What is it about?
This is a book about evolution – from a post-Darwinian perspective. It recounts the core ideas of one of the great French philosophers, Henri Bergson (1859-1941), and his rediscovery and legacy in the poststructuralist critical philosophies of the 1960s onwards. It explores the confluences of these approaches with the foundational ideas of complexity theory and complex adaptive systems in environmental biology. The failings in the development of systems theory, many of which complex systems theory overcomes, are retold; with Bergson, this book proposes, some of the rest may be overcome too. It asserts that Bergson’s ideas can further our understanding of evolution, and of complex systems, and aid the work of scientists working in the field of ecological complexity.
Featured Image
Why is it important?
One of a range of new books about Bergson's work, this presents Bergson's ideas as key to some of the most contemporary understandings of the world
Perspectives
This is my first major book - more philosophy of science than philosophy of information systems, although Chapter 4 is a Foucauldian genealogy of systems thinking.
Dr David G Kreps
National University of Ireland
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Bergson, Complexity and Creative Emergence, January 2015, Nature,
DOI: 10.1057/9781137412201.
You can read the full text:
Resources
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
