ABSTRACT
In his 1907 Creative Evolution, Bergson developed many important issues pertaining to his philosophy of life and philosophy of knowledge. However, public attention was mainly focused on an image introduced in the first chapter: the élan vital or vital impulse. The vital impulse is one of Bergson’s most controversial and frequently misunderstood ideas, and is often used to discredit his philosophy as a whole as an obsolete vitalism. Such attitudes have produced the common misconception that Bergson did not matter to 20th-century biologists. This chapter attempts to put to rest these misconceptions by examining the vital impulse in the context of Bergson’s philosophy and of the history of biology. It will become apparent that the biologists who were enthusiastic about Bergson’s philosophy of life were not, as some historians suggest, defenders of an already obsolete vitalist theory of life. Rather, they viewed Bergson’s vision of evolution, with the image of the vital impulse at its center, as a welcome philosophical alternative that could inform their empirical research.
