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A Review
of
Henri Louis Bergson's Book
Creative Evolution
Chapter I: The Evolution of Life Mechanism and Teleology
Topic 5: Transformism
by Doug Renselle
Doug's Pre-review Commentary
Start of Review


Chapter I II
Introduction 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 
Chapter III IV
22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45  46 47

Move to any Topic of Henri Louis Bergson's Creative Evolution,
or to beginning of its review via this set of links
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Topic 5...............Transformism

PAGE

QUOTEs
(Most quotes verbatim Henri Louis Bergson, some paraphrased.)

COMMENTs
(Relevant to Pirsig, William James Sidis, and Quantonics Thinking Modes.)

25

"Would the doctrine be affected in so far as it has a special interest or importance for us? Classification would probably remain, in its broad lines. The actual data of embryology would also remain. The correspondence between comparative embryogeny and comparative anatomy would remain too. Therefore biology could and would continue to establish between living forms the same relations and the same kinship as transformism supposes to-day. It would be, it is true, an ideal kinship, and no longer a material affiliation. But, as the actual data of paleontology would also remain, we should still have to admit that it is successively, not simultaneously, that the forms between which we find an ideal kinship have appeared. Now, the evolutionist theory, so far as it has any importance for philosophy, requires no more. It consists above all in establishing relations of ideal kinship, and in maintaining that wherever there is this relation of, so to speak, logical affiliation between forms, there is also a relation of chronological succession between the species in which these forms are materialized. Both arguments would hold in any case. And hence, an evolution somewhere would still have to be supposed, whether in a creative Thought in which the ideas of the different species are generated by each other exactly as transformism holds that species themselves are generated on the earth; or in a plan of vital organization immanent in nature, which gradually works itself out, in which the relations of logical and chronological affiliation between pure forms are just those which transformism presents as relations of real affiliation between living individuals; or, finally, in some unknown cause of life, which develops its effects as if they generated one another. Evolution would then simply have been transposed, made to pass from the visible to the invisible."

(Our bold and color.)

Bergson restarts his footnote counts on each page. So to refer a footnote, one must state page number and footnote number.

Our bold and color highlights follow a code:

  • black-bold - important to read if you are just scanning our review
  • green-bold - we see Bergson suggesting axiomatic memes
  • violet-bold - an apparent classical problematic
  • blue-bold - we disagree with this text segment while disregarding context of Bergson's overall text
  • gray-bold - quotable text
  • red-bold - our direct commentary

Bergson's averment to 'non-material affiliation' we see as more of his apparent quantum intuition.

"Transformism" is not an ill-conceived meme. It is just an ill-conceived meme when applied using
CTMs. When one applies transformism using QTMs, one achieves some cogent and useful new quantum perspectives.

Transformism's classical, analytical view of reality demands that creation was a one time, single occurrence. From that moment of creation all material reality "pre-exists." All subsequent material reality is no more than a simple "transformation" of that material reality. No more new material can be introduced! Material transformative reality conserves!

A quantum view of reality demands evolute, novel, plural, incremental creation of always newer patterns of value using an unlimited supply of Planck quanta as reality's most elemental constituents. No conservation rule applies! Reality is open. Energy and material resources are free and unlimited. Quantum transformation is not of creation's pre-existing material, but evolution of unlimited nonactual quantum vacuum flux to actual latched patterns of value and back again.

26

"Almost all that transformism tells us to-day would be preserved, open to interpretation in another way. Will it not, therefore, be better to stick to the letter of transformism as almost all scientists profess it? Apart from the question to what extent the theory of evolution describes the facts and to what extent it symbolizes them, there is nothing in it that is irreconcilable with the doctrines it has claimed to replace, even with that of special creations, to which it is usually opposed. For this reason we think the language of transformism forces itself now upon all philosophy, as the dogmatic affirmation of transformism forces itself upon science.

