Evolution Creatrice: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

Evolution Creatrice, credited to Henri Bergson, is available as a LibriVox volunteer audiobook. This guide identifies the recording, its source summary and its audio tracks.

About the work

The LibriVox catalogue summary, preserved with the recording, reads:

LibriVox recording of Evolution Creatrice by Henri Bergson. (Translated by Arthur Mitchell.) Read in English by Peter Tucker Creative Evolution (French: L'Évolution créatrice) is a 1907 book by French philosopher Henri Bergson. Its English translation appeared in 1911. The book provides an alternate explanation for Darwin's mechanism of evolution, suggesting that evolution is motivated by an élan vital, a "vital impetus" that can also be understood as humanity's natural creative impulse. The book was very popular in the early decades of the twentieth century, before the Neodarwinian synthesis was developed. The book also develops concepts of time (offered in Bergson's earlier work) which significantly influenced modernist writers and thinkers such as Marcel Proust. For example, Bergson's term "duration" refers to a more individual, subjective experience of time, as opposed to mathematical, objectively measurable "clock time." In Creative Evolution, Bergson suggests that the experience of time as "duration" can best be understood through creative intuition, not through intellect. - Summary by Wikipedia

Recording facts

• Recording title: Evolution Creatrice
• Author credits: Henri Bergson
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 22
• Listed recording duration: 11:17:21

Catalogue topics

• time
• evolution
• intuition
• elan vital
• duration

Track guide

1. 00 - Translator's note and author's introduction — 13:33
2. 01 - Chapter 1, Part 1 — 42:09
3. 02 - Chapter 1, Part 2 — 1:05:41
4. 03 - Chapter 1, Part 3 — 29:29
5. 04 - Chapter 1, Part 4 — 36:54
6. 05 - Chapter 2, Part 1 — 14:25
7. 06 - Chapter 2, Part 2 — 51:42
8. 07 - Chapter 2, Part 3 — 31:15
9. 08 - Chapter 2, Part 4 — 25:13
10. 09 - Chapter 2, Part 5 — 19:31
11. 10 - Chapter 2, Part 6 — 16:57
12. 11 - Chapter 3, Part 1 — 24:43
13. 12 - Chapter 3, Part 2 — 36:11
14. 13 - Chapter 3, Part 3 — 31:53
15. 14 - Chapter 3, Part 4 — 1:00:52
16. 15 - Chapter 4, Part 1 — 47:09
17. 16 - Chapter 4, Part 2 — 10:25
18. 17 - Chapter 4, Part 3 — 44:36
19. 18 - Chapter 4, Part 4 — 30:00
20. 19 - Chapter 4, Part 5 — 19:16
21. 20 - Chapter 4, Part 6 — 13:07
22. 21 - Chapter 4, Part 7 — 12:20

Listen to this recording

Open the complete recording and player on Internet Archive. The player includes the full track list and available download formats.

Source and rights

This is a record from LibriVox's official Internet Archive collection, with a public-domain licence recorded in its metadata. LibriVox's policy includes its catalogue summaries as well as its recordings. Its public-domain assessment follows United States law; copyright status can differ elsewhere. The summary and track facts are reproduced and reformatted from that record. Dates attached to the archive upload are not treated as original book publication dates.