The Essential Mary Midgley Book

A difficult book. I'm glad I read it, but much of it was forced reading. His ideas about time and the value of immediate experience are worthwhile, though. It is a useful counterpoint to a scientific skepticism that sees truth only in what can be measured and quantified. He sees intuition as a type of seeing from within that can lead one to a kind of truth that cannot be had by mere external observation.

Bergson gives us a creative universe that is not predetermined as a result of merely mechanistic functions. As a part of that universe, we have the chance to create. A new burst of creativity comes along when a person, in his own time and place, does something completely new and different, like Shakespeare creating Hamlet. It was not inevitable that Hamlet be written. It required a Shakespeare. Truth and reality is in a constant state of becoming that is far more subject to creative forces than it is to mechanistic ones.

I frankly don't understand his argument about duration. He seems to be saying each moment of time stands on its own, not having duration, and therefore never connecting with the next moment or event in an influential way. Therefore, we have the free will to point the next moment in any direction we want -- or something vaguely like that.

There may just be too much distance between his brilliant mind and my average one, but I still think he could do a better job of explaining his arguments in an understandable and less repetitive way. I find myself agreeing with the conclusions, but with only the foggiest notion of how he got there.