.
[S E Robbins (2004) On time, memory and dynamic form. Consciousness and Cognition 13(4), 762-788: "Lynds, his reviewers and consultants (e.g., J.J.C. Smart) are apparently unaware of his total precedence by Bergson"]
See also
*
Problem of time
In theoretical physics, the problem of time is a conceptual conflict between general relativity and quantum mechanics in that quantum mechanics regards the flow of time as universal and absolute, whereas general relativity regards the flow of tim ...
*
Loop quantum gravity
*
Uncertainty principle
In quantum mechanics, the uncertainty principle (also known as Heisenberg's uncertainty principle) is any of a variety of mathematical inequalities asserting a fundamental limit to the accuracy with which the values for certain pairs of physic ...
References
External links
1910 English translation of ''Time and Free Will''Multiple formatsat Internet Archive
{{Time in philosophy
Concepts in metaphysics
Concepts in the philosophy of mind
Free will
Henri Bergson
Philosophy of time