Diagramming Duration : Bergsonian Multiplicity and Chaos Theory

Abstract

Cet article retrace les efforts menés par Bergson dans son « Introduction à la métaphysique », afin de découvrir une façon de représenter, par le langage, sa notion de « durée réelle », entendue comme une multiplicité continue. L’auteur suggère que les images graphiques générées par ordinateur afin de représenter la théorie du chaos en offrent la possibilité, avant de développer les conséquences conceptuelles et théoriques que cette corrélation entraîne.This essay traces Bergson's search for a language adequate to express the notion of “durée réelle” as a continuous multiplicity, in his work “Introduction à la métaphysique.” It then argues that computer-graphic images of chaos theory in fact provides such a language, and develops the conceptual and theoretical implications that follow from this correlation

Exploring Bergsonian time in Sadeq Hedayat’s The Blind Owl

“…Bergsonian duration or durée is a succession of qualitative changes, which melt into and permeate one another without any specific or predictable pattern (Pearson and Mullarkey, 2002: 104). Duration for Bergson, therefore, is to be defined in terms of continuous multiplicity (Harris, 2004: 111) in that any new experience in the present time finds its meaning in countless previous experiences in the past and immediately dissolves in them to construct an indivisible, flexible and ever-increasing temporal whole; in Salman’s words, ‘Duration is a continuous progress which is not divisible into moments and which defies measurement’ (2004: 27). Likewise, Dainton writes that time in Bergson’s mindset is an entity in its own right over and above any content it might have (2010: 44).…”