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Audiobook edition · 15 h 55 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What if life is neither a machine nor a finished plan, but something that keeps creating?
In Creative Evolution, Henri Bergson asks how life comes to take so many forms. He accepts evolution but challenges two ways of explaining it: blind causes pushing a machine, and a goal fixed in advance. For him, both miss what matters most about time—the possibility that something truly new can happen.
Bergson begins with the difference between time you measure and time you live. Waiting for sugar to melt opens a path toward his central idea: the vital impetus, a current of creative energy. Along the way, a shellfish’s eye, a hunting wasp and a film strip bring his questions about life and the mind into focus.
What you’ll discover
- Time you cannot hurry Consider why waiting for sugar to melt reveals something a clock cannot capture.
- Life beyond the machine Follow Bergson’s challenge to explanations that leave no room for genuine creation.
- The vital impetus Explore his idea of a creative current passing from one generation to the next.
- Instinct beside intelligence Meet ants, bees and wasps as Bergson traces distinct ways of knowing.
- Another way to understand Discover why Bergson turns to intuition where he sees the limits of intellect.
Who will love it
This book suits readers who like big questions about time, freedom, life and the mind. It rewards anyone curious about evolution beyond the textbook.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- Waiting reveals a world still growing
- The past makes each moment new
- Neither machines nor plans explain becoming
- Similar eyes suggest a shared impetus
- Life divides as its impulse grows
- Intuition enters life from within
- Matter is creation coming unwound
- Snapshots cannot recover living movement
- Change comes before the things
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Creative Evolution
by Henri Bergson · 1907
A sugar cube dissolving in a glass of water becomes proof that time is real and creative.
Challenging5–10 hours to read20 languages
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“Mundane—yes, a philosophy for the world and not for philosophers, just as chemistry ought to be not for chemists alone.”
In short
Why does a lump of sugar make you wait? Henri Bergson starts there.
Creative Evolution at a glance
- Reading time
- About 7 h 50 min6 h 15 min fast, 9 h 20 min slow
- Length
- 111,800 words
- Library level
- Challenging long sentences, a rich vocabulary
- First published
- 1907by Henri Bergson
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). How long the classics take to read · Updated
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
To exist is to change and create yourself
Bergson begins with the one existence we know from inside, our own. We speak of mental states as solid blocks, a joy here, a worry there. Look closely and no feeling stays the same. Every state is made of ongoing change.
Our inner life is like a snowball that grows as it rolls, or a symphony whose drumbeats stand out against a flowing background. We string our states on an imagined self like beads on a thread, but the thread is only a symbol. No experience can be lived twice, since the second time you carry the first inside you.
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Details
- First published
- 1907
- Language
- English
- Reading time
- 10 h 20 min
- Level
- Challenging
Cite this edition
Bergson, Henri. Creative Evolution. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/creative-evolution.
Bergson, H. (2026). Creative evolution. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/creative-evolution (Original work published 1907)
Bergson, Henri. Creative Evolution. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/creative-evolution.
@book{bergson2026creative,
author = {Bergson, Henri},
title = {Creative Evolution},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/creative-evolution},
note = {First published 1907}
}
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What is Creative Evolution about?
It is a philosophical account of evolution as a continuous, creative process driven by one vital impulse. Bergson argues against both blind mechanism and fixed purpose, and builds a theory of time, life, intellect and intuition.
What does Bergson mean by duration?
Duration is time as we live it, a flowing continuity in which the past carries into the present and each moment adds something new. He contrasts it with clock time, which only counts points and leaves out the flow.
What is the élan vital in Creative Evolution?
It is the original impetus of life, passing from germ to germ and dividing into many lines of evolution. Bergson uses it to explain why life keeps inventing new, unforeseeable forms and complex organs.
The author
Henri Bergson
1859–1941 · French philosopher
Henri Bergson was a French philosopher and Nobel laureate whose ideas about time, intuition, and creativity made him one of the most influential thinkers of his day. Laughter, his celebrated essay on comedy, asks why we laugh and what humor reveals about being human.
“The universe lasts.”
More by Henri Bergson
See all their booksMore like this
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