The Southern Journal of Philosophy

Volume 53, Issue 1

March 2015

ÉLAN VITAL REVISITED: BERGSON AND THE

THERMODYNAMIC PARADIGM

James DiFrisco

ABSTRACT: The received view of Bergson’s philosophy of life is that it advances some
form of vitalism under the heading of an “élan vital.” This paper argues against the
vitalistic interpretation of Bergson’s élan vital as it appears in Creative Evolution (1907)
in favor of an interpretation based on his overlooked reflections on entropy and
energetics. Within the interpretation developed here, the élan vital is characterized not
as a spiritualistic “vital force” but as a tendency of organization opposed to the tendency
of entropic degradation. It is then shown how Bergson’s view of evolution and living
organization resonates with more contemporary scientific approaches belonging to a
“thermodynamic paradigm” in theoretical biology in different respects, including the
critique of neo-Darwinism and the positing of a driving force behind evolution. Finally,
the special interest that Bergson’s philosophical biology bears today is considered in
terms of the connection between the concepts of élan vital and duration.

1. INTRODUCTION: VITALISM AND BERGSON’S ÉLAN VITAL

Bergson’s concept of élan vital has often been disparaged as a classic expres-
sion of modern vitalism, a charge which has contributed to the relative
neglect of his thought in contemporary philosophical reflections on biology.
The concept of élan vital appears to posit a special “vital force,” and
together with Bergson’s manner of opposing life to matter, this would seem
to commit him to a particularly antiscientific and antimaterialistic philoso-
phy of life. This paper argues against the vitalistic interpretation of
Bergson’s concept of élan vital and of his philosophy of life as it is developed
in Creative Evolution. Instead of being an expression of vitalism, I contend
that Bergson’s philosophy of life can be better understood as an early
expression of a thermodynamic or energetic perspective on life. In what

James DiFrisco is a PhD candidate at KU Leuven, Belgium. His primary areas of research
include philosophy of biology, history of biology, and process philosophy. His work is supported
by the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO).

The Southern Journal of Philosophy, Volume 53, Issue 1 (2015), 54–73.

ISSN 0038-4283, online ISSN 2041-6962. DOI: 10.1111/sjp.12096

54
 BERGSON AND THE THERMODYNAMIC PARADIGM 55
follows, I first describe the traditional vitalistic interpretation and explain
why it is misconceived. The second section then sketches an alternative
interpretation of élan vital and its place in Creative Evolution, and the third
clarifies its connections to the more recent development of a “thermody-
namic paradigm” in theoretical biology. Finally, I consider the challenge
Bergson’s thought offers for the life sciences today, which is to conceptual-
ize how the thermodynamic-energetic condition of self-organization—élan
vital—is coupled with the living system’s duration.
Arguing against the vitalistic interpretation of Bergson’s philosophy of life
requires first reaching an understanding of the term “vitalism,” especially
given that it tends to be used as an imprecise pejorative term that does not
denote any clearly defined position. Historically, vitalism existed as a varied
tradition of resistance to the mechanistic picture of the living, the lines of
which can be traced in figures such as Jan Baptiste van Helmont, Xavier
Bichat, Johannes Müller, Claude Bernard, Hans Driesch, and others.1 Con-
sidered philosophically, and abstracted from the position of any particular
figure, vitalism may perhaps best be defined by the distinction between life
and matter at the level of substance, such that life bears a different kind
of substratum than nonliving matter, or that it is the seat of different kinds of
forces and different laws. Defined as such, it goes further than forms of
organicism or anti-reductionism, which would maintain the identity of living
and nonliving matter while denying that living things, as organized wholes,
can be reduced to the activity of their material parts.
The reason why Bergson’s Creative Evolution might appear to participate in
this kind of vitalism is that it advances a strong dualism between life and
matter at times, while also invoking an “élan vital” opposed to materiality as
an explanation of biological phenomena. In fact, this vitalistic reading of
Creative Evolution forms just one aspect of a more general interpretation of
Bergson as a dualist. The dualistic interpretation of Bergson was encour-
aged in Anglophone philosophy primarily by Bertrand Russell in his critical
review of 1912, “The Philosophy of Bergson,” where he writes: “M.
Bergson’s philosophy, unlike most of the systems of the past, is dualistic: the
world, for him, is divided into two disparate portions, on the one hand life,
on the other matter.”2 It is indeed true that Bergson’s philosophy is con-
structed on a series of dualisms or “differences in kind”—such as the
dualism between matter and memory, intellect and intuition, or matter and
life—which would seem to make Bergson a “spiritualist,” a “mystic,” and a

1
See Canguilhem 2008, 59–74.
2
Russell 1912, 322. For a more recent instance of this typical interpretation, see Dennett
2013, 321.
56 JAMES DIFRISCO

