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A Review
of
Henri Louis Bergson's Book
Creative Evolution
Chapter II: The Divergent Directions of the
Evolution of Life, Torpor, Intelligence, Instinct
Topic 23: Intelligence and Instinct
by Doug Renselle
Doug's Pre-review Commentary
Start of Review


Chapter I II
Introduction 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 
Chapter III IV
22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45  46 47

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Topic 23...............Intelligence and Instinct

PAGE

QUOTEs
(Most quotes verbatim Henri Louis Bergson, some paraphrased.)

COMMENTs
(Relevant to Pirsig, William James Sidis, and Quantonics Thinking Modes.)

137

"This rather narrow view of them has the advantage of giving us an objective means of distinguishing them ["objective means" is essence of SOMese]. In return, however, it gives us, of intelligence in general and of instinct in general, only the mean position above and below which both constantly oscillate. [We see this 'oscillation' as more of a quantum uncertainty interrelationship.] For that reason the reader must expect to see in what follows only a diagrammatic drawing, in which the respective outlines of intelligence and instinct are sharper than they should be, and in which the shading-off which comes from the indecision [i.e., quantum uncertainty interrelationship] of each and from their reciprocal encroachment on one another is neglected. In a matter so obscure, we cannot strive too hard for clearness. It will always be easy afterwards to soften the outlines and to correct what is too geometrical in the drawing—in short, to replace the rigidity of a diagram by the suppleness of life.

"To what date is it agreed to ascribe the appearance of man on the earth? To the period when the first weapons, the first tools, were made. The memorable quarrel over the discovery of Boucher de Perthes in the quarry of Moulin-Quignon is not forgotten. The question was whether real hatchets had been found or merely bits of flint accidentally broken. But that, supposing they were hatchets, we were indeed in the presence of intelligence, and more particularly of human intelligence, no one doubted for an instant. Now let us open a collection of anecdotes on the intelligence of animals: we shall see that besides many acts explicable by imitation or by the automatic association of images, there are some that we do not hesitate to call intelligent: foremost among them are those that bear witness to some idea of manufacture, whether the animal life succeeds in fashioning a crude instrument or uses for its profit an object made by man."

(Our brackets, bold, and color.)

Bergson restarts his footnote counts on each page. So to refer a footnote, one must state page number and footnote number.

Our bold and color highlights follow a code:

  • black-bold - important to read if you are just scanning our review
  • green-bold - we see Bergson suggesting axiomatic memes
  • violet-bold - an apparent classical problematic
  • blue-bold - we disagree with this text segment while disregarding context of Bergson's overall text
  • gray-bold - quotable text
  • red-bold - our direct commentary

Again, allow us to cite comparisons of Bergson's metaphor to ones we use often here in Quantonics. Pirsig's SQ by itself is rigid. But when commingling DQ, SQ keeps its Quality—keeps its vibrancy and harmony. Our inanimate Planck quantons appear rigid, like SQ without DQ, but when we animate them we can see their own vibrant semantics. When we look at an inanimate quanton, we imagine its animacy, and thus help it to keep its Quality as it plays on our quantum stages. Any symbol can be thought of as animate if we just commence a Quantonic habit of doing that. Quantonics teaches us a new habitual way of viewing reality's constituents—all—as animate.

Our habitual use of quantons to represent reality's constituents always remind us that reality is both nonactuality (isoflux) in complementary interrelationships with actuality (latched preferential flux).

Every actual constituent both compenetrates and coinsides its nonactual complement.

See our QELR of uncertainty. See Quantum Uncertainty as Macroscopic.

Index

138

"The animals that rank immediately after man in the matter of intelligence, the apes and elephants, are those that can use an artificial instrument occasionally. Below, but not very far from them, come those that recognize a constructed object: for example, the fox, which knows quite well that a trap is a trap. No doubt, there is intelligence wherever there is inference; but inference, which consists in an inflection of past experience [while ignoring n¤w~ings rqcs spiritualq comtextingsq...] in the direction of present experience, is already a beginning of invention. Invention becomes complete when it is materialized in a manufactured instrument. Towards that achievement the intelligence of animals tends as towards an ideal. And though, ordinarily, it does not yet succeed in fashioning artificial objects and in making use of them, it is preparing for this by the very variations which it performs on the instincts furnished by nature. As regards human intelligence, it has not been sufficiently noted that mechanical invention has been from the first its essential feature, that even to-day our social life gravitates around the manufacture and use of artificial instruments, that the inventions which strew the road of progress have also traced its direction. This we hardly realize, because it takes us longer to change ourselves than to change our tools. Our individual and even social habits survive a good while the circumstances for which they were made, so that the ultimate effects of an invention are not observed until its novelty is already out of sight. A century has elapsed since the invention of the steam engine, and we are only just beginning to feel the depths of the shock it gave us. But the revolution it has effected in industry has nevertheless upset human relations altogether. [Consider imminent quantum tsunami affects on human relations altogether.]"

Updated 18Dec2104 - Doug.

(Our brackets, bold, and color.)

 

 

Bergson's statement is even truer today at Millennium III's beginning. We still have more difficulty changing ourselves than we do changing our tools. However, we have a classical co-dependency on tools whose fundamental foundations are awry and fault-laden. But our co-dependency keeps us in a classical SOMitic Church of Reason. This iteration, we must change ourselves first. We must change to re-cognize mathematics' basal flaws: Platonic idealism, unilogism, analyticity, parametric independence, objectivity, identity, infinity, monolithicity, formality, mechanicity, et al. We must change to re-cognize physics' basal flaws: objective measurement, use of formal mathematics, use of formal predicate logic, objectivity, identity, infinity, formality, individuicity, separability, localability, reducibility, emphasis of particle vis-à-vis wave, et al. Once we accept these flaws as philosophically evident and ostensible, we commence our change of self. Once we commence change of self, we can commence basal change of our tools. For us, in Quantonics, this is modern science's greatest challenge and need today, at Millennium III's beginning.

