Chap­ter I begins