Evolution of Consciousness and Evolution of Life

Miquel, Paul-Antoine.
MLN, Volume 120, Number 5, December 2005 (Comparative Literature Issue), pp. 1156-1167 (Article)
Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press DOI: 10.1353/mln.2006.0019

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Evolution of Consciousness and Evolution of Life

Paul-Antoine Miquel

Introduction In the beginning of Creative Evolution, Henri Bergson submits to us a strange analogy:
Continuity of change, preservation of the past in the present, real durationthe living being seems, then, to share these attributes with consciousness. Can we go further and say that life, like conscious activity, is invention, is unceasing creation?1

The answer to this question comes very quickly:

Regarded from this point of view, life is like a current passing from germ to germ through the medium of a developed organism . . . The essential thing is the continuous progress indenitely pursued, an invisible progress, on which each visible organism rides during the short interval of time given it to live. Now, the more we x our attention of this continuity of life, the more we see that organic evolution resembles the evolution of a consciousness, incommensurable with its antecedents.2

Of course, we can conclude that this analogy is nothing but a pure anthropomorphism. How can we compare the continuity of genetic energy with the human stream of consciousness? Are we not fantasizing, in the strict Bergsonian meaning of the word? Are we not instinctively putting some human attributes in Nature in order to explain its properties? But in The Origin of Species Darwin deals with a very similar analogy. As a man selects protable variations for his own good, Nature also selects favorable variations for and through the
MLN 120 (2005): 11561167 2006 by The Johns Hopkins University Press

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good of each being.3 Are we not attributing to it some active or divine power? Are we not putting a will in Nature, like in human consciousness? Darwin examines the question in the sixth edition of the book. The insightful answer that he gives is that Nature personies the action of a very great number of natural laws, then, the action of complexity. It is, therefore, an objective complexity such as universal attraction, for instance, and not a subjective property. Yet, in regard to the Bergsonian critique of natural life sciences in Creative Evolution, the answer does not sufce. Life explainedit is well knownis not life lived, and there is some internal analogy between life lived by all organisms in Nature, and duration in human consciousness. If I want to mix a glass of sugar and water, I must wait until the sugar melts . . . It is no longer something thought, it is something lived. It is no longer a relation, it is an absolute.4 The fact of succession is not explained with the help of science. If we admit now that the universe endures, this problem is not only a psychological problem, it is also a biological problem, and we must accept that what we are living in our mind can perhaps give better information in order to understand duration in the universe, than all of our scientic explanations. Can we share this conclusion? I intend to show that if we agree with it, we are faced with two series of difculties. First, we must explain how, in the Bergsonian vision of the world, duration can be lived, not only by my consciousness, but also by any natural species in the universe. This requires a very great transformation in the conceptual framework of Bergsonian philosophy. We cannot admit anymore that duration is just an inside property. It moves outside of me, in the universe. This objectication of duration is new, in Bergsonian thinking. Where does it come from? Second, if we accept that life is lived by all organic beings, we must conclude that life cannot be explained. Is this not a very difcult conclusion? It means that all of the explanations in the life sciences must endure the risk of being inaccurate and articial. It prohibits all possible developments in order to understand better aging, embryology, and evolution. Third, we would ask an ultimate question: what does the fact that life is lived show? Does it show that life cannot be explained, or does it show, rst that the framework of the explanation of life has to change, and second (this is not the same point) that all explanation of life is accurate and precise, but incomplete? Frdric Worms has often said that physical conditions are ce sans quoi [that without which]5 we

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cannot speak of life, and I would gladly carry on in this way: life explained is that without which it is not possible to understand life as a philosophicaland perhapsa metaphysical category. 1. The fact that life is lived by organisms requires an important change in the use of the concept of succession I would recall here very quickly the dualistic position of the French philosopher in his rst book, Time and Free Will:
Thus, within our ego, there is succession without externality; outside the ego, in pure space, mutual externality without succession.6