“vitalist,” respectively.3 But this kind of straightforward dualistic interpre-

tation of Bergson is superficial and misleading. As Deleuze has convincingly
demonstrated in his book on Bergson, dualism never has the last word in
Bergson’s mature philosophy.4 Dualism is just one moment of the method,
which is followed by a moment where the terms of the dualism are shown
to be two sides of a more primary term. This is worked out regarding the
dualism between matter and life in the third chapter of Bergson’s Creative
Evolution. As we will see, Bergson is led to reconfigure the distinction
between matter and life in nonsubstantialist terms, such that they do not get
distinguished as different types of things, with the élan vital representing a
special type of “vital force.”
In the recent revival of philosophical work on Bergson, it has been rec-
ognized for these kinds of reasons that the reputation of Bergson that asso-
ciates him with vitalism is mistaken.5 Ansell-Pearson writes, for instance, “If
one of the central tenets of a vitalist position is to insist on a radical dis-
tinction between living and inert matter then Bergson is no vitalist.”6 A
similar view is expressed by Vaughan: “Bergson’s concept of élan vital is,
then, significantly different from the vitalism that we find in the history of
biology. . . . Bergson does not go so far as traditional vitalism in the affir-
mation of a vital principle distinct from physicochemical forces.”7 In spite of
this advance in understanding what it is not, however, the concept of the
élan vital in particular remains positively underdetermined. Often its central
role in Creative Evolution is de-emphasized, or it is excused as an unfortunate
choice of words. Or, it is interpreted in a characteristically Deleuzean way
as “a virtuality in the process of being actualized”8—though this is not
exactly sufficient. Specifically, it is not clear in this case why it should be
described as an élan—an impulse, force, or impetus—at all, nor why it
should be pictured via physical images of explosions or forceful gestures of
the body. It is hoped that the interpretation offered in this paper will be
able to do justice to this aspect of the élan vital and thereby also to clarify its
central place in Creative Evolution.

3
Bergson’s purported anti-intellectualism was the stumbling-block of his philosophy for
Russell and for many others since him. But the claim of anti-intellectualism also depends on an
erroneous dualistic interpretation of the relationship between intellect and intuition. See Gunter
1991, 110–13.
4
Deleuze 1991, 92ff.
5
See Durie 2002, 371n42; Mullarkey 1999, 97; Miquel 2007, 42); Ansell-Pearson et al.
2010, 353. See also, however, Fujita (2007, 115), who writes: “Incontestably there is a kind of
vitalism in Bergson.”
6
Ansell-Pearson (2005, 66). See also ibid., 61.
7
Vaughan 2007, 15–16.
8
Deleuze 1991, 94. See also ibid., 113.
 BERGSON AND THE THERMODYNAMIC PARADIGM 57
With the concept of the élan vital, in effect, one faces an interpretive
problem. For one thing, it is evident that it is not supposed to be a literal
“force” like gravitation or electromagnetism, which could be operationalized
in a scientific explanation of biological phenomena.9 This is not only because
it is neither measurable nor part of a system of observable variables, but also
because as an explanation, like any reified “vital principle,” it would beg the
question.10 It would then be susceptible to the same kind of criticism that was
historically directed against faculty psychology, which is that it merely posits
what is to be explained in the form of a quasi-metaphysical “power” or
“potential.”11 Given these conditions, it would be tempting to explain away
Bergson’s élan vital as a metaphysical rather than empirical construct, thereby
insulating it against such criticisms for the reason that it does not posit any
actually existing vital force that could be empirically discovered. But in the
measure that the élan vital is rarefied as an abstract metaphysical concept, it
also loses its justification as an organizing concept for a philosophy of life that
stays close to the concrete givens of biology. Such a metaphysical interpreta-
tion clearly does not align with Bergson’s own understanding of what he is
doing with the idea of the élan vital. Reflecting on his earlier work in The Two
Sources of Morality and Religion, Bergson writes:
It is in following as closely as possible the data of biology that we have arrived at the
conception of an élan vital and of a creative evolution. . . . This conception had
nothing in common with the hypotheses on which metaphysics are constructed; it
was a condensation of facts, a résumé of résumés.12

In other words, the élan vital is not an abstract metaphysical concept. Bergson
is careful in Two Sources to separate his notion of élan vital from the comparison
with Schopenhauer’s “will to life” [vouloir-vivre]. The latter, he writes, is an
“empty concept” generated by a “sterile metaphysics,” whereas the élan vital
is “an idea charged with matter, empirically obtained, capable of orienting
research.”13 For Bergson, then, the élan vital is neither a strictly scientific
concept, nor is it an “empty” metaphysical concept.
In fact, it cannot be adequately grasped within the terms of this opposition
as it is usually understood. In Creative Evolution, Bergson was working within a

9
Nevertheless, it is remarkable that the idea of an élan vital as a driving force of life can be
more or less directly translated into strictly scientific terms, if one likes, as the force of “entropy
deficit” or “inhomogeneity.” See Sato 2012.
10
See Canguilhem 2008, 66.
11
This objection to Bergson’s élan vital was made by the British biologist Julian Huxley in
Huxley 1923, 33.
12
Bergson 1932, 264; 1935, 213 (translation modified).
13
Bergson 1932, 120; 1935, 95 (translation modified).
58 JAMES DIFRISCO

conception of metaphysics, outlined principally in his 1903 “Introduction to

Metaphysics,” that aimed to “put more of science into metaphysics and more
of metaphysics into science”14 in order to constitute what he called a “true
empiricism.”15 In Bergson’s view, traditional metaphysics (as understood by
Kant, for instance) attempts to lay hold of the structure of the world by
spreading over it a net of abstract concepts that fit it too loosely, as it
were—concepts such as unity, multiplicity, subject, object, part, whole, sub-
stance, etc. Instead, metaphysics ought to become more empirically grounded
by adhering more closely to the concrete evidence of the sciences, allowing
the latter to continuously check the application of its concepts. Such a meta-
physics would “go from reality to concepts and not from concepts to
reality.”16 It would thereby have to sacrifice the classical ideal of a final system
of metaphysical truth in favor of a more modest ideal of a gradual progress
that is always incomplete. Metaphysics does have an essential role to play in
Bergson’s “true empiricism,” however. One limitation of empirical science
according to Bergson is that because it is so closely linked with the habits of
pragmatic action, it tends to uncritically rely on the “ready-made” concepts
that are already available to the understanding.17 The creation of new con-
cepts adequate to the ongoing discoveries of the complexity of the empirical
world requires an effort of intuition going beyond our habitually ingrained
concepts. This can be done from within a particular science, and it has been
done in the scientific revolutions that have occurred throughout history.
Metaphysics, however, is a field in which intuition is given free rein, such that
it can survey all of the domains of scientific knowledge and experience and
inquire into how they fit together.18 Metaphysics can thus constitute a com-
prehensive field of inquiry about what is fundamental to the structure of the
world as a whole and what is derived—something that empirical science
cannot (or at least does not) do.
In the domain of biology, mechanism and finalism represent for
Bergson two “ready-made” concepts to be overcome by attempting to
create newer, better concepts, and the élan vital represents such an attempt.
The élan vital would thus be a new kind of concept proper to Bergson’s
“true empiricism” as it takes up the concrete problems of life and evolution.
This must be kept in mind as we examine the place of this concept in
Creative Evolution.