Index

139

"New ideas are arising, new feelings are on the way to flower. In thousands of years, when, seen from the distance, only the broad lines of the present age will still be visible, our wars and our revolutions will count for little, even supposing they are remembered at all; but the steam-engine, and the procession of inventions of every kind that accompanied it, will perhaps be spoken of as we speak of the bronze or of the chipped stone of pre-historic times: it will serve to define an age.(1) If we could rid ourselves of all pride, if, to define our species, we kept strictly to what the historic and the prehistoric periods show us to be the constant characteristic of man and of intelligence, we should say not Homo sapiens, but Homo faber. In short, intelligence, considered in what seems to be its original feature, is the faculty of manufacturing artificial objects, especially tools to make tools, and of indefinitely varying the manufacture.

"Now, does an unintelligent animal also possess tools or machines? Yes, certainly, but here the instrument forms a part of the body that uses it; and, corresponding to this instrument, there is an instinct that knows how to use it. True, it cannot be maintained that all instincts consist in a natural ability to use an inborn mechanism. Such a definition would not apply to the instincts which Romanes called "secondary"; and more than one "primary" instinct would not come under it. But this definition, like that which we have provisionally given of intelligence, determines at least the ideal limit toward which the very numerous forms of instinct are traveling. Indeed, it has often been pointed out that most instincts are only the continuance, or rather the consummation, of the work of organization itself. Where does the activity of instinct begin? and where does that of nature end? We cannot tell."

Note (1) - M. Paul Lacombe has laid great stress on the important influence that great inventions have exercised on the evolution of humanity (P. Lacombe, De 1'histoire considérée comme science, Paris, 1894. See, in particular, pp. 168-247).

(Our brackets, bold, and color.)

 

We ask our readers to update their views of intelligence using Paul Pietsch's "The principal feature of intelligence is indeterminacy." From Pietsch's 1980 Shufflebrain. Compare "indeterminacy" to quantum~uncertainty. Doug - 26Mar2008.

Max Frisch published his book, Homo Faber in German in 1959. Homo faber, as used by Bergson, is a philosophy of humanness as classically mechanstic with objective parts which can be studied in isolation and treated like nuts and bolts. Frisch's protagonist was an American engineer-voyager of sorts, but unnaturally mechanistic/intellectual. Frisch's story tells of a man named Walter Faber who fights a battle of intellect over intuition. In a Quantonic ending, Faber finds both, a quanton(intuition,intellect). A movie was made of this book and retitled, The Voyager. Frisch's is very mature material, not for puerile minds. See our link to a superb review: Homo Faber (This link is now '404.' We will try to find jsimmons again and restore this link: http://www.princeton.edu/
~jsimmons/work/lit141finalpaper.html). See our recent set of graphics which quantum unify, cohesively, Bergson's three memes of intelligence, instinct, and intuition. His three I's we call "I-Cubed" in Quantonics. Click on each graphic to step down two more levels. Doug 23Jan2001.

Our position is that those of us who adopt QTMs in favor over CTMs will introduce a new epoch where humanity and its descendants will commence emerscenture of non-artificial quantons. We shall efface our troglodytic and objective legacy mythos and write a newer Quantonic emersos for our progeny. View faber in a sense of classical, mechanical 'fabricator.'

 

Bergson's queries here are of supreme import. We are uncertain whether he grasps their correlation with his own heterogeneous view of times. In quantum science, Bergson's questions regard what we call "The quantum measurement problem." Careful reading of John von Neumann's Grundlagen, shows his classical predilections for homogeneous reality, including analytic mathematical use of homogeneous time for his attempts to ascertain where a quantum measurement occurs. He too, could not find where, and as Bergson says, "We cannot tell."

When one adopts a Bergsonian meme of heterogeneous times, one suddenly has an epiphany that quantum measurement happens many wheres. That is reality's great joke on von Neumann and all other classicists who attempt to find a single locus for classical measurement. Their unilogism is clinically inept in dealing with nature's physial (i.e., not physic-al) quantum paralogisms. As David Bohm said, "We need a new quantum non-mechanics of reality." In his Quantum Theory, Chapter 8, Section 26.

You may wish to see our links on 'measurement:'

 

Index

140

"In the metamorphoses of the larva into the nymph and into the perfect insect, metamorphoses that often require appropriate action and a kind of initiative on the part of the larva, there is no sharp line of demarcation between the instinct of the animal and the organizing work of living matter. We may say, as we will, either that instinct organizes the instruments it is about to use, or that the process of organization is continued in the instinct that has to use the organ. The most marvelous instincts of the insect do nothing but develop its special structure into movements: indeed, where social life divides the labor among different individuals, and thus allots them different instincts, a corresponding difference of structure is observed: the polymorphism of ants, bees, wasps and certain pseudoneuroptera is well known. 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 advantages and drawbacks of these two modes of activity are obvious. Instinct finds the appropriate instrument at hand: this instrument, which makes and repairs itself, which presents, like all the works of nature, an infinite complexity of detail combined with a marvelous simplicity of function, does at once, when required, what it is called upon to do, without difficulty and with a perfection that is often wonderful. In return, it retains an almost invariable structure, since a modification of it involves a modification of the species. Instinct is therefore necessarily specialized, being nothing but the utilization of a specific instrument for a specific object. The instrument constructed intelligently, on the contrary, is an imperfect instrument. It costs an effort. It is generally troublesome to handle. [Bravo! Amen!]"

(Our brackets, bold, and color.)

 

 

Do you enjoy being stunned by epiphanies you may have never perceived prior just now? Doug does! For Doug, that is real evidence of evolutionary pr¤græss of th~¤ught. Now, what do machines do? They repeat analytical processes. They run on automatic! That's why we call them "automata." Now ask yourself, self, "What processes in quantum reality are repeatable?"