I will quickly explain why this characterization of duration constitutes for me the addition of a bad transcendence to a bad immanence. It must be understood, rst, that space is not a quality of quality in Time and Free Will. It is something like a reality with no quality. Space is homogeneity. It is externality [extriorit]. But homogeneity is not only a property of things, when things are independent of consciousness. Space is not only the container of all physical objects, it is the schema of or explanation of the world, and it also designs the external relation and correlation between the schema and the container. Thus, space not only characterizes a certain description of objects, it also characterizes a certain description of truth. In the rst sense (description of objects), space is the fact that we can give a dimension to an object, and that we can compare and measure objects one against the others, because they share the same dimensionality. This dimensionality is symbolized by a standard scale, like the meter for instance, which is a standard of length. As a length sample, the meter is an object. But this object symbolizes the standard scale of length, or, better said, the standard scale of length as an external relation that is not affected when we apply it to various sorts of objects. External means here rst that we can compare (and not only put in order) the relata, and second that the relation is independent from the relata. In the second sense (description of truth), space is the fact that scientic explanation is relative and articial. It does not give to us the reality of the object, since it puts the object which is represented outside the mind. It gives us a representation of the relation between objects and the mind, which is always relative. It turns around reality, but it never reaches it. It is like a picture that can never replace the original, which is outside, transcendent, out of reach. In the rst sense, succession means that the old present vanishes,

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when the new present arrives. It is, then, not possible, by denition, to compare the old present with the new. The simple idea of such a comparison excludes the concept of succession in order to explain it. Therefore succession cannot be explained, and it is impossible to compare the events in succession with the elements of a spatial line. It is not only because duration is continuous, it is because the events in duration are heterogeneous to each other. But, succession is lived; it is a reality. Something from the old present is present in the present, and in the consciousness of the present. Succession cannot be described. It acts in the present, as an internal relation, which completes all possible description. It is lived inside as a pure immanent relation. Of course, with such a denition of succession, it is impossible to understand how life can be lived by organisms. Outside: externality without succession, and inside: succession without externality. How can it be possible then to say that the universe is enduring succession, and that life is existing outside of our consciousness, without breaking down this internality, this pure immanence? In order to answer, we ought to criticize the radical distinction between space and duration, both understood as opposite concepts. We must refuse to explain, with the very schema of space, the relationships between space and duration. But how can this be possible? 2. How can life be lived outside us? The fact that life can be lived outside is put forth in Matter and Memory. An important distinction is introduced in the third chapter concerning the relations between present and past:
The bodily memory, made up of the sum of the sensori-motor systems organized by habit, is then a quasi-instantaneous memory to which the true memory of the past serves as base. Since they are not two separate things, since the rst is only, as we have said, the pointed end, ever moving, inserted by the second in the shifting plane of experience, it is natural that the two functions should lend each other a mutual support.7

Firstly, the bodily memory [la mmoire du corps] which starts with the consciousness of present is nothing but an image of images, or, better said, the innitesimal difference between the body as a part of an image world, and the reection of this world in an image of images. It is impossible to completely isolate this perception or reection which contains an immediate past, and the beginning of

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memory which starts in it: The psychical state, then, that I call my present, must be both a perception of the immediate past and a determination of the future.8 Like the curve which can be isolated to its tangent in innite calculus, the present, then, cannot be isolated from my present. The world of images cannot be isolated from this image of images that I call my present. It is only in this way that we can understand that bodies and physical phenomena are nothing but images, even if they are self existing images. It is only in this way that we can conclude that, the present moment constituted by the quasiinstantaneous section effected by the perception in the owing-mass is precisely that which we call the material world. Secondly, what exactly is the past?
Essentially virtual, it cannot be known as something past unless we follow and adopt the movement by which it expands into a present image, thus emerging from obscurity into the light of day.9

This past is not immediately the pure past, but what is past as a past, is essentially virtual. That is the rst important point; the second important point is that the virtual cannot be opposed to the actual as duration was opposed to space. Why? Because the actual is not the opposite of the virtual. It is its negation, and that is the rst point. The second is that the virtual is essentially dened by the fact that it contains its negation (the present, the actual). Therefore, the difference between virtual and actual is in the present itself, in the actuality. How can it be possible to compare obscurity with the light of the day? It is possible because there is no such thing as pure obscurity. One only nds differences of luminosity between the day and the night. Of course these differences between past and present are not always actualized in the present. They can stay here as a pure potential, but it is a difference between virtual and actual that stays here: it is not a pure virtual without an actual. Then the virtual becomes nothing more than this internal discrepancy between virtual and actual in the actuality. It is very easy then to understand what memory is. Memory is the metaphysical fact, the metaphysical experience of the pure fact that the old present is destroyed as an old present, but it is conserved in the new present as a past. And now, this potential of discrepancy between the present and the past can be actualized, or silenced in the present [la mmoire peut tre agie ou active]. If it is actualized more and more, memory becomes a creative memory. If it disappears more and more, memory becomes a pure automatic algorithm, such as a watch. For instance, the well-known madeleine de Proust has nothing to do

