CONTRIBUTI / 6 / Giulio Piatti /
When Henri Bergson, in Duration and simultaneity, intends to show that durée constitutes the ‘pattern’ of reality, he refers to Alfred North Whitehead’s «beautiful» book on the philosophy of nature (The Concept of Nature). Whitehead, in return, paid his respect multiple times to bergsonian philosophy, from which he had been deeply influenced. The relationship between Bergson and Whitehead is not, however, that of a merely mutual admiration, but it is based on a common naturalistic view, intent in building a consistent cosmology of beings. Aim of my presentation is – following some pioneering remarks made by Jean Wahl – to study the reflections on perception of Bergson and Whitehead: both in the first chapter of Matter and Memory and in the third part of Process and Reality, the two extend perceptivity from the domain of subject to reality in itself, building an original «cosmo-aesthetics» which reunites immediate experience, metaphysics and scientific thought.
