Creative Evolution

Answers

• Q07LIFE

  Does living activity require a principle beyond physical and chemical processes?

  Yes. life involves an impetus beyond physico-chemical process. Neither mechanism nor finalism explains evolution; life is a vital impetus that physics and chemistry do not capture, though he criticizes the older vital-principle theories.

  But we have set forth the theoretical reasons which prevent us from likening the living being, a system closed off by nature, to the systems which our science isolates. These reasons have less force, we acknowledge, in the case of a rudimentary organism like the amoeba, which hardly evolves at all. But they acquire more when we consider a complex organism which goes through a regular cycle of transformations. The more duration marks the living being with its imprint, the more obviously the organism differs from a mere mechanism, over which duration glides without penetrating. And the demonstration has most force when it applies to the evolution of life as a whole, from its humblest origins to its highest forms, inasmuch as this evolution constitutes, through the unity and continuity of the animated matter which supports it, a single indivisible history. Thus viewed, the evolutionist hypothesis does not seem so closely akin to the mechanistic conception of life as it is generally supposed to be. Of this mechanistic conception we do not claim, of course, to furnish a mathematical and final refutation. But the refutation which we draw from the consideration of real time, and which is, in our opinion, the only refutation possible, becomes the more rigorous and cogent the more frankly the evolutionist hypothesis is assumed.

  Ch. I, 'The Evolution of Life—Mechanism and Teleology' (section 'The vital impetus') · Downloaded Project Gutenberg #26163; table of contents and the passage on 'the stumbling-block of the vitalistic theories' checked.

• Q13SUCCESSION

  Can machines undergo a process of evolution even when humans build and reproduce them?

  No. tools are not organisms. Distinguishes instinct, which makes organized instruments, from intelligence, which makes unorganized tools, placing machines outside the evolution of life.

  Summary disputed by reviewer: overstated

  Thus, if we consider only those typical cases in which the complete triumph of intelligence and of instinct is seen, we find this essential difference between them: _instinct perfected is a faculty of using and even of constructing organized instruments; intelligence perfected is the faculty of making and using unorganized instruments_. … The instrument constructed intelligently, on the contrary, is an imperfect instrument. It costs an effort. It is generally troublesome to handle. But, as it is made of unorganized matter, it can take any form whatsoever, serve any purpose, free the living being from every new difficulty that arises and bestow on it an unlimited number of powers. Whilst it is inferior to the natural instrument for the satisfaction of immediate wants, its advantage over it is the greater, the less urgent the need. Above all, it reacts on the nature of the being that constructs it; for in calling on him to exercise a new function, it confers on him, so to speak, a richer organization, being an artificial organ by which the natural organism is extended. For every need that it satisfies, it creates a new need; and so, instead of closing, like instinct, the round of action within which the animal tends to move automatically, it lays open to activity an unlimited field into which it is driven further and further, and made more and more free.

  Chapter II · Chapter II title and instinct/intelligence instrument distinction confirmed (Mead Project text, secondary summary). Reading as a negative answer to Q13 is an interpretation.

• Q37EXTENSION

  Should tools used to perform bodily functions be understood as parts of the human body?

  No. the tool is defined by not being an organ. Instinct uses organized instruments that are part of the body, while intelligence makes inorganic tools that stay separate from it and can be varied without limit; this separateness defines homo faber.

  Summary disputed by reviewer: Bergson also calls the made instrument 'an artificial organ by which the natural organism is extended', so the tool's separateness from the body is not absolute in this passage.

  Thus, if we consider only those typical cases in which the complete triumph of intelligence and of instinct is seen, we find this essential difference between them: _instinct perfected is a faculty of using and even of constructing organized instruments; intelligence perfected is the faculty of making and using unorganized instruments_. … The instrument constructed intelligently, on the contrary, is an imperfect instrument. It costs an effort. It is generally troublesome to handle. But, as it is made of unorganized matter, it can take any form whatsoever, serve any purpose, free the living being from every new difficulty that arises and bestow on it an unlimited number of powers. Whilst it is inferior to the natural instrument for the satisfaction of immediate wants, its advantage over it is the greater, the less urgent the need. Above all, it reacts on the nature of the being that constructs it; for in calling on him to exercise a new function, it confers on him, so to speak, a richer organization, being an artificial organ by which the natural organism is extended.

  Chapter II · French Wikisource page image of the 1907 edition; secondary summaries of chapter II; Project Gutenberg page for Mitchell translation.

Passages