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with the simple event: eating a cookie. La madeleine de Proust is the pure metaphysical fact, the memory of an old event in a present is acting on the present. It is not only in the present. It is actualized. This actualization is the new psychological event: to feel nostalgia when I think of my grandmother. My grandmother is not here anymore, with her typical southern-French accent. But the nostalgia for my grandmother is invading my mind. There are two essential consequences for us here. Firstly, the past as a virtual reality is like an absolute because it survives in itself. We understand now what can be called surviving in itself. The past is in internal relation with itself in the present. It is a past, since this internal discrepancy between the present and the past is not necessarily actualized. However, it does not mean that it does not exist anymore. If we can use a physical analogy, the fact that the potential energy of my pen is not used, does not mean that my pen cannot move if it is falling. Thus, we have a very new denition of the absolute, very close to the Heideggerian denition of das Sein. The past, as an absolute, is essentially nite, since it is not beyond all limitation as a pure transcendent essence. It is absolute because the relation between the virtual and its negation is a relation between the virtual and itself. The past is the past in the present and not outside. And there is an important consequence here: we cannot accept now that the pure past could be independent of the present. Therefore it is impossible to accept that the pure remembrance [souvenir pur] could be independent of the brain. It is a very paradoxical conclusion since the dualistic attitude, which remains present in Matter and Memory, requires Bergson to assert the contrary in the second part of his book. We must assume, then, that the negation of the virtual is not something outside the virtual, and then outside the reality. The negation of the virtual is real. Therefore, the actual is a dimension of reality and of duration. It is not a Nothing [un Nant]. We must remember, on the contrary, that nothing is nothing! Nothing is just something with the idea of nothing! Therefore, the present is not only the space, but much more the fact that the space is material, and matter is now a dimension of reality. Thus, we are led to a very important conclusion: matter is not outside duration! We will see that matter has not only something to do with space, it has a specic duration [lunivers matriel dure], it has a memory [une mmoire qui sommeille], and a specic tendency [lextension] which has something to do with dissipation, or disorder. If we admit this very point, we can better understand the quotation

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at the beginning of this paper. If our present is in duration, then the multiplicity of presents of the whole universe endure! Thus, it is impossible to distinguish between outside and inside. Inside us, the internal discrepancy between present and past is lived; the philosophical fact, that this difference can be more and more actualized or not actualized, is lived. But if all presents are in duration, we must nd this difference outside. And if it is the case, the difference between life and matter, which is lived outside us, must have something to do with this difference between a creative and an automatic memory inside us. Therefore our consciousness must sympathize with something like the consciousness of the universe. Here we are, here we go! We need a nal and very important distinction in the Bergsonian conceptual framework in order to understand this sympathy with the duration of the universe. What is life? Life is not a simple creative memory. And matter is not a simple algorithmic memory. Life, like matter, is tendencies. Heidegger completely misunderstood what a Bergsonian tendency is. A tendency is not only the fact that the present is representing something, it is the fact that the present is acting, it is moving in a certain way. Life is rstly the fact that the way of the present is often changing with the present itself. Let us go, for example, back to the diagram of The Origin of Species.10 You see here that there is no blueprint that predicts evolutionary pathways of species. They change by means of hereditary variations and natural selection. But if we explain it with Bergsonian concepts, we must admit that the guiding force of evolutionary process is a new metaphysical and philosophical fact, whose name is lan vital. The lan vital is nite. It means here rst that it is a guiding force in the present, which essentially depends on the present. Therefore, it is impossible to predict where the present is going. It means that you cannot have an adaptationist vision of evolution, like in Grays or in Spencers views. But it is well known that the adaptationist program is not dead today. See for instance Dawkins or Dennett. I will just emphasize here that it is neither a Bergsonian, nor a Darwinian program. The future then is unpredictable, since the future as a sense or a virtual direction, the future as the way by which the present changes, depends essentially on the present itself. Then, the lan vital is nite. The force, which guides the evolutionary process, depends on it, as a cause, which is the product, or the effect of its effects, [b]ecause the causes here, unique in their

