This is a 1,039-item updating and extension of Henri Bergson: A Bibliography, published by the Philosophy Documentation Center in 1974. While it concentrates on bibliographic items that have appeared in the 1970s, this bibliography contains items both by and about Bergson which were published prior to the 1970s. The present work is admittedly incomplete; but it attempts a more complete annotation than was available in the 1974 bibliography.

The following introduction offers a broad survey of the history of quantum physics. It then outlines the position of each contributor in this Special Focus Section concerning the collapse of the quantum wave function and defines three important terms (Hilbert space, Schrödinger’s cat, and decoherence) used in discussing this topic.

Henri Bergson was born in Paris on October 18, 1859, the son of a Polish father (Varsovie Michael Bergson) and an English mother (Katherine Levinson Bergson). Both Michael and Katherine Bergson were Jewish, and they shared a Hasidic background. Though Henri Bergson did not consider himself Jewish in any orthodox sense, he conceded that the awareness of belonging to an unfairly treated minority was to have a lasting influence on his life. While his father was a pianist – a popularizer (...) of Chopin – and composer, his mother was deeply interested in the arts, especially the contemporary literary world. (shrink)

The main contributor to this volume is David Louis Miller of the University of Texas at Austin. Both a student of Mead's and an editor and defender of his thought, Miller attempts in his essay and subsequent responses to demonstrate both the overall coherence of Mead's philosophy and the extent to which that philosophy makes room for the concept of individual creativity. Miller thus corrects many false or otherwise superficial interpretations of Mead's social psychology, and of, by implication, contemporary symbolic (...) interactionism. (shrink)

John Mullarkey. Bergson and Philosophy (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999), 206 pp. ISBN 0 7486 0957 1 (paperback), US$20; Keith Ansell Pearson, Philosophy and the Adventure of the Virtual : Bergson and the Time of Life (London: Routledge, 2002), 246 pp. ISBN 0 415 23727 0 (cloth), US$90, 0 415 23728 9 (paperback), US$27.95; Leonard Lawlor, The Challenge of Bergson: Phenomenology, Ontology, Ethics (New York: Continuum, 2003), 153 pp. ISBN 0 8264 6802 0 (cloth), US$73.50, 0 8264 6803 9 (paperback), (...) US$24.95; John Mullarkey, ed., The New Bergson [Angelaki Humanities] (New York: Manchester University Press, 1999), 235 pp. ISBN 0 7190 5380 3 (cloth), US$69.95; 0 7190 5553 9 (paperback), US$29.95; John Mullarkey and Keith Ansell Pearson, eds., Bergson: Key Writings [Athlone Contemporary European Thinkers], trans. Melissa McMahon (New York: Continuum, 2002), 402 pp. ISBN 0 8264 5728 2 (cloth), US$99.95, 0 8264 5729 0 (paperback), US$33.95. (shrink)

Theories of perception and of memory are closely allied. The binding problem (which considers how bits of perception are reassembled by the brain) leads to neurophysiological subjectivism. This could be outflanked by arguing with Bergson that perceiving consciousness is out in the world. Thus the brain would bind only behavioral “maps.” In turn, consciousness would retain our personal pasts. Such personal (episodic) memories both help us to recognize present objects and to perform creative acts. Memory, although retentive, is also creative. (...) This is important in rethinking biological and evolutionary memory. (shrink)

Alfred Schutz, an Austrian-American philosopher, is best known for his application of phenomenological methods to the problems of sociology. His insistence that sociology must deal with the assumptions involved in ordinary social relations is found particularly in his Der Sinnhafte Aufbau der sozialen Welt, an important source of contemporary ethnomethodology.

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