Did you have that epiphany? Did you reap that reward?

"No!"

Quantum reality cann¤t repeat! All is uncertain microscopically, mesoscopically and macroscopically. Classical automata by design are determinate, certain. That is why they always end up either failing, possibly having 'accidents,' and generating what are sometimes called "Murphies." That is also why humans have yet to develop genuine Artificial Intelligence! We do not yet fathom how to 'create' quantum~adaptive m¤dals which deal with a spectrum of uncertainties via adaptive behaviors.

What do we have to do to commence that qua? Dump CTMs! Adopt QTMs.

Fathom comparables for security: classical vav quantum.

Doug - 26Mar2008.

Index

141

"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. But this advantage of intelligence over instinct only appears at a late stage, when intelligence, having raised construction to a higher degree, proceeds to construct constructive machinery. At the outset, the advantages and drawbacks of the artificial instrument and of the natural instrument balance so well that it is hard to foretell which of the two will secure to the living being the greater empire over nature.

"We may surmise that they began by being implied in each other, that the original Psychical activity included both at once, and that, if we went far enough back into the past, we should find instincts more nearly approaching intelligence than those of our insects, intelligence nearer to instinct than that of our vertebrates, intelligence and instinct being, in this elementary condition, prisoners of a matter which they are not yet able to control. If the force immanent in life were an unlimited force, it might perhaps have developed instinct and intelligence together, and to any extent, in the same organisms."

(Our bold and color.)

 

 

 

 

We note in Bergson's, "having raised construction to a higher degree," an implicit limitation: construction. Construction is a mechanical act, a dialectical act, an architectural act, a ratiocinemetric act. What has Quantonics declared more highly evolved than classical construction? Emerscence! Emerscence, emerscitecture, and emerscenture are all quantum Quantonics pragma, metanapragma. Allow us to rewrite Bergson's red bolded text to, "having raised emerscenture to a higher emersos," and you may immediately see how Quantonics affectively breaks classical limitations of architecture, construction, design, fabrication, formalization, and manufacture. Doug - 29Mar2008.

 

Index

142

"But everything seems to indicate that this force is limited, and that it soon exhausts itself in its very manifestation. It is hard for it to go far in several directions at once: it must choose. Now, it has the choice between two modes of acting on the material world: it can either effect this action directly by creating an organized instrument to work with; or else it can effect it indirectly through an organism which, instead of possessing the required instrument naturally, will itself construct it by fashioning inorganic matter. Hence intelligence and instinct, which diverge more and more as they develop, but which never entirely separate from each other. [Bergson admits quanton(instinct,intelligence).] On the one hand, the most perfect instinct of the insect is accompanied by gleams of intelligence, if only in the choice of place, time and materials of construction: the bees, for example, when by exception they build in the open air, invent new and really intelligent arrangements to adapt themselves to such new conditions.(1) But, on the other hand, intelligence has even more need of instinct than instinct has of intelligence; for the power to give shape to crude matter involves already a superior degree of organization, a degree to which the animal could not have risen, save on the wings of instinct. So, while nature has frankly evolved in the direction of instinct in the arthropods, we observe in almost all the vertebrates the striving after rather than the expansion of intelligence. It is instinct still which forms the basis of their Psychical activity; but intelligence is there, and would fain supersede it. Intelligence does not yet succeed in inventing instruments; but at least it tries to, by performing as many variations as possible on the instinct which it would like to dispense with. It gains complete self-possession only in man, and this triumph is attested by the very insufficiency of the natural means at man's disposal for defense against his enemies, against cold and hunger."

Note (1) - Bouvier, "La Nidification des abeilles à, l'air libre" (C. R. de l'Ac. des sciences, 7 mai 1906).

(Our brackets, bold, and color.)

Here we see Bergson as a consummate dialectician with his bivalent "the choice between two modes" which is how classical 'science' currently thingks. Want an example? Even in quantum mechanics classical 'science' uses 'Projection Operator' Eigenvalues as dialectical Eigenstates of either zero or one. Those bivalent, 'two valued' 'di' gits are called "projections." They distill countless quantum~wavings ephemeral qualities into either zero or one. It is a classical abomination which some refer 'science.' It, rather, is dialectical deceit, thingking garbage! Doug - 29Mar2008.

Fashioning inorganic matter is a classical approach. Quantum reality offers us new memes! We can now fashion biological patterns of value. We can invent new hybrids of both biological and inorganic patterns of value which escape radical mechanism's inorganic AI limitations and dead ends.

Index

143

"This insufficiency, when we strive to fathom its significance, acquires the value of a prehistoric document; it is the final leave-taking between intelligence and instinct. But it is no less true that nature must have hesitated between two modes of psychical activityone assured of immediate success, but limited in its effects; the other hazardous, but whose conquests, if it should reach independence, might be extended indefinitely. Here again, then, the greatest success was achieved on the side of the greatest risk. Instinct and intelligence therefore represent two divergent solutions, equally fitting, of one and the same problem.

"There ensue, it is true, profound differences of internal structure between instinct and intelligence. We shall dwell only on those that concern our present study. Let us say, then, that instinct and intelligence imply two radically different kinds of knowledge. But some explanations are first of all necessary on the subject of consciousness in general.

"It has been asked how far instinct is conscious. Our reply is that there are a vast number of differences and degrees, that instinct is more or less conscious in certain cases, unconscious in others. The plant, as we shall see, has instincts; it is not likely that these are accompanied by feeling. Even in the animal there is hardly any complex instinct that is not unconscious in some part at least of its exercise. But here we must point out a difference, not often noticed, between two kinds of unconsciousness, viz., that in which consciousness is absent, and that in which consciousness is nullified. Both are equal to zero, but in one case the zero expresses the fact that there is nothing, in the other that we have two equal quantities of opposite sign which compensate and neutralize each other."

