Bergson and Modern Physics A Re-Interpretation and Re-Evalua
Bergson and Modern Physics A Re-Interpretation and Re-Evaluation M. Capek Kluwe All the city in 1 notebook with - summary chart of the followed city by a series of charts divided by... Brilliant exposition of Bergson, and a critical analysis of metaphysical presumptions. Capek divides his book into three parts. The first part amounts to a particular characterization of the metaphysics underlying nineteenth century science and philosophy. This metaphysics is then undermined through consideration of Bergson's `biological epistemology'. The second part is an attempt to expound Bergson's theory of `duration', which remains obscure despite Capek's exposition. The third part relates aspects of Bergson's theories to certain features of relativity theory and quantum mechanics, the intention being to suggest that Bergson's overall perspective is a better match for contemporary physics than the traditional, more static, perspectives. Overall the book succeeds in presenting and then criticizing a set of presumptions in traditional metaphysics, and it does so by approaching and illuminating these presumptions from a number of angles. As an explication of Bergson's own thought it is also very clear, but Bergson's theories do not necessarily become more impressive through being rendered with clarity - conceptually they remain recondite. Lastly, an exposition of developments in twentieth century physics is offered, and this again benefits from Capek's wonderfully clear style, and the philosophical implications are extensively discussed (Capek's previous book, `The Philosophical Impact of Contemporary Physics', is even more thorough on this point). Google's online book site has several chapters available, cost free. In Part One Capek presents a characterization of a metaphysical position that might be termed `mechanistic determinism'. While primarily arising from the developments in physics from Newton onwards, Capek also traces its origins to the speculations of the ancient Greeks. It is a world view which sees the cosmos as a machine, where every action is fully determined by preceding actions, and which thinks it coherent to consider the cosmos from a vantage outside of time, whereby the past, the present, and the future, are all equally real and all equally determined; it is a view which sees the unchanging as the paradigm of what needs no further explanation, and which is considered `most real' - in contrast, that which changes is `less real', even illusory, and, consequently, must be explained in terms of that which is changeless. On this world view, knowledge, and truth, are thought of as absolutes, unchanging absolutes, and they are to be found when this vantage surveying the entirety of the cosmos, past, present and future, is attained or approached. While Newton's laws of motion, and subsequent theories widening the applicability of mechanistic ideas, meant that this world view could be justified in terms of the determinable motion of solid bodies, Capek shows that a predilection for such a view existed in ancient Greek thought and, derivatively, in Judeo-Christian theology. Given that the ideal vantage is one where the cosmos appears fixed and finished, where all change can be predicted, the means by which one approaches knowledge and truth might also be expected to be fixed and finished, and not open to change through time, or `evolution' - these `means' are our systems of logic and mathematics - thus Capek takes `mechanistic determinism' and, indeed, most positions in traditional metaphysics, as asserting that the fundamentals of logic and mathematics are invariant over time and, more strongly, are invariant in any conceivable world. In keeping with the predilection for the unchanging and uniform, in theories which postulate fundamental particles, these particles are conceived as homogenous and eternal - this was the case in Democritean atomism, and so too with atomism's revival in the Renaissance the apparent change of the e