élan vital

Compiled with AI assistance and selectively reviewed. Please consult the cited passages; the books remain the authoritative source. About this companion

Editorial synthesis · provisional

Definition

Élan vital is Bergson’s vital impulse in Creative Evolution, invoked as an account of life’s capacity to produce unforeseen forms rather than unfold a completed plan. RB1 retains its philosophical importance while explicitly identifying it as controversial and outside mainstream science. The corpus’s own organizational account of emergence does not require an added vital force, and PB’s comparison with conatus remains an analogy in an art essay.

Explanation

The direct exposition places Bergson beside Whitehead while preserving their different concepts. Bergson’s emphasis on creative time challenges the picture of possibilities already completed before becoming occurs. The native Creative Evolution references retain the historical attribution; the present assessment does not convert that philosophical argument into a newly confirmed biological mechanism.

PB’s earlier animalizing-imagination essay calls Spinoza’s conatus akin to élan vital while describing conatus as value-neutral. That local resemblance should not erase differences between perseverance, creativity and their separate philosophical settings. AB’s native notes likewise place Bergson within a wider lineage without making him the sole explanation of biological novelty.

The later emergence argument locates novelty in physically instantiated organization, not a further substance or energetic agent. This explicit limit governs the synthesis: retaining the term for Bergson’s position is compatible with declining vitalism as the author’s mechanism of form-taking. The proposed entry preserves the historical concept and the book-specific contrast.

Scope and attribution

Retain attribution and the explicit scientific and organizational qualifications.

AB — The Actual Book

Bergson remains one antecedent in a wider process lineage.

Occurrence locators: Notes: 239.

PB — The Possible Book

The conatus comparison belongs to the earlier art-essay register.

Occurrence locators: Reproduced historical essay: 199.

RB1 — The Real Book, Volume I: The Possible Is Real

Bergson’s impulse is attributed and explicitly distinguished from mainstream science and an added vital force.

Occurrence locators: 159.

Background used in the editorial explanation

Named theories and mechanisms are distinguished from neighboring background, homonyms and the author’s own synthesis. Reproduced AI passages retain their separate voice.