Bergson, Counting, Evolution

At the heart of Bergson's critique of the Intellectualization of lived experience is the quantification of it, which originates in Counting. For, insofar as the latter process entails that its objects share a common characteristic, it must homogenize the contents of Duration. However, he also asserts that Duration continually "accumulates: it goes on increasing." Hence, he does recognize a fundamental quantitative characteristic of Duration, i. e. the one that is implicit in the notion of 'increase'. Furthermore, this continual accumulation is one expression of what has previously here been termed the 'Ordinality' of Duration. More generally, Bergson might have recognized that continued accumulation is a fundamental pattern of any 'evolutionary' process, i. e. of the production of increasingly complex entities. However, such possible recognition is obscured by his vacillation between that concept of Evolution, and one in which it is conceived as the ongoing Spiritualization of Nature, which, while arguably progressive, is not a cumulative process.