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Durée Complexe

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Book cover Bergson, Complexity and Creative Emergence

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Abstract

This chapter makes a first attempt to map the ideas of Bergson with those of complexity theory — seeking, if you will, a kind of durée complexe. Complexity theory is multiple and being explored in many different disciplines.1 The complex adaptive systems in environmental biology, also known as ecological complexity, will be our focus; but some of the ideas we will need to explore to understand them apply equally well in other fields, too. It will require starting with some background in physics and thermodynamics to grasp the concepts I wish to deal with, in relation to the ideas on life, matter and consciousness that Bergson puts forward in the latter part of his Creative Evolution. The chapter therefore falls into two parts: on durée, and on complexe.

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Notes

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Kreps, D. (2015). Durée Complexe. In: Bergson, Complexity and Creative Emergence. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137412201_5

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