Tag: "life"

The Revolt Against Materialism

If you’ve never read anything by the French philosopher and scientist Henri Bergson (1859-1941), you are definitely missing out! Most famous for coining the term élan vital–or vital force–in his 1907 book Creative Evolution, Bergson was trying to reclaim the theory of evolution from the mechanistic and deterministic worldview that was starting to take hold in many cultural and philosophical circles by the end of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. He argued that there is a creative, living force driving the evolutionary process. And his bold claim that free will and human choice were not only real, but products of the evolution of life, won this philosopher surprising fame in the public eye. His inspired talks filled lecture halls, he won a Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925, and his writings were very popular during the first two decades of the twentieth century. Here’s an excerpt from Creative Evolution: Continue reading…