Henri Bergson – Note to Self

Added Bergson’s Creative Evolution to my reading list after finding so many references in McGilchrist’s latest. And had also noticed lots of cross-links between Bergson and Whitehead / James through an active “fan” of Bergson on my timeline in the last couple of years (Emily Herring).

Keep coming across references to him having been the most famous philosopher, most famous and decorated public intellectual in fact, in his early 20th C time – Brooklyn’s first traffic jam, etc. This, despite also being evidently influential on so many other important thinkers, leaving you wondering why he had dropped out of the headlines in the same way that (say) Einstein is constantly recalled to public consciousness.

However, as I added Bergson to my list I had that feeling I had acquired Creative Evolution before, a title that so obviously fitted my agenda. Sure enough I mentioned starting (trying) to read it back here in 2007 (9/11 2007 as it happens) having bought it in Barnes & Noble when we were living in the US. So I scanned my library, thoroughly randomised by a recent down-sizing house-move, and found it. (A 2005 edition of the 1907 Harvard translation by Arthur Mitchell, assisted by Wm James. And I only acquired it because an MoQ-Discuss / Pirsig reference noted.)

A short but familiar reading list in there too, several of which also in the bibliography of McGilchrist’s The Matter With Things. Small world. Add The Creative Mind and Time and Free Will to the reading list.

And that pic reminds me – Mark Solms Hidden Spring sits there unfinished too. A victim of priorities over the course of this year. And I never did finish Zeman’s latest either.

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