An Attempt to an Applied Metaphysics

This chapter, describes more in depth the three interrelated motifs that were drawn from Bergson’s oeuvre to inform the further discussions in this study: immediate concreteness, vital impulse and duration. They all relate to a dynamic and fluid worldview, as opposed to a static and analytic one. The concepts are interwoven and reoccur throughout the writings of Bergson. The three motifs all treat the following question: how is ‘discrete individuality’ possible whilst direct experience is always in flux, indiscrete, and holistic? The main point of this reflective and reflexive exercise is to use them as notions for a concretisation of Bergson’s philosophy for contemporary science, first through science and subsequently through a discussion of technology, in relation to the self-creative, or autopoietic, nature of human evolution and its impact on global ecosystems.