14
Bergson 1938, 217; 1992, 192. See also Bergson 1972, 493–94.
15
Bergson 1938, 196; 1992, 175.
16
Bergson 1992, 183; 1938, 206.
17
See Bergson 1998, 195–96; 1941, 196–97.
18
See Bergson 1992, 192; 1938, 216–17.
 BERGSON AND THE THERMODYNAMIC PARADIGM 59
2. ÉLAN VITAL IN CREATIVE EVOLUTION

The élan vital appears in two different contexts in Creative Evolution, and we will
consider each in turn: first, in the discussion of evolution and phylogenesis in
the first and second chapters, and then in the theory of matter and organi-
zation developed in the third chapter. In the first chapter, the élan vital is
introduced broadly as an alternative to mechanism and finalism in theories of
evolution. Mechanism and finalism for Bergson comprise the two ready-
made forms of explanation available to the human intellect in its orientation
toward pragmatic action, such that it explains the behavior of natural systems
either in terms of the blind motions of atomistic parts or as the effect of
intelligent purposes. Mechanism in the context of Bergson’s engagement with
evolutionary theory means neo-Darwinism, which at that time referred spe-
cifically to August Weismann’s view that the organization and evolution of
living forms could be explained entirely through the “omnipotence of natural
selection” [Allmacht der Naturzüchtung].19 For Bergson, neo-Darwinism repre-
sented an extension of the mechanistic image of the physical world into the
domain of biology. It pictures the organism as an inert system in mechanical
equilibrium, whose decomposable parts can be “selected” piecemeal by the
action of the environment.20 Since it calls upon natural selection as the sole
explanatory principle for the organization and evolution of the living world,
neo-Darwinism lacks a notion of the activity of life, of internally-generated
organizational constraints and evolutionary directions. Most importantly for
Bergson, however, because it is based on the classical mechanistic image of
nature, time does not have any “efficacy” in the neo-Darwinian framework.
Since present and future states are the necessary consequence of past states,
“all is given” in advance, and it is impossible for any true “evolution” to take
place.21
Little is gained by adopting a finalistic framework instead, Bergson argues,
because finalism retains the same basic postulates as mechanism. It similarly
pictures the organism as an aggregate of parts, only to suppose a coordinating
principle over and above the parts which is responsible for their organization
and evolution. As in the case of mechanism, time has no appreciable reality;
everything is given in advance—no longer in the past state but in the future

19
Wolsky and Wolsky 1992, 159.
20
This connection between Newtonian mechanism and the neo-Darwinism of Bergson’s
time has also been demonstrated more recently for the modern evolutionary synthesis, specifi-
cally, in terms of the homology between Newton’s second law and the Hardy-Weinberg
Equilibrium formula, which defines how genetic variations will be distributed in a population in
the absence of exogenous forces. See Sober 1984, 31. See also Depew 1986, 31.
21
Bergson 1941, 38; 1998, 37.
60 JAMES DIFRISCO

state which is the telos. Finalism for Bergson offers an intellectualized model of
activity, for which nonrandom action requires there to be a concept of a goal.
Bergson is, moreover, careful to distance himself from what he considered to
be vitalism—specifically the “neo-vitalism” of Hans Driesch which was enjoy-
ing considerable popularity at the time.22 His critique of Driesch’s “vital
principle” or “entelechy” is not only that it explains little, but also that it
cannot be localized.23 That is, since there is no truly discrete individual
among the levels of organization—among cells, tissues, organs, organisms,
populations, and species—a vital principle or entelechy cannot be assigned at
any one level, so that, for example, organs would exist “for the sake of” the
organism. Hence, in Bergson’s view, “finality is external or it is nothing at
all,”24 and this leads him to replace the notion of finality altogether with a
notion of impulsion or élan, which is externalized beyond each progressive
level of organization to the very origin of life from non-living matter.
The élan vital is introduced in this context as a way of thinking about life
that is able to overcome the problems Bergson identifies with mechanism and
finalism. Bergson describes the élan vital as an impulsion (élan) responsible for
the organization of living things, which is passed on and differentiates from
generation to generation through the “germ-plasm” common to species.25
Unlike in neo-Darwinism, then, in Bergson’s position the élan vital provides a
source of activity by which life bears its own organizational constraints and
evolutionary directions in addition to those imposed by the selective action of
the environment. Unlike finalism, the unity of the living world is not repre-
sented as the effect of a telos that draws life toward a definite future state, but
rather as the effect of a common élan coming from behind.26 Moreover, time
regains its efficacy for Bergson because the élan vital is a “force” or a “poten-
tial” whose complex pathway of release in living organisms cannot be deter-
mined in advance.
As we have said, however, the élan vital should not be understood as a “vital
force” nor as an attempt at scientific explanation, though neither is it an
empty metaphysical idea. How, then, should it be interpreted after all? It is
later in the third chapter that Bergson will write: “[Life] must be compared to
an impetus [élan], because no image borrowed from the physical world can