"But then, we must no longer speak of life in general as an abstraction, or as a mere heading under which all living beings are inscribed. At a certain moment, in certain points of space, a visible current has taken rise; this current of life, traversing the bodies it has organized one after another, passing from generation to generation, has become divided amongst species and distributed amongst individuals without losing anything of its force, rather intensifying in proportion to its advance. It is well known that, on the theory of the "continuity of the germ-plasm," maintained by Weismann, the sexual elements of the generating organism pass on their properties directly to the sexual elements of the organism engendered. In this extreme form, the theory has seemed debatable, for it is only in exceptional cases that there are any signs of sexual glands at the time of segmentation of the fertilized egg. But, though the cells that engender the sexual elements do not generally appear at the beginning of the embryonic life, it is none the less true that they are always formed out of those tissues of the embryo which have not undergone any particular functional differentiation, and whose cells are made of unmodified protoplasm.(1)"

Note (1) - Roule, L'Embryologie générale, Paris, 1893, p. 319.

(Our bold and color.)




If Bergson should allow us to slightly modify his word transformism to a newer third millennium memetic phrase, "quantum transformism," then we shall choose to agree with his last sentence.








Again, our more recent lingo would call this "quantum flux."
27

"In other words, the genetic power of the fertilized ovum weakens, the more it is spread over the growing mass of the tissues of the embryo; but, while it is being thus diluted, it is concentrating anew something of itself on a certain special point, to wit, the cells, from which the ova or spermatozoa will develop. It might therefore be said that, though the germ-plasm is not continuous, there is at least continuity of genetic energy, this energy being expended only at certain instants, for just enough time to give the requisite impulsion to the embryonic life, and being recouped as soon as possible in new sexual elements, in which, again, it bides its time. Regarded from this point of view, life is like a current passing from germ to germ through the medium of a developed organism. It is as if the organism itself were only an excrescence, a bud caused to sprout by the former germ endeavoring to continue itself in a new germ. 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 on this continuity of life, the more we see that organic evolution resembles the evolution of a consciousness, in which the past presses against the present and causes the upspringing of a new form of consciousness, incommensurable with its antecedents. That the appearance of a vegetable or animal species is due to specific causes, nobody will gainsay. But this can only mean that if, after the fact, we could know these causes in detail, we could explain by them the form that has been produced; foreseeing the form is out of the question.(1) It may perhaps be said that the form could be foreseen if we could know, in all their details, the conditions under which it will be produced."

Note (1) - The irreversibility of the series of living beings has been well set forth by Baldwin (Development and Evolution, New York, 1902; in particular p. 327).

(Our bold and color.)
28

"But these conditions are built up into it and are part and parcel of its being; they are peculiar to that phase of its history in which life finds itself at the moment of producing the form: how could we know beforehand a situation that is unique of its kind, that has never yet occurred and will never occur again? Of the future, only that is foreseen which is like the past or can be made up again with elements like those of the past. Such is the case with astronomical, physical and chemical facts, with all facts which form part of a system in which elements supposed to be unchanging are merely put together, in which the only changes are changes of position, in which there is no theoretical absurdity in imagining that things are restored to their place; in which, consequently, the same total phenomenon, or at least the same elementary phenomena, can be repeated. But an original situation, which imparts something of its own originality to its elements, that is to say, to the partial views that are taken of it, how can such a situation be pictured as given before it is actually produced?(1) All that can be said is that, once produced, it will be explained by the elements that analysis will then carve out of it. Now, what is true of the production of a new species is also true of the production of a new individual, and, more generally, of any moment of any living form. For, though the variation must reach a certain importance and a certain generality in order to give rise to a new species, it is being produced every moment, continuously and insensibly, in every living being. And it is evident that even the sudden "mutations" which we now hear of are possible only if a process of incubation, or rather of maturing, is going on throughout a series of generations that do not seem to change."

Note (1) - We have dwelt on this point and tried to make it clear in the Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience, pp. 140-151.

(Our bold and color.)











Reader, please note and consider that now we know that all quantum reality is like this. All quantum reality changes and is new, Planck event by Planck event.

This is a classical analytic illusion.

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