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kind, are part of the effect, have come into existence with it, and are determined by it as much they determine it.11 It acts like a virtual power, which is shown as virtual in the present, in its internal difference or discrepancy with the actuality of the present. Therefore, evolution progresses by dissociation and divergence of efforts, and not by convergence. Secondly, the lan vital is the fact that all creation of new forms in evolutionary pathways are produced by dissipation. And then, life is not a simple tendency. It is a reality which is making itself in a reality which is unmaking itself. Let us examine several examples. What, for instance, is an animal? An animal is moving without eating. Then, it is not automatically eating, like a plant. The locomotor muscles are expending without calculation.12 In order to eat, it expends motion in explosive actions. Life has nothing to do with the economy of forces and with the principle of less action. It deals with expense and prodigality. This dissipation creates new structures and new functions, such as instinct. Instinct is the fact that you are not acting automatically like a plant. You are acting with an automatic representation of an aim that you are following. You are acting with an intention, even if you cannot dissociate this intention from your action. Your consciousness is awake. And what is a human being, now? A human being expends thoughts without acting. It is thinking in order to think. And thanks to this stupid expense, a human evaluates the aim and the means in order to accomplish the aim. Automatic representations do not sufce. The human needs intelligence and this prodigality of thoughts. Therefore, he needs the ability to represent objects with signs, and to manipulate those signs without acting. As Bergson says, the intelligent sign is mobile. From the moment that a human perceives ideas through signs, and perceives ideas of himself, he can understand the world, manipulate objects, and look for natural laws. Therefore, life is a tendency that acts by means of an opposite tendency. However, this opposite tendency is not outside of itself. It is internal to life. Life, as a tendency, is internally polarized. It is not a tension without extension. It is a tension by means of extension. Therefore, life does not stop the course of material change, but does succeed in retarding itself. Matter is not something external to life, as space was external to duration. It is a negation of life that is not a nothing, which has its own reality. As present was a dimension of memory, matter is a dimension of life. And the lan vital is a limited force that cannot exist without matter, because it is always seeking to

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transcend itself and always remains inadequate to the work it would fain produce.13 Matter is not an accidental obstacle anymore. It is an essential obstacle to life. On the contrary, what, briey, is matters own temporal reality? In the third chapter, Bergson returns to introspection in order to show this. Like the internal difference between the past and the present, which may be silenced by automatic memory, matter is something like the absolute passivity that we feel when we relax.14 The way in which the present moves does not change with the present itself. The future is just the fact that the same way, the same sense eternally returns: in the limit, we get a glimpse of an existence made of a present which recommences unceasinglydevoid of real duration, nothing but the instantaneous which dies and is born again endlessly.15 The material tendency is ex-tension, it is repetition. Repetition is a form of duration, it is not necessity or eternity. In repetition, one sees some uctuations in the present, but these uctuations are just a sampling effect. They are just the sign that the present is always composed of random events. We now understand that chance has nothing to do with life and its unpredictability. Chance is characterized by a set of random events, and by the fact that these random events always verify the same distribution of probability. The way is not changed by the uctuation. Look at the Darwinian map of evolution: one sees exactly the contrary!16 The way is often changed by uctuations because, as Darwin says, the relation between hereditary variations and natural selection may be called accidental. Finally we reach the real structure of internal and external time, which is duration. Duration is not always the fact that the present is essential to the way by which the present changes; it is not always the fact that this way is shown in the present as a virtual reality. When this structure of action emerges in a present, then duration is life. Yet duration is also the fact that this internal relation between the present and the way by which the present changes can be silenced. Duration is not always another, it can be other, or else that which is always another. What characterizes duration is not necessity or eternityit is contingence. If we look outside, the difference between this active and passive duration is the difference between matter and life. But if we look inside, this difference is the materiality of mind that we nd in automatic memory, and the vitality of mind that we nd in creative

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memory. Therefore, in the Bergsonian view, this internal difference between life and matter can be understood inside of us, even if we can nd it outside in the universe. Bergson writes, [a]ll this we can feel within ourselves and also divine, by sympathy, outside of ourselves, but we cannot think it, in the strict sense of the word, nor express it in terms of pure understanding.17 3. Bergsons creative mistake I believe that there is a last radical opposition in Bergsonian metaphysics: not the opposition between succession and externality, present and past, or matter and life, but the opposition between inside and outside. I can understand and live life inside me, I can see what life is lived in my consciousness even if life is outside of me. But intelligence, by means of science makes the contrary true, it goes around life, taking of outside the greatest possible number of views of it, drawing it into itself instead of entering into it.18 Intelligence, then, is characterized, by a natural inability to comprehend life. This is why the difference between life and matter can be understood in us, by philosophical or metaphysical introspection. Positive metaphysics, then, is the human ability to grasp a pure internal experience, which has nothing to do with space, before it is possible to understand the relationships between space and duration. I think that this view on positive metaphysics is a mistake, and I will explain why. If it were possible to grasp such an integral experience many problems would emerge. First, how can it be attested that lived duration is not only a psychological experience which says something about the nature of human belief, about consciousness, but which does not say anything about the essence of reality? How can it be attested that the belief in the idea that the experience of duration is the experience of the essence of reality is a true belief and not a ction? Second, how can it be shown that this psychological feeling has something to do with the fact that life is lived in the universe, since this life is lived outside of me? How can we be sure that what is inside of me can be put in relation to what is outside of me, since we said that positive metaphysics is a pure internal experience? What we know about the world indeed, is not purely internal. It is objectied by means of perceptive information, language, and positive natural knowledges.