22
Bergson 1941, 42n1; 1998, 42n1.
23
Bergson 1941, 42; 1998, 42.
24
Bergson 1941, 41; 1998, 41.
25
Bergson 1941, 232; 1998, 231. Even though he opposed the selectionism of Weismann,
Bergson adopted a thoroughly Weismannian and anti-Lamarckian view of heredity, which lent
its support to his “anti-organicism” and his strong distinction between life as such and living
things. See Ansell-Pearson 1999, 45ff.
26
Bergson 1941, 51; 1998, 51.
 BERGSON AND THE THERMODYNAMIC PARADIGM 61
give more nearly the idea of it. But it is only an image.”27 He elaborates on
this idea further in a letter to Florence Delattre in 1935, where he distin-
guishes the élan vital from Samuel Butler’s “life force”:
When I relate the phenomena of life and evolution to an “élan vital,” it is not for the
ornament of style, and it is not in order to mask our ignorance of the profound cause
by an image, as when the vitalist in general invokes a vital principle. . . . The truth
is that philosophy here only furnishes philosophers with two principles of explica-
tion: mechanism and finality (this latter characterizing the “vital principle” of vital-
ists and consequently the “life force” of Butler). . . . I accept neither of these points
of view. . . . It is somewhere between these concepts that it is necessary to place
oneself. How to determine this place? It is necessary that I give an indication [indique
du doigt] since there is no intermediary concept between “mechanism” and “finality.”
The image of an élan is just this indication. By itself it has no other value.28

The élan vital is thus a metaphor or image, though it is not one that aims to
“mask our ignorance” or that pretends to explain more than it does, but one
that aims to guide our thinking and that is “capable of orienting research.”29
It is an “indication” to help direct our thinking about life away from
the ready-made alternatives of mechanism and finalism, away from
adaptationism and teleology, and toward a way of thinking about life in terms
of flows of energy proceeding from an active, driving force. In this respect, it
is a concept belonging to Bergson’s “true empiricism.” Neither a metaphysi-
cal statement of essences once and for all, nor something accepted uncritically
from the positive sciences, it is the result of a probing for new language and
new concepts with which to talk about life.
That the notion of an élan is a metaphor should not lead one to think that
it is devoid of value. Metaphors, such as the “machine” metaphor for organ-
isms, can often provide a useful basis for further conceptualization and
theoretical work in both science and philosophy.30 Bergson’s élan vital is
originally formulated in the first half of Creative Evolution in this spirit, as a
guiding metaphor for thinking about life. But it also provides the basis for a
further conceptualization which Bergson will develop when he returns to the
notion of the élan vital in the third chapter of Creative Evolution. It is in this
difficult chapter that Bergson sets forth his theory of the fundamental

27
Bergson 1941, 258; 1998, 257. Bergson also writes on the next page: “While, in its contact
with matter, life is comparable to an impulsion or an impetus, regarded in itself it is an
immensity of potentiality, a mutual encroachment of thousands and thousands of tendencies.”
(1941, 259; 1998, 258).
28
Bergson 1972, 1526.
29
Bergson 1932, 120; 1935, 95 (translation modified).
30
See Bradie 1999.
62 JAMES DIFRISCO

relationship between élan vital, matter, and duration in the cosmos. Here, the
sense of Bergson’s élan vital as an “impetus” or “force” is determined more
precisely vis-à-vis the physical world.
Up until the third chapter of Creative Evolution, the discussion of life and
matter occurs within the “moment of dualism” in Bergson’s method. Starting
in the third chapter, however, we reach the moment where this opposition is
shown to belong to a more primary term. This shift is enabled by a transfor-
mation in how the concept of matter is understood, which must be examined
before turning to its relation to the élan vital. Before the third chapter, matter
primarily designates the object of mechanics—referring to the domain of
closed systems operating under conservative forces, where the cause is sym-
metrical to the effect. This is the notion of matter which for Bergson differs in
kind from life, élan vital, and organization. At the beginning of the third
chapter, however, he claims that matter is “a flux rather than a thing,” and
that this allows for a “reconciliation” between the orders of matter and life.31
This is both a thermodynamic and energeticist conception of matter, descrip-
tive of a domain of nonisolable systems which qualitatively change from cause
to effect under the action of dissipative forces. For this conception of
matter, Bergson drew upon different elements of a current of antimechanism
in late 19th century physics. These elements would include siding with
“energeticism” in the debate concerning the thermodynamic irreversibility
and dynamic reversibility of time32 and rejecting the English Newtonians’
reduction of all forms of energy to mechanical energy,33 as well as taking up
the skepticism of Duhem and Faraday regarding the atomic theory of
matter.34 For Bergson, matter in this energeticist sense of the third chapter
may exist along a continuous spectrum of different degrees of “tension” or
“extension.” Hence, unlike the object of mechanics, it is susceptible of being
generated by degrees out of more tensed states of duration, as opposed to
posing the requirement that it is either eternal or created all at once by an
external agent.
The more primary term out of which the dualism between and life and
matter is generated is what Bergson calls “for want of a better word . . .
consciousness,”35 “supra-consciousness,”36 or “general consciousness,”37
which might be better called “cosmic duration.” This is distinguished from an