(Our bold and color.)

As we continue our quantum studies we learn muchas noveltyings. One we learned from Ernst Haeckel in his own studies of Radiolaria, is his usages of both "phylogeny" and "phylology."

Here we see Bergson describing Nature's own emergent~quantique: phylogeny. Bergson writes it like this, "Instinct and intelligence therefore represent two divergent solutions, equally fitting, of one and the same problem," which is what we call simply today, "phylogeny." A simple way of saying "phylogeny," is "quantum~emerscent n¤nsynonymous di(omni)vergence." Our parenthetic infix of "omni" again shows us how anthropogenic dialectic ruins a more multiplicate Nature's "omni." To make this easy, think of new branches sprouting on a tree. Another is Judah Folkman's angiogenesis. There is n¤ 'di' there! If you study radiolaria, and we suggest you should, you will omniscover Nature's own phylogeny issi omnivergent and omnihologramic. We have written elsewhere in Quantonics how human genomes are evolving. Human evolution is ongoing and manifests its emerscence as: aneuploidy (e.g., N-somiation of chromosome XX and XY pairs), isochromosomatism (e.g., palindromic encoding of previously unduplicated chromasomal encodings), and we add another here as phylogeny. There are countless others! Search www for "nonsynonymous divergence chromosomal alignment." You will find some nifty quantum~memeos there. Doug - 29Mar2008.

Bergson didn't understand that quantum actuality is flux positive. One may n¤t analytically, transversely, classically add and subtract flux. Quantum flux superposes and encodes (interference) entangled flux. Flux which is n¤nentangled doesn't encode (interfere). Encoding may cancel two positive fluxes, but their net energies are double (n¤ quantum flux energy is ever classically 'zeroed'), n¤t classically zero. Entangled and interfering encodings which do n¤t cancel emersce (actually create) a n¤væl compound flux encoding...a omnique (classically 'unique') fretted-latched harmonic Value pattern of mixed quantum flux. A Quantonics Key Enabler™ here is that "We have n¤ means of 'zeroing' flux. Flux is perpetual. When flux appears to disappear, it has either become n¤napparently bosonic, possibly transitioned (classical analogue is square root; notice how moving isoflux into actuality has a classical analogue of squaring isoflux which classically explains how all actual quantum~flux is positive, but positive in a way that disallows classical negation) to isoflux." A Quantonics Key Enabler™ Doug - 29Mar2006.

Index

144

"The unconsciousness of a falling stone is of the former kind: the stone has no feeling of its fall. Is it the same with the unconsciousness of instinct, in the extreme cases in which instinct is unconscious? When we mechanically perform an habitual action, when the somnambulist automatically acts his dream, unconsciousness may be absolute; but this is merely due to the fact that the representation of the act is held in check by the performance of the act itself, which resembles the idea so perfectly, and fits it so exactly, that consciousness is unable to find room between them. Representation is stopped up by action. The proof of this is, that if the accomplishment of the act is arrested or thwarted by an obstacle, consciousness may reappear. It was there, but neutralized by the action which fulfilled [fulfilled] and thereby filled the representation. The obstacle creates nothing positive; it simply makes a void, removes a stopper. This inadequacy of act to representation is precisely what we here call consciousness.

"If we examine this point more closely, we shall find that consciousness is the light that plays around the zone of possible actions or potential activity which surrounds the action really performed by the living being. It signifies hesitation or choice. Where many equally possible actions are indicated without there being any real action (as in a deliberation that has not come to an end), consciousness is intense. Where the action performed is the only action possible (as in activity of the somnambulistic or more generally automatic kind), consciousness is reduced to nothing. Representation and knowledge exist none the less in the case if we find a whole series of systematized movements the last of which is already prefigured in the first, and if, besides, consciousness can flash out of them at the shock of an obstacle. From this point of view, the consciousness of a living being may be defined as an arithmetical difference between potential and real activity. It measures the interval between representation and action."

(Our brackets, bold, and color.)

Those of you interested in William James Sidis' paper titled, Unconscious Intelligence should compare what Bergson says here re: consciousness vis-à-vis unconsciousness. Bergson's work is, in our opinion, superior to Sidis'. We find it evident that Sidis did not read Bergson's works. Sad...

Index

 

We think a quantum light we call "quantum awareness" is a similar light shining around all constituents (quantons) of actuality. Our quantum awareness light manifests quite simply as that, for example, which surrounds photons in their travels, especially at departures, gravitational perturbations, and landings. It is quantum isoflux. It is isoconic. It is aware. It is absolute. It offers n¤t edict, rather many choices!!

Index

145 "It may be inferred from this that intelligence is likely to point towards consciousness, and instinct towards unconsciousness. For, where the implement to be used is organized by nature, the material furnished by nature, and the result to be obtained willed by nature, there is little left to choice; the consciousness inherent in the representation is therefore counterbalanced, whenever it tends to disengage itself, by the performance of the act, identical with the representation, which forms its counterweight. Where consciousness appears, it does not so much light up the instinct itself as the thwartings to which instinct is subject; it is the deficit of instinct, the distance, between the act and the idea, that becomes consciousness so that consciousness, here, is only an accident. Essentially, consciousness only emphasizes the starting point of instinct, the point at which the whole series of automatic movements is released. Deficit, on the contrary, is the normal state of intelligence. Laboring under difficulties is its very essence. Its original function being to construct unorganized instruments, it must, in spite of numberless difficulties, choose for this work the place and the time, the form and the matter. And it can never satisfy itself entirely, because every new satisfaction creates new needs. In short, while instinct and intelligence both involve knowledge, this knowledge is rather acted and unconscious in the case of instinct, thought and conscious in the case of intelligence. But it is a difference rather of degree than of kind. So long as consciousness is all we are concerned with, we close our eyes to what is, from the psychological point of view, the cardinal difference between instinct and intelligence."

(Our bold.)

