Between Philosophy and Biology

Abstract

The book opens with an introductory overview of Bergson’s philosophical trajectory, organized around the basic shape of the author’s reading of Bergson as a post-vitalistic philosopher of biology. By way of motivation for what is innovative and significant about the study at hand, the introduction situates Bergson along the following three axes: (1) the vitalism controversy that helped contribute to the initial decline of his reputation as well as the residual opposition still felt towards him by philosophers of science (among others); (2) the current resurgence of interest in Bergson to which this book will make a signal contribution; and (3) the contemporary life sciences, which are in the process of defining themselves along a number of new avenues of study, from deep homology, developmental constraint, and convergence, which all testify against traditional understandings of the contingency of adaptation to a kind of unity and directional pattern at the heart of evolutionary processes, to the widespread efficacy of symbiosis, which re-centers association and cooperation over competition and accords a new significance to transversal alliances and transindividuality over arborescent descent with modification and the programmatic development and behaviour of closed biological individuals.