31
Bergson 1941, 187; 1998, 186.
32
For a historical account of this debate, see Prigogine and Stengers 1984, 233–55.
33
Bergson 1941, 243; 1998, 242.
34
Bergson 1941, 189; 1998, 188.
35
Bergson 1941, 238; 1998, 237.
36
Bergson 1941, 261; 1998, 261.
37
Bergson 1941, 187; 1998, 186 (translation modified).
 BERGSON AND THE THERMODYNAMIC PARADIGM 63
individual consciousness;38 it is only called consciousness by analogy to psy-
chological duration because it is a state of interpenetrating elements, a quali-
tative multiplicity of “stuff” which endures. From this primordial state of
cosmic duration, matter is generated through a process of “distention”
[détente] or “extension,” in which its parts are increasingly externalized with
respect to one another.39 The notion of cosmic duration can be helpfully
envisaged according to the image of the cone of memory described in Matter
and Memory. Originally introduced to represent the different degrees of con-
traction and relaxation of memory, the cone image is extended by Bergson at
the end of Matter and Memory to represent a continuous hierarchy of durations
in nature. Each degree on this hierarchy would stand for a different intensity
of duration—that is, a different degree to which a system is affected by its past
and develops toward the future, degrees of dynamism and the interpenetra-
tion of states. Living things would be higher on the hierarchy, whereas matter
would occupy the lower region depending on its degree of dynamism. Since
matter may exist in any number of states of intensity or extension and since
it is “a flux rather than a thing,” however, it cannot exactly be thought of as
a distinct substance or substratum. On the contrary, for Bergson, what is most
substantial is duration,40 and matter would only be duration in a mode of
extension or externality. Hence, it is interesting to note that if vitalism is
defined by the distinction between life and matter in terms of substance,
Bergson’s philosophy of life is not vitalistic because in it neither life nor matter
is a substance. For the same reason, it is not an organicism or
antireductionism per se if that would be defined by the irreducibility of life to
its material “substratum.”
Bergson’s position is better described as an encompassing energeticist or
thermodynamic view of nature, in which processes or fluxes have a more
fundamental status than substances or things. This perspective is only fully
attained in the third chapter of Creative Evolution. Here, accordingly, the
opposition between living things and material things that was developed in
the first two chapters is recast as a difference of degree, and the difference in
kind is rediscovered on a different level. Within the cosmic hierarchy of
durations, ordered according to degrees of intensity, Bergson distinguishes
between two fundamental processes: movements of “ascent” [montée] up the
hierarchy and movements of “descent” [descente] down the hierarchy. Matter
tends to be found in the movement of descent: Bergson calls this movement

38
Bergson 1941, 238; 1998, 237.
39
This process can be readily interpreted in terms of the expansion of the universe and the
early formation of elementary particles. See Gunter 1971, 538.
40
Bergson 1941, 4; 1998, 4. See also Deleuze 1991, 37.
64 JAMES DIFRISCO

“materiality,” and it is defined by extension, expansion, and externalization

of parts.41 Bergson explicates the notion of “descent” in terms of the progres-
sive degradation of energy imposed by the second law of thermodynamics.42
This law states that free energy tends to be irreversibly dissipated as heat over
time, and, more generally, that in any isolated system organization degrades
and disorder and entropy increase until a terminal state of equilibrium is
reached. Materiality or descent is thus the overwhelming tendency of the
physical world: systems tend toward their lowest accessible state of potential
energy, and correlations among parts of the system become increasingly
randomized over time, “forgetting” the initial conditions. The movement of
“ascent,” on the other hand, is for Bergson nothing other than the élan vital.
It is defined by the raising of potential energy and distancing from equilib-
rium, and hence, under appropriate conditions, by the production of orga-
nization. Élan vital and materiality, or ascent and descent, together form the
terms of the new “dualism” in the third chapter of Creative Evolution.
This must be properly understood, however: the élan vital is not a specific
vital force, as we have argued. It does point to the set of actual forces
responsible for the production of organization, but this is not what is opposed
to matter or material forces. In the sense in which it is opposed to materiality,
for Bergson, the élan vital is a “tendency” or pattern of processes that is virtual
rather than actual. Élan vital and materiality are virtual tendencies, whereas
living things and material bodies are actual entities that are constituted in
different degrees by the different tendencies. A living organism is thus at any
moment composed by the contrary tendencies of “ascent” and “descent,”
organization and equilibration, which together determine its place on the
hierarchy of durations. This shift, from seeing differences in kind between
types of actual entities to seeing them between virtual tendencies in the third
chapter, attests to a transformation of perspective on Bergson’s part. Whereas
the first opposition was developed on a more phenomenological or descriptive
level, the second seeks to generate and explain the first from within a more
encompassing perspective that sees temporal differences on the hierarchy of
durations as the true differences.
In conceptualizing the élan vital as a virtual ascent on this hierarchy, then,
Bergson is not positing that there are special negentropic forces in the world,
which would be impossible. This is because the élan vital is always paired with
the contrary tendency of materiality in actual, living entities. It therefore does

41
Bergson 1941, 246ff.; 1998, 245ff. Materiality, as a “tendency” or pattern of descent, is
not to be confused with the actual genesis of matter from cosmic duration, though the genesis
of matter does follow the pattern of “descent.”
42
Bergson 1941, 242–46; 1998, 241–45.
 BERGSON AND THE THERMODYNAMIC PARADIGM 65
not constitute an exception to the global tendency of entropic dissipation or
“materiality.” There may, however, be regions of local growth in organiza-
tion at the expense of the increased global entropy—which is precisely what
occurs with living beings. The élan vital therefore does not reduce or even
balance entropy production globally, but it does define such local regions of
organization where the process of entropic degradation is delayed.43 As
Bergson writes:
[The élan vital] has not the power to reverse the direction of physical changes, such
as the principle of Carnot [entropy increase] determines it. It does, however, behave
absolutely as a force would behave which, left to itself, would work in the inverse
direction.44

