Henri Bergson (1859-1941) distinguished between intellect and intuition. Intellect, he proposed, provides us with ways to logically map the world in order for us to survive. Intuition allows us to perceive the continuous flux of time and space that constitutes reality.
Bergson’s philosophy was criticized for its lack of logical analysis. Others argued that he worked more like an artist, working on the assumption that art does not offer logical argument.
According to Macgee, Bergson’s detractors said that although he
…made his ideas attractive with vivid analogies and poetic metaphors he did not support them with much in the way of rational argument. He left them to commend themselves to the reader’s intuitions. Furthermore, his critics complained, his ideas did not stand up very well to logical analysis. His defenders replied by saying that he possessed all of these qualities in common with the best creative writers, and that this was because he was offering insights rather than logical arguments.
Bryan Magee, The story of thought, 1998; 127-8
Our conception of our surroundings is…highly selective, always pragmatic, and always self-serving…Only if this is realized can the true nature of human knowledge be understood. (214)
a world we can handle, and use, a world broken u into manageable untis, separate objects in marked-off measures of space, and also marked-off measures of time. This is the world of everyday affairs, business, common sense, and also of science…a product of of our way of dealing with the world , in exactly the same sort of way, and for the same sort of reasons, as a map-maker will represent a living landscape in terms of a square-off geometrical grid. (215)
But does such a map show us reality?
Reality, Bergson believed, is a continuum of time and space.