Evolution Creatrice


Read by Peter Tucker

(4.8 stars; 17 reviews)

Creative Evolution (French: L'Évolution créatrice) is a 1907 book by French philosopher Henri Bergson. Its English translation appeared in 1911. The book provides an alternate explanation for Darwin's mechanism of evolution, suggesting that evolution is motivated by an élan vital, a "vital impetus" that can also be understood as humanity's natural creative impulse. The book was very popular in the early decades of the twentieth century, before the Neodarwinian synthesis was developed.

The book also develops concepts of time (offered in Bergson's earlier work) which significantly influenced modernist writers and thinkers such as Marcel Proust. For example, Bergson's term "duration" refers to a more individual, subjective experience of time, as opposed to mathematical, objectively measurable "clock time." In Creative Evolution, Bergson suggests that the experience of time as "duration" can best be understood through creative intuition, not through intellect. - Summary by Wikipedia (11 hr 17 min)

Chapters

Translator's note and author's introduction 13:33 Read by Peter Tucker
Chapter 1, Part 1 42:09 Read by Peter Tucker
Chapter 1, Part 2 1:05:41 Read by Peter Tucker
Chapter 1, Part 3 29:29 Read by Peter Tucker
Chapter 1, Part 4 36:54 Read by Peter Tucker
Chapter 2, Part 1 14:25 Read by Peter Tucker
Chapter 2, Part 2 51:42 Read by Peter Tucker
Chapter 2, Part 3 31:15 Read by Peter Tucker
Chapter 2, Part 4 25:13 Read by Peter Tucker
Chapter 2, Part 5 19:31 Read by Peter Tucker
Chapter 2, Part 6 16:57 Read by Peter Tucker
Chapter 3, Part 1 24:43 Read by Peter Tucker
Chapter 3, Part 2 36:11 Read by Peter Tucker
Chapter 3, Part 3 31:53 Read by Peter Tucker
Chapter 3, Part 4 1:00:52 Read by Peter Tucker
Chapter 4, Part 1 47:09 Read by Peter Tucker
Chapter 4, Part 2 10:25 Read by Peter Tucker
Chapter 4, Part 3 44:36 Read by Peter Tucker
Chapter 4, Part 4 30:00 Read by Peter Tucker
Chapter 4, Part 5 19:16 Read by Peter Tucker
Chapter 4, Part 6 13:07 Read by Peter Tucker
Chapter 4, Part 7 12:20 Read by Peter Tucker

Reviews

Evolution Creatice


(5 stars)

Henri Bergson’s “Evolution Creatrice” has, for me, elevated Henri Bergson to a level on par with Nietzsche, Foucault, and May Sinclair. That’s the best, albeit brief, critique I can give any philosopher.

POL-PHL-ECO


(5 stars)

Terrific book! I wish there was more of Bergson on Librivox. He's a very intelligent thinker who was highly influential to nearly all Continental Philosophers of the 20th century. This book has profound insights on time, metaphysics in general, history of philosophy, science, anthropology, biology, etc. Essentially, Bergson is trying to show life more as real life than he believed typical biology, physics, and metaphysics did. Biology seemed to show things progressing somewhat aimlessly in a teleological sense rather than his more purposeful view. Physics viewed things as distinct chunks of time rather than the continual flow of time we really live in. Metaphysics did the same as physics by looking at the essences of things at distinct moments in time rather than in the flux of time.