Here, with this use of the conditional mood (“would”) we find Bergson as
before using guarded language to describe the élan vital, careful not to assert
too much by qualifying it as an image or metaphor, an indication, or a
conditional description. This further confirms its status as the product of a
cautious probing for new ways of thinking about life, as a concept proper to
Bergson’s “true empiricism.” The postulate of the élan vital is just based on the
empirical recognition that nature exhibits processes of organization as well as
processes of degradation. I would argue that, in this respect, it expresses in an
early form the positive meaning of the second law that was to become clear
with nonequilibrium thermodynamics in the 20th century. That is, as stated
by its major pioneer Ilya Prigogine, the idea that “a theory of the ‘destruction
of structure’ must in some way be complemented by a theory of ‘creation of
structure,’ a theory lacking in classical thermodynamics.”45 For Bergson,
formulating his view within the limits of the classical thermodynamics and
statistical mechanics available at the time, this is expressed in an oppositional
manner with élan vital and materiality.46
Having developed the thermodynamic interpretation of élan vital and
materiality, Bergson proceeds to apply these concepts to the biological
realm. This is where the meaning of the élan vital as a properly biological
category is clarified. For one might well ask, if the élan vital is not a “vital

43
Bergson 1941, 247; 1998, 246.
44
Bergson 1941, 246–47; 1998, 245–46 (emphasis added).
45
Prigogine 1971, 91.
46
For this reason, that Prigogine would distinguish his work from Bergson’s thinking on the
grounds that the latter opposes life, and matter seems to rest at least partially on a misunder-
standing; for the genuine opposition is not between life and matter per se, but between élan vital
and materiality as virtual tendencies. Prigogine writes: “In short, Bergson’s direction of thought
was to oppose life and matter. My view is that life is deeply rooted in matter whenever the
instability of dynamical systems and, closely related to this, autocatalytic reactions are taken into
account” (Letter to Gunter, cited in Gunter 1991, 121).
66 JAMES DIFRISCO

force,” then why would it not be called an “élan physique?”47 What is spe-
cifically vital about the élan vital? The answer lies in the fact that “ascent”
is not simply an increase in free energy, but is an ascent to a higher degree
of duration. According to Bergson’s description, the élan vital is exhibited in
the accumulation, storage, and release of energy that each living system
achieves to maintain its organization.48 This free energy is dissipated, of
course, as it would also be in any nonliving system following the general
tendency of materiality. But the dissipation is counteracted by the near-
continuous accumulation of free energy being transformed into structure.
The energetic functioning of the living system—its metabolism—is there-
fore composed by the simultaneous contrary processes of ascent and
descent, organization and disorganization, which Bergson interprets in
terms of anabolism and catabolism, respectively.49 This sustained uptake of
free energy that opposes the direction of materiality allows the living system
to persist in an organized state at a distance from equilibrium with its envi-
ronment. Thus, relative to systems that are not prevented from reaching
equilibrium, the living system maintains a higher duration. That is, it is able
to “remember” and incorporate the effects of past events. Its present is
spread over a longer interval due to its more continuous rhythm of uptake
and dissipation. Since the future pathways of its release of energy cannot be
predetermined, finally, it is a site of “indetermination” and even of creative
activity in Bergson’s terms.50
Understood as a thermodynamic “ascent,” then, the concept of élan vital
serves to unite the two aspects of free energy and level of duration, because it
describes the process of organization that subtends the duration of living
things. This is what is specifically vital about the élan vital. In fact, Bergson is
led to elevate this feature into the very definition of life. In distinguishing what
is essential and what is accidental for life and evolution, he claims that all of
the following elements are accidental and contingent: the morphology that
life adopts, the points of divergence of phyletic lineages, the adaptations, as
well as the chemical composition that we find for life on earth.51 Instead,
“Two things only are necessary: (1) a gradual accumulation of energy;
(2) an elastic canalization of this energy in variable and indeterminable

47
There is indeed a sense in which this élan may not be limited to the vital sphere, and
Bergson himself often prefers the expression élan de la vie to élan vital. This aspect is not
significantly developed by Bergson, however.
48
Bergson 1941, 247; 1998, 246.
49
Bergson 1941, 20; 1998, 20.
50
Bergson 1941, 256; 1998, 255.
51
Bergson 1941, 255; 1998, 255.
 BERGSON AND THE THERMODYNAMIC PARADIGM 67
directions.”52 This is essentially a thermodynamic definition of life. Once a set
of minimal systems corresponding to this definition appear, moreover, they
may gradually evolve in the direction of increasing organization and
autonomy from the environment. That is, they evolve in the direction indi-
cated by the élan vital, however indeterminate it may be, as opposed to only
reacting to environmental selection or following a finalistic program. The
thermodynamic conception of the élan vital thus returns upon the notion of a
driving force of evolution in the first and second chapters of Creative Evolution
and fulfills its sense.

3. BERGSON AND THE THERMODYNAMIC PARADIGM

Bergson’s philosophy of life with its central concept of élan vital would remain
highly speculative and abstract if it could not be checked and grounded, at
least in part, by some kind of broader scientific framework and thereby
subjected to the test of his “true empiricism.” In this respect, it is remarkable
how deeply Bergson’s ideas in Creative Evolution resonate with the development
of a thermodynamic view of life and evolution in the 20th century. The
remainder of this paper will begin to sketch the points of connection between
these two bodies of work. The very possibility of drawing these connections,
moreover, constitutes further evidence for the nonvitalistic interpretation
advanced above. Before making this comparison, however, it will be neces-
sary to briefly introduce the historical developments that led to a thermody-
namic view of life.
The mid- to late-19th century saw the emergence of Darwin’s theory of
evolution by natural selection as well as the formulation and generalization of
the laws of thermodynamics. In Bergson’s time, it was recognized that these
two systems presented a glaring contradiction: on the one hand, evolution by
selection seemed to indicate a trend of increasing complexity and organiza-
tion over time, but on the other hand, the second law of thermodynamics
prescribed a universal tendency toward degradation and disorder. The root
source of this contradiction was to be found in the fact that whereas organ-
isms are open systems operating far from equilibrium, classical thermody-
namics and its extension in statistical mechanics were limited to the study of
isolated systems under equilibrium conditions. Nonequilibrium systems
appeared to be intractable to thermodynamic modeling primarily because the

52
Bergson 1941, 255–56; 1998, 255. Bergson later suggests that some sort of sensori-motor
function, however different from our own, is also essential to life. It should be noted, however,
that in Bergson’s Matter and Memory the sensori-motor function is conceived very broadly in
terms of physiological circuits of passivity and activity, such that it is consistent with the structure
of metabolism described in Creative Evolution. See Bergson 1939, 11–80, 236; 1991, 17–76, 210.
68 JAMES DIFRISCO

thermodynamic state variables, such as entropy, could be only defined for

equilibrium. New methods for modeling open systems eventually arose at the
hands of such workers as Lars Onsager and especially Ilya Prigogine, that led
to the establishment of nonlinear nonequilibrium thermodynamics in the
mid-20th century.53 Without going into too much detail, the primary interest
of this new science was that it was able to rigorously describe the production
of macroscopically ordered states by energy flows. The input of excess free
energy into an open system forces it to adopt the configuration that dissipates
the energy most effectively, and sometimes these are highly ordered configu-
rations (the classic examples of such “dissipative structures” include Bénard
convection cells and oscillating chemical reactions such as the Belousov-
Zhabotinsky reaction).54 One thereby obtains a guiding principle of organi-
zation via maximum dissipation or “maximum entropy production.”
Incidentally, these scientific developments are capable of filling the gap that
remained in Bergson’s thought between energy flows and organization.
Whereas Bergson recognized that the production of organized states running
counter to the global tendency of materiality would require continuous inputs
of free energy, it was not yet possible to grasp this process as being itself one
of dissipation.
Prigogine, as the major pioneer of nonlinear nonequilibrium thermody-
namics, was the first to bring it into a relationship with biology. But this work
was largely restricted to exploring the nature of prebiotic systems and the
origin of genetically replicating systems. For the most part, Prigogine did not
attempt to extend his thermodynamic principles to the process of evolution
itself, but rather to the emergence of systems organized enough to be capable
of evolving by genetic mutation and natural selection.55 Nevertheless, others
have extended these principles in this way. As nonequilibrium thermodynam-
ics continued to evolve in the latter half of the 20th century, theorists became
increasingly interested in linking it to the phenomena of biological organiza-
tion and evolution, since the variety of dissipative structures to be found in
nature includes living systems. Starting in the 1970s and 1980s, a “thermo-
dynamic paradigm” began to take shape in theoretical biology.56 This is
hardly a unified program, but it bears a set of general features shared among

53
For a historical account of these developments, see Prigogine and Stengers 1984,
131–76.
54
These examples are discussed, respectively, in Prigogine and Nicolis 1989, 8–15; 1977,
339–44.
55
See, however, Prigogine and Nicolis 1977, 442ff.
56
See Wicken 1998. It is worth noting that the very project of explaining biological
phenomena in thermodynamic terms has been seriously questioned, and that this paradigm is
certainly not uncontroversial. See, for example, Corning and Kline 1998.
 BERGSON AND THE THERMODYNAMIC PARADIGM 69
the different representative theorists.57 For one thing, it is typically connected
to a general dissatisfaction with neo-Darwinism. Although contemporary
neo-Darwinism has a different meaning than the neo-Darwinism of Bergson’s
time,58 the critique coming from Bergson and these theoretical biologists
follows a similar pattern. It is argued, for instance, that the notion of an
internal “driving force” is necessary to complement the recourse to natural
selection as the sole explanatory principle for evolutionary phenomena.59
Related to this, it is argued that neo-Darwinism lacks a proper concept of
organization,60 that it incorrectly represents organisms as decomposable equi-
librium systems,61 and that it fails to conceptualize the rootedness of life in
physico-chemical dynamics.62 In general, the theorists working within this
paradigm share with Bergson the conviction that adaptation to the environ-
ment “explains the sinuosities of the movement of evolution, but not its
general directions, still less the movement itself.”63
In calling for a notion of intrinsic directionality in evolution to complement
natural selection, then, these theorists align with Bergson in reviving some
form of orthogenesis. This would be opposed to the more usual emphasis on
the total contingency of the path of evolution by evolutionary biologists such
as Stephen Jay Gould.64 It is nevertheless a highly attenuated form of ortho-
genesis: it is not that evolution pursues any predetermined goals, but that
there is an appearance of finality as an effect of an underlying driving force
that, as it were, pushes living systems from behind.65 For Bergson, as we have
seen, this is the élan vital, but others posit the large-scale directions, for
example, of “maximum entropy production,”66 of “complexification,”67 or of
“informational entropy production.”68 When it comes to positive accounts of
these factors and their place in evolution, however, the theorists sharing this
broad position differ among themselves. Probably the closest to Bergson’s
Creative Evolution would be Brooks and Wiley’s unified theory of biology