 

 

 

 

We cannot resist paraphrasing Bergson, "Where instinct can be content, intelligence cannot." Now ask yourself, reader, "Is use of mathematics instinctive? Intelligent? Is mathematics a reusable tool, especially when used mechanistically—axiomatically? When a physicist reuses an equation from a know ledge, is that physicist's behavior more instinctive or more intelligent?" And you readers who are into IQ in big ways, what do you mean when you say, "We can measure intelligence?" Is it possible to measure intelligence? We think, as Bergson describes it, that intelligence is closer kin Pirsig's DQ than it is to SQ. If we are correct, then an ESQ measure of IQ gives no measure of intelligence. So perhaps we should start a new appellation for IQ: Instinct Quotient!

Index

146

"In order to get at this essential difference we must, without stopping at the more or less brilliant light which illumines these two modes of internal activity, go straight to the two objects, profoundly different from each other, upon which instinct and intelligence are directed.

"When the horse-fly lays its eggs on the legs or shoulders of the horse, it acts as if it knew that its larva has to develop in the horse's stomach and that the horse, in licking itself, will convey the larva into its digestive tract. When a paralyzing wasp stings its victim on just those points where the nervous centres lie, so as to render it motionless without killing it, it acts like a learned entomologist and a skilful surgeon rolled into one. But what shall we say of the little beetle, the Sitaris, whose story is so often quoted? This insect lays its eggs at the entrance of the underground passages dug by a kind of bee, the Anthophora. Its larva, after long waiting, springs upon the male Anthophora as it goes out of the passage, clings to it, and remains attached until the "nuptial flight," when it seizes the opportunity to pass from the male to the female, and quietly waits until it lays its eggs. It then leaps on the egg, which serves as a support for it in the honey, devours the egg in a few days, and, resting on the shell, undergoes its first metamorphosis. Organized now to float on the honey, it consumes this provision of nourishment, and becomes a nymph, then a perfect insect. Everything happens as if the larva of the Sitaris, from the moment it was hatched, knew that the male Anthophora would first emerge from the passage; that the nuptial flight would give it the means of conveying itself to the female, who would take it to a store of honey sufficient to feed it after its transformation; that, until this transformation, it could gradually eat the egg of the Anthophora, in such a way that it could at the same time feed itself, maintain itself at the surface of the honey, and also suppress the rival that otherwise would have come out of the egg."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Index

147

"And equally all this happens as if the Sitaris itself knew that its larva would know all these things. The knowledge, if knowledge there be, is only implicit. It is reflected outwardly in exact movements instead of being reflected inwardly in consciousness. It is none the less true that the behavior of the insect involves, or rather evolves, the idea of definite things existing or being produced in definite points of space and time, which the insect knows without having learned them.

"Now, if we look at intelligence from the same point of view, we find that it also knows certain things without having learned them. But the knowledge in the two cases is of a very different order. We must be careful here not to revive again the old philosophical dispute on the subject of innate ideas. [I.e., Platonism.] So we will confine ourselves to the point on which every one is agreed, to wit, that the young child understands immediately things that the animal will never understand, and that in this sense intelligence, like instinct, is an inherited function, therefore an innate one. But this innate intelligence, although it is a faculty of knowing, knows no object in particular. When the new-born babe seeks for the first time its mother's breast, so showing that it has knowledge (unconscious, no doubt) of a thing it has never seen, we say, just because the innate knowledge is in this case of a definite object, that it belongs to instinct and not to intelligence. Intelligence does not then imply the innate knowledge of any object. And yet, if intelligence knows nothing by nature, it has nothing innate. What, then, if it be ignorant of all things, can it know? Besides things, there are relations. [And besides things and relations, our quantum/Quantonics extension says there are interrelationships.] The new-born child, so far as intelligent, knows neither definite objects nor a definite property of any object; but when, a little later on, he will hear an epithet being applied to a substantive, he will immediately understand what it means."

(Our brackets, bold, and color.)

For you Chomskyites, compare Bergson's comments on innate knowledge. Chomksy claims humans have innate (our local Quantonics word is intrinsic) lingual knowledge. Our impression is that Bergson would say we have instincts which can be "toothed" on local language practices.

 

 

 

 

Nor would it hurt to compare Plato and Chomsky. They share glimmers of pre-existing forms.

Index

148

"The relation of attribute to subject is therefore seized by him naturally, and the same might be said of the general relation expressed by the verb, a relation so immediately conceived by the mind that language can leave it to be understood, as is instanced in rudimentary languages which have no verb. Intelligence, therefore, naturally makes use of relations of like with like, of content to container, of cause to effect, etc., which are implied in every phrase in which there is a subject, an attribute and a verb, expressed or understood. May one say that it has innate knowledge of each of these relations in particular? It is for logicians to discover whether they are so many irreducible relations, or whether they can be resolved into relations still more general. But, in whatever way we make the analysis of thought, we always end with one or several general categories, of which the mind possesses innate knowledge since it makes a natural use of them. Let us say, therefore, that whatever, in instinct and intelligence, is innate knowledge, bears in the first case on things and in the second on relations.

"Philosophers distinguish between the matter of our knowledge and its form. The matter is what is given by the perceptive faculties taken in the elementary state. The form is the totality of the relations set up between these materials in order to constitute a systematic knowledge. Can the form, without matter, be an object of knowledge? Yes, without doubt, provided that this knowledge is not like a thing we possess so much as like a habit we have contracted,—a direction rather than a state: it is, if we will, a certain natural bent of attention. The schoolboy, who knows that the master is going to dictate a fraction to him, draws a line before he knows what numerator and what denominator are to come; he therefore has present to his mind the general relation between the two terms although he does not know either of them; he knows the form without the matter."

(Our bold and color.)