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Thus, we need perception and science in order to say anything about the world, even if life is lived in the world. In the case of the world, internal experience does not come rst. Third, if this were the case, and if we could have a direct internal experience of life and of the evolution of life inside us, then all explanation of life and of evolution would be a misunderstanding. This supposes that philosophy and metaphysics can dictate to science what science can do and understand, before that science even acts. Such an idea prohibits all scientic development in the life sciences. This is a very great mistake, since it gives the illusion that it is possible to speak of duration, memory, and life without any scientic knowledge. And we know of course that this was not the case with Bergson, who was very well informed in physics and in biology. This also gives the illusion that scientic progress can be a priori controlled by philosophy or metaphysics. Let us see, however, the experience of duration itself. It is the experience of the relation between the old present and the present in the new present. It is an internal relation, of course, but one which is essentially dependent on the present. How can we isolate pure duration from the present? And, how can we isolate pure duration from space? If all our thoughts are temporal, how can it be possible to say that several thoughts are not spatial ? If space is something like a schema or a coupe on our present, if our present is a part of the present, and not only a reection of the present in our thoughts, it is not possible to isolate duration from space. And, it is neither possible to isolate what is inside of me, from what is outside of me. The ego cannot be something like a prisoner in the fortress of duration. Yet this mistake is a useful one, and this leads me to my conclusion. Firstly, the fact that life is not purely and simply lived inside me does not mean that life is not lived. In order to establish that point, however, we must ask the question: can it be attested, in the scientic explanation itself, that life is lived in the Bergsonian sense ? For instance, can it be attested in the scientic explanation that the present of living organisms acts in a way by which the present changes? Can we ght, with scientic tools, the adaptationist program? Can it be attested that life has nothing to do with chance, since the evolution of life is not undetermined, but it is unpredictable? Can it be proved that life cannot be explained by the nave approach of the physicist, which is statistical mechanics? Can we establish that it is not statistical mechanics which is useful in biology, but rather that it is biology that helps us to understand why living organisms are open physical systems far off

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equilibrium? Yes, I think that we can give new answers to such questions today, and I will thank Bergson for having put us on this way, before Ilia Prigogine, Stuart Kauffman, or Henri Atlan. Secondly, the fact that science teaches us how life is lived, how life evolves, does not mean that life is reduced to the scientic explanation of life. On the contrary, our understanding of life, and of the relationship between life and matter is something like a view of the world, which emerges from the scientic analysis of the event. But this view does not come rst. It depends essentially on scientic explanation. Lintuition ne parle au gur que lorsque lintelligence a dabord parl au propre. Lintuition ne soppose pas lintelligence. Elle la chevauche. This is the last Bergsonian message, and, for me, this is the real meaning of the expression positive metaphysics.
Centre de recherch et dhistoire des Ides, University of Nice

NOTES
1 Henri Bergson, Lvolution cratrice, Ed. Du Centenaire (Paris: PUF, 1959) 23; Creative Evolution (New York: Dover Publications, 1998) 23. 2 Lvolution cratrice 27; Creative Evolution 27. 3 Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species, Facsimile of the rst edition (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1964) 84, 149. 4 Lvolution cratrice 10; Creative Evolution 10. 5 Public Lecture in Centre Cavaills, Ecole Normale Suprieure, Paris, January 2005. 6 Henri Bergson, Essais sur les donnes immdiates de la conscience, Ed. Du Centenaire (Paris: PUF, 1959) 171; Time and Free Will (New York: Harper and Row, 1960) 171. 7 Henri Bergson, Matire et mmoire, Ed. Du Centenaire (Paris: PUF, 1959) 169; Matter and Memory (New York: Zone Books, 1991) 169. 8 Matire et mmoire 153; Matter and Memory 153. 9 Matire et mmoire 150; Matter and Memory 150. 10 On the Origin of Species 515. 11 Lvolution cratrice 165; Creative Evolution 165. 12 Lvolution cratrice 124; Creative Evolution 124. 13 Lvolution cratrice 126; Creative Evolution 126. 14 Lvolution cratrice 200; Creative Evolution 200. 15 Lvolution cratrice 201; Creative Evolution 201. 16 On the Origin of Species 515. 17 Lvolution cratrice 164; Creative Evolution 164. 18 Lvolution cratrice 176; Creative Evolution 176.