250. Duration, process and invention

Bergson’s notion of duration entails difference in continuity. Different things unified in time, in a flow of change, or better: of formation, emergence, and transformation. Bergson connected this with his idea of ‘creative evolution’.

In his view, duration is the paragon of qualitative difference, with elements, or moments, which are not additive, not repetitive, in contrast with the quantitative difference of separate, distinct, but similar things lined up in space.  

How to conceptualize this? Think of a body growing, and growing old, with body parts, themselves changing, connected in time, in the body. Or think of notes composing a melody, or words a story. Melody and story develop in time, with different connections between notes or words that shift their place and connotation in the process.  

The potential importance of this is that it may contribute to a better grasp of the present curse in society where the qualitative, the quality of process, gets overwhelmed by the quantitative, in measurement and control that suffocates the process and erodes the performance of professional work, in education and health care, for example.

I discussed that earlier in this blog (item 75), in a plea for ‘horizontal control’, where room is created for a non-quantitative, dialogical assessment of quality in terms of work processes. The fundamental move here is that it replaces an object view with a process view, a view in terms of duration, to be tackled not primarily by measurement but by dialogue (though measurement may part of it).

I am regularly invited to give lectures on this, in health care, education and the building industry, for example.

How are we to better understand duration as emergence? Bergson presented it as an exchange, and alternation, between maintenance versus renewal of form. This seems to me close, ‘spot on’, to my account of the ‘cycle of invention’, discussed in items 31, 35, and 138 of this blog.

To recall: novelty is proposed to arise from a generalization of an established form (theory, technology, practice, …) to a novel context with novel demands and opportunities, where its survival is challenged. In an attempt to cope with this, the form is differentiated. This is the first step in a loosening of form, in a widening of the context of application. Next, when this does not suffice, local failures and opportunities inspire hybrids of the established practice with elements from the novel context, in reciprocation. Here the form is beginning to be taken apart. Experimentation with novel combinations exhibits what value novelties may have, and what, in the old practice, inhibits realization of new potential. This yields pressures and hints for more fundamental, architectural changes of the form, for experimentation with tentative novel forms, in accommodation. Then, a process of selection arises, in which alternative novel prototypes compete for survival, which ultimately narrows down to a dominant design, which is then refined and narrowed down to an optimal new form, in consolidation. Here, form narrows down again. I discussed how this in some ways resembles evolution but also has important differences.

Now, does this yield an elucidation, a further specification, of the notion of duration? Does this help for further development of Bergsonism (as Deleuze called it)?  A clarification of ‘creative evolution’, with a specification of how it differs from natural evolution?

Next, how are we to understand  Bergson’s claim that duration is not only a feature of our consciousness, and of our subjective experience of time, but also of everything outside us, in the world. Are there really no stable, autonomous objects in the world? If in evolution we formed an inclination to conceptualize in terms of autonomous objects moving in space, because that contributed to our survival in the world, coping with prey, predators, enemies, sticks and stones, then that notion of stable, distinct objects must have reality value. So how can objects be both stable and subject to the process of change involved in duration?

An obvious idea would be that of ‘relative stability’. Things can be more or less stable relative to their change. Words have a volatile meaning, in moving from sentence to sentence, while objects maintain their constitution and form from one position in space to another. At the same time, living things have an internal movement of physiology, cell construction, decay, and death. A bodily organ deteriorates with age but manages to maintain its function more or less, for some more time. Even dead materials, a stone, say, is composed of processes on the level of molecules and atoms and underlying fundamental forces. For our survival in interaction with objects in space that movement is not relevant and hence not experienced.