Index

149

"So is it, prior to experience, with the categories into which our experience comes to be inserted. Let us adopt then words sanctioned by usage, and give the distinction between intelligence and instinct this more precise formula: Intelligence, in so far as it is innate, is the knowledge of a form; instinct implies the knowledge of a matter.

"From this second point of view, which is that of knowledge instead of action, the force immanent in life in general appears to us again as a limited principle, in which originally two different and even divergent modes of knowing coexisted and intermingled. The first gets at definite objects immediately, in their materiality itself. It says, "This is what is." The second gets at no object in particular; it is only a natural power of relating an object to an object, or a part to a part, or an aspect to an aspect—in short, of drawing conclusions when in possession of the premisses, of proceeding from what has been learnt to what is still unknown. It does not say, "This is;" it says only that "if the conditions [including axiomatic assumptions used for observation and measurement; and reader should note that though classicism assumes those assumptions are uniconventional, quantum reality is not uni- nor -conventional] are such, such will be the conditioned." In short, the first kind of knowledge, the instinctive, would be formulated in what philosophers call categorical propositions, while the second kind, the intellectual, would always be expressed hypothetically. Of these two faculties, the former seems, at first, much preferable to the other. [And now, we can see very clearly that passé philosophers, and in some regard Bergson himself, placed some classical things in categories where quantum reality shows us they should still be more hypothetical.] And it would be so, in truth, if it extended to an endless number of objects. But, in fact, it applies only to one special object, and indeed only to a restricted part of that object. Of this, at least, its knowledge is intimate and full; not explicit, but implied in the accomplished action."

(Our brackets, bold, and color.)

Unfortunately, Bergson falls back into SOM's schism of subject/form and object/matter. However, his back sliding in context of his previous words, elevates intelligence and form above object and matter, which is precisely a familiar inversion which Pirsig invokes in his evolution of patterns of Value in his Metaphysics of Quality. This inversion also fits nicely with manifest aspects of quantum science (e.g., Bohr's philosophical beatings for calling complementarity "subjective;" and multiple self-referent recursions of quantum reality's islands formerly berated "sophisms" and "paralogisms" by classicists; Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems (two theorems); Foulis Firefly Box (events, propositions, attributes/properties and their logics as paralogical sophisms); and Bell's theorem on quantum nonlocality).

But quantum science has shown us that no two objects, nor no two parts are same. Reality is qualitative and only apparently quantitative. Aspects as Quantonic forms can be same. E.g., a parallelopiped is same as another parallelopiped in aspect shape. Where two parallelopipeds are never same, their shape is same. This is an extremely important philosophical distinction. Where we see shape homomorphism and isomorphism we do not see objective identity nor do we see analytically reduced portion identity. In quantum physial reality, there is no identity! There is only action! Flux! Absolute flux! From this quantum epiphanous foundation, we can show there is no physial:

  • one,
  • zero,
  • infinity,
  • constancy,
  • tautology, or
  • excluded-middle.

All of these are simply quantum uncertain artifacts of classical instinct, soon to be rubble and ashes of a mean and ugly reign.

Many changes are due 'modern' classical 'science' fundamentals. A quantum tsunami's impulse quaked. Quantum intelligence is about to overtake and subsume classical instinct.

Index

150

"The intellectual faculty, on the contrary, possesses naturally only an external and empty knowledge; but it has thereby the advantage of supplying a [classically conventional] frame in which an infinity of objects may find room [a uniquely classical perspective; a very nonquantum perspective] in turn. It is as if the force evolving in living forms, being a limited force, had had to choose between two kinds of limitation in the field of natural or innate knowledge, one applying to the extension of knowledge, the other to its intension. [quanton(intension,extension) mediated by Bergson's vital impetus] In the first case, the knowledge may be packed and full, but it will then be confined to one specific object; in the second, it is no longer limited by its object, but that is because it contains nothing, being only a form without matter. [Bergson's "form without matter" corresponds: Pirsig's DQ, Quantonics' isoflux nonactuality, and quantum reality's quantum vacuum flux AKA "dark energy." In Quantonics, we QELR and recoin classical notions of 'form' as memeos of quantum~emerq(ancy). Doug - 3Apr2006.] The two tendencies, at first implied in each other, had to separate in order to grow. They both went to seek their fortune in the world, and turned out to be instinct and intelligence.

"Such, then, are the two divergent modes of knowledge by which intelligence and instinct must be defined, from the standpoint of knowledge rather than that of action. But knowledge and action are here only two aspects of one and the same faculty. It is easy to see, indeed, that the second definition is only a new form of the first.

"If instinct is, above all, the faculty of using an organized natural instrument, it must involve innate knowledge (potential or unconscious, it is true), [Bergson's parenthetical] both of this instrument and of the object to which it is applied. Instinct is therefore innate knowledge of a thing. [Chomsky claims human innate instinct of language.] But intelligence is the faculty of constructing unorganized—that is to say artificial—instruments. If, on its account, nature gives up endowing the living being with the instruments that may serve him, it is in order that the living being may be able to vary his construction according to circumstances. The essential function of intelligence is therefore to see the way out of a difficulty in any circumstances whatever, to find what is most suitable, what answers best the question asked. [Lives are tests!]"

(Our brackets, bold, and color.)

 

 

 

Bergson's use of separate here show's SOM's knife:

dichon(instinct, intelligence).

Comma nospace is SOM's wall.

Comma space is SOM's wall.

Repair mistake dating back to 2000. Doug - 24Dec2009.

We missed this, first pass, almost six years ago. Doug - 3Apr2006.

Quantonics quantum~flux waves SOM's bricks away...like this...

I.e., quanton(instinct,intelligence). We may choose to view all quantum "numbers" this way. They are all both together and cohesive and both separate and autonomous from one another (See our discussion of Mae-wan Ho's quanton(cohesion,autonomy) in our May, 2005 TQS News. Doug - 3Apr2006.). All quantum complements are like this and their interrelationships are always "quantum uncertain." Our new symbol for this quantum uncertainty looks like this:

And now we can show our quanton using our new font:

quanton(instinctintelligence).    