57
These representative theorists would include: Wicken, Brooks and Wiley, Schrödinger,
Schneider and Kay, Smith, Morowitz, and several others.
58
Contemporary neo-Darwinism, otherwise called the “modern evolutionary synthesis,”
refers especially to the coherent synthesis of Darwinian evolution by natural selection with the
Weismann barrier, population genetics, and modern molecular biology.
59
See, for example, Brooks and Wiley 1988, 29; Wicken 1979, 350; Pross 2003.
60
See Wicken 1998, 367; 1979, 349–50.
61
See Depew 1986, 31ff.; Brooks and Wiley 1988, 29.
62
See Pross 2003, 394; Schneider and Kay 1994, 26.
63
Bergson 1941, 103; 1998, 102.
64
Gould 1989.
65
See Bergson 1941, 51; 1998, 51.
66
Swenson 1989, 187.
67
Kauffman 2000, xi.
68
Brooks and Wiley 1988.
70 JAMES DIFRISCO

presented in Evolution as Entropy (1988). In this text, the authors develop a

framework in which entropic processes are conceived as the “driving force”
behind organizational and evolutionary dynamics. “Entropic processes” here
are not understood as disordering processes per se, because they are taken to
include processes in which order and entropy increase simultaneously.69
Entropy becomes more a measure of irreversible qualitative change in a
system over time and not necessarily of qualitative change in the direction of
disorder. Brooks and Wiley thus reinterpret the second law of thermodynam-
ics in a much broader way than its original energetic meaning:
Is entropy primarily a manifestation of energy flows or of the passage of time? . . .
We are able to see biological evolution and thermodynamic changes as special cases
of a more general phenomenon of evolution, which we have been able to relate
directly to cosmological considerations of existence in an expanding universe. . . .
The second law is thus more than the natural law of energy flows; it is the natural law
of history.70

The second law as a natural law of history is then taken to apply at two levels
within a more encompassing cosmic evolution: (1) the genesis of organization
in dissipative structures, and (2) phylogenesis. Both are “entropic” processes
resulting from the driving force of nonequilibrium, whose persistence in living
systems distinguishes them from nonliving nature in that they are more
deeply constituted by their history—having, one should say, a higher “degree
of duration.”
It is not difficult to see how this scheme corresponds to the philosophy of
life presented in Bergson’s Creative Evolution. The two levels determined by the
nonequilibrium driving force of entropic processes, that of organization and
evolution, correspond to Chapter III and Chapters I–II of Bergson’s Creative
Evolution, respectively, which discuss the élan vital in the context of organiza-
tion and energy flow and in the context of phylogenetic evolution. In each
case it is a question of a “force,” an élan or disequilibration, which engenders
the time proper to life against the background of a more encompassing
cosmic evolution or duration.
There are certainly fundamental differences between the ideas of Bergson
and those of more contemporary theorists belonging to the “thermodynamic

69
This conception of entropy is enabled by a more cosmological or long-range approach
than that of Prigogine, which is found, for example, in Layzer 1975, 1988, Landsberg 1984,
Frautschi 1982, and elsewhere. The basic idea is that a system can increase in entropy while also
increasing in order or organization so long as its actual entropy increase proceeds at a slower rate
than that of its maximum possible entropy. Organization would then be indicated by the
difference between actual and maximum possible entropy for a system. See Brooks and Wiley
1988, 52–62.
70
Brooks and Wiley 1988, 356.
 BERGSON AND THE THERMODYNAMIC PARADIGM 71
paradigm,” at least some of which would be attributable to the differences
between a philosophical and a scientific interest in these problems. The
primary substantive difference appears to be that the opposition between élan
vital and materiality is not expressed within an expanded form of the second
law for Bergson, since the compatibility of the second law with organizing
processes in open systems was not fully grasped at the time.71 But the opposi-
tion between élan vital and materiality is not for this reason a mark of spiri-
tualism or vitalism, given that it is still expressed in terms of free energy,
organization, and entropy. Bergson’s élan vital would be something manifestly
immaterial if the material world were identical with the world described by
Newtonian mechanics; but in the latter case, neither would there be any
reality of duration. As a philosopher, Bergson starts instead from duration
and its degrees of material extension, where the difference between life and
matter is reconceived in terms of time. The élan vital is a concept that reveals
its origin from within this philosophical perspective.
This ultimate reference of Bergson’s élan vital to his primary philosophical
interest in duration is generally well-understood,72 but it also should not be
exaggerated. If it were only a matter of duration, the notion of the élan vital as
a “force” would be unnecessary and would add nothing new. What is less
well-understood is that the élan vital is deployed in Creative Evolution as a way of
accounting for duration in the living world on an energetic or thermodynamic
basis, and thereby of providing a unifying concept for Bergson’s philosophical
biology. Within this interpretation, Bergson’s remarks on entropy in the third
chapter would not represent a secondary effort to safeguard his idea of the
creative evolution of the cosmos against its seeming contradiction with the
“heat death” cosmology of classical thermodynamics, but would represent
the very core of the concept. Of course, I do not claim that Bergson somehow
anticipated the scientific developments that led to this way of thinking about
life, nor that the latter serves to retroactively vindicate the doctrine of the élan
vital. It is at least to some degree a matter of historical contingency that
Bergson arrived at similar results, but it is also more significantly because
he shared a similar vision of nature. It is due to this vision, moreover,
that Bergson’s philosophy of life offers serious philosophical resources
for thinking about life today. In particular, it offers a compelling alternative
voice to the ongoing debates between different forms of mechanism and

71
Another important difference is that Bergson did not possess a concept of molecular
information, whose synthesis with thermodynamics is central to the work of Brooks and Wiley
as well as Wicken.
72
It is not uncommon to read characterizations of Bergson’s position along these lines:
“Bergson’s vitalism is thus a vitalism of time: the ‘mysterious’ power of life, the élan vital, is
nothing but the power of time” (Marrati 2005, 1106).
72 JAMES DIFRISCO

organicism. Its alternative challenges us to think about hierarchical levels of

organization not in terms of holism or integration but in terms of time—a
time which is not quite self-sufficient, however, but which is engendered by
processes of organization in nature.

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