 

Index

151

"Hence it bears essentially on the relations between a given situation and the means of utilizing it. What is innate in intellect, therefore, is the tendency to establish relations, and this tendency implies the natural knowledge of certain very general relations, a kind of stuff that the activity of each particular intellect will cut up into more special relations. [Cut up is a uniquely SOMitic act.] Where activity is directed toward manufacture, [i.e., emerscenture] therefore, knowledge necessarily bears on relations [i.e., interrelationships]. But this entirely formal [i.e., quantum] knowledge of intelligence has an immense advantage over the material knowledge of instinct. A form, just because it is empty, may be filled at will with any number of things in turn, even with those that are of no use. So that a formal knowledge is not limited to what is practically useful, although it is in view of practical utility that it has made its appearance in the world. An intelligent being bears within himself the means to transcend his own nature.

"He transcends himself, however, less than he wishes, less also than he imagines himself to do. The purely formal character of intelligence deprives it [impedes transcendence] of the ballast necessary to enable it to settle itself on the objects that are of the most powerful interest to speculation. Instinct, on the contrary, has the desired materiality, but it is incapable of going so far in quest of its object; it does not speculate. Here we reach the point that most concerns our present inquiry. The difference that we shall now proceed to denote between instinct and intelligence is what the whole of this analysis was meant to bring out. We formulate it thus: There are things that intelligence alone is able to seek, but which, by itself, it will never find. These things instinct alone could find; but it will never seek them.

"It is necessary here to consider some preliminary details that concern the mechanism of intelligence."

(Our links, brackets, bold, and color.)

It is unclear, but we think Bergson's view of an individual human is more classical. I.e., one's individual objective humanity stops at one's skin. Quantum reality (our Quantonic flavor of it, enhanced by Mae-wan Ho, Brian Josephson, et al.) views humanness as Quantonic. All humans are a quanton(nonactuality,self). As such, all humans are quantumly extended throughout self's complement. And self's complement acts as mediator and vital impetus change agent for all humans. We have interrelationships we have yet to discover! We have capabilities beyond our consciousness of them! We will eventually learn how to tap Sidises' "reserve energy," which is that 'energy' of our nonactualities. We sense ours is a different transcendence from Bergson's.

Allow us to amplify that paragraph's comments. Quantons are self~other referent, recursively, recapitulatively. Quantons are fractal, quantum~fractal. This is what Doug has learned to mean, starting in late 2005 and early 2006, by quantum~gn¤sis, quantum~self~k~now~ings, quantum~self~iamai-ings. Doug - 3Apr2006. [We and Bergson, here are ever so close to what Frances A. Yates, in her Giordano Bruno, describes as ancient Essene optimistic gnosticism. Sophism is quantum individual self~reference! See SON, SrON, and SOON.]

So—were we to—in some manner—accept a quantum epiphany akin our own quanton(instinct,intelligence) and learn to use them, quantumly, together—we might elicit Quantonic transcendence? Indeed, my friends, indeed. Doug 14Oct2000.

Index

152 "We have said that the function of intelligence is to establish relations. [i.e., interrelationships, what we in Quantonics call, "Value"] Let us determine more precisely the nature of these relations. On this point we are bound to be either vague or arbitrary so long as we see in the intellect a faculty intended for pure speculation. We are then [classically] reduced to taking the general frames of the understanding for something absolute, irreducible and inexplicable [classical analyticity]. The understanding must have fallen from heaven with its form, as each of us is born with his face. This form may be defined, of course, but that is all; there is no asking why it is what it is rather than anything else. Thus, it will be said that the function of the intellect is essentially unification, [i.e., quanton(cohesion,individuicity)] that the common object of all its operations is to introduce a certain unity [i.e., cohesion] into the diversity [i.e., individuicity] of phenomena, and so forth. But, in the first place, "unification" is a vague term, less clear than "relation" [i.e., quantons AKA Quantonic interrelationships] or even "thought," [i.e., quantons on our quantum stages] and says nothing more. And, moreover, it might be asked if the function of intelligence is not to divide [i.e., individuicity, autonomy] even more than to unite [i.e. cohere, commingle, compenetrate, coinside, et al.]. Finally, if the intellect proceeds as it does because it wishes to unite, and if it seeks unification simply because it has need of unifying, the whole of our knowledge becomes relative to certain requirements of the mind [i.e., quantum stages] that probably might have been entirely different from what they are: for an intellect differently shaped, knowledge would have been different. Intellect being no longer dependent on anything, everything becomes dependent on it; and so, having placed the understanding too high, we end by putting too low the knowledge it gives us. Knowledge becomes relative [i.e., relative among local quantum comtexts, ~absolute based upon local comtextual dependence], as soon as the intellect is made a kind of absolute.—We regard the human intellect, on the contrary, as relative to the needs of action. [i.e., quanton(absolute,relative) ] Postulate action [i.e., pragma and absolute flux], and the very form of the intellect can be deduced from it. This form is therefore neither irreducible nor inexplicable. And, precisely because it is not independent, knowledge cannot be said to depend on it: knowledge ceases to be a product of the intellect and becomes, in a certain sense, part and parcel of reality. [i.e., quanton(reality,knowledge), our quantum stages]"

(Our links, brackets, bold, and color.)

Pay careful attention to our embedded brackets and their alignments to Bergson's words. Much Value here!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Index

153

"Philosophers will reply that action [i.e., absolute quantum flux, see our map of reality and our declaration of nonactuality as 'order'] takes place in an ordered world, that this order is itself thought, [reality is thinking] and that we beg the question when we explain the intellect by action, which presupposes it. They would be right if our point of view in the present chapter was to be our final one. We should then be dupes of an illusion like that of Spencer, who believed that the intellect is sufficiently explained as the impression left on us by the general characters of matter: as if the order inherent in matter were not intelligence itself! But we reserve for the next chapter the question up to what point and with what method philosophy can attempt a real genesis of the intellect at the same time as of matter. For the moment, the problem that engages our attention is of a psychological order. We are asking what is the portion of the material world to which our intellect is specially adapted. To reply to this question, there is no need to choose a system of philosophy: it is enough to take up the point of view of common sense. [hmmm… we would not have chosen those words…i.e., "common sense," rather, "myriad uncommon senses" unified and mediated via quantum absolute flux, or
quanton(quantum_fluxmyriad_senses) ]

"Let us start, then, from action, and lay down that the intellect aims, first of all, at constructing. This fabrication is exercised exclusively on inert matter, in this sense, that even if it makes use of organized material, it treats it as inert, without troubling about the life which animated it. And of inert matter itself, fabrication deals only with the solid; the rest escapes by its very fluidity. If, therefore, the tendency of the intellect is to fabricate, we may expect to find that whatever is fluid in the real will escape it in part, and whatever is life in the living will escape it altogether. Our intelligence, as it leaves the hands of nature, has for its chief object the unorganized solid. [A purely classical, SOMitic, view.]"

(Our links, graphics, brackets, bold, and color.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Index

154 "When we pass in review the intellectual functions, we see that the intellect is never quite at its ease, never entirely at home, except when it is working upon inert matter, more particularly upon solids. What is the most general property of the material world? It is extended: it presents to us objects external to other objects, and, in these objects, parts external to parts. No doubt, it is useful to us, in view of our ulterior manipulation, to regard each object as divisible into parts arbitrarily cut up, each part being again divisible as we like, and so on ad infinitum. But it is above all necessary, for our present manipulation, to regard the real object in hand, or the real elements into which we have resolved it, as provisionally final, and to treat them as so many units. To this possibility of decomposing matter as much as we please [i.e., classical analyticity], and in any way we please, we allude when we speak of the continuity of material extension; but this continuity, as we see it, is nothing else but our ability, an ability that matter allows to us to choose the mode of discontinuity we shall find in it. It is always, in fact, the mode of discontinuity once chosen that appears to us as the actually real one and that which fixes our attention, just because it rules our action. Thus discontinuity is thought for itself; it is thinkable in itself; we form an idea of it by a positive act of our mind; while the intellectual representation of continuity is negative, being, at bottom, only the refusal of our mind, before any actually given system of decomposition, to regard it as the only possible one. Of the discontinuous alone does the intellect form a clear idea."

(Our brackets, bold and color.)

 

It has taken Doug years to commence qua of "grasping what Bergson is saying here," and then putting it Ihn Quantum Lightings™.

Classical 'discontinuity' is infinitely differentiable 'state.'

Quantum ¤mniscomtinuihty issi abs¤lutæ flux quantihzati¤n ihn which wæ can vihew Planck's quanton as a læast ahcti¤n, quantum~minimum~comtext.

Doug - 23Apr2006.

Index

Return to Chapter Index

To contact Quantonics write to or call:

Doug Renselle
Quantonics, Inc.
Suite 18 #368 1950 East Greyhound Pass
Carmel, INdiana 46033-7730
USA
1-317-THOUGHT

©Quantonics, Inc., 2000-2037 Rev. 29Nov2018  PDR Created: 20Sep2000  PDR
(23Jan2001 rev - Add quantum measurement links to page 139 comments to cover Bergson's "We cannot tell..." meme.)
(23Jan2001 rev - On page 139 add link to our new Bergson's I-Cubed graphics.)
(23Jan2001 rev - Add Godel, Foulis, and Bell theorems/papers links to page 149 comments.
(23Jan2001 rev - Correct double negatives in page 149 comments.)
(23Jan2001 rev - Add our new graphic for our quantum uncertainty font to page 150 comments.
(23Jan2001 rev - Reverse our quanton's 'intelligence' and 'instinct.')
(23Jan2001 rev - Add link to 'emerscenture' definition in our Quantonic terms on page 151.)
(23Jan2001 rev - Add more bracketed comments and links to Bergson's page 152 text.
(23Jan2001 rev - Change bright red bold to darker red bold in entire topic.)
(23Jan2001 rev - Add more bracketed comments and links to Bergson's page 153 text.)
(6Aug2001 rev - Generalize p. 139 comments 'Pirsigean Problematic Memes' link.)
(6Aug2001 rev - Add p. 151 comment link to 'How to Tap Into Reserve Energy.')
(14Dec2001 rev - Add top of page frame-braker.)
(25Aug2002 rev - Add 'consensus' link to common sense above.)
(3,15Apr2006 rev - Adjust colors. Reset legacy red text. Release page constraints. Wingding arrows to GIFs. Add pages 137 & 139 comment links. Extend p. 150 text & comments. Add p. 142 anchor.)
(14Nov2007 rev - Reformat slightly.)
(26Mar2008 rev - Reformat slightly. Add red text comments based upon more recent quantum~understandings and hermeneutics of Bergson's text.)
(29Mar2008 rev - Update p. 141 comments.)
(20Dec2008 rev - Add 'Quantum Awareness' anchor. Replace some fonts with gifs.)
(24Dec2009 rev - Repair page 150 commentary mistake dating back to 2000.)
(11Nov2010 rev - Add page 139 text commentary link to text of Bohm's Quantum Theory, Chapter 8, Sections 26-28.)
(21Jul2011 rev - Add 'fractal' link to "How to do quantum~fractals.")
(8Aug2012 rev - Add p. 141 text link to Doug's 'What is Immanence?')
(5May2013 rev - Add page 138 anchor.)
(21Jul2018 rev - Add P143 anchor for referral to Radiolaria.)
(29Nov2018 rev - Add Page 139 anchor and intra page 'Bergson Extreme Import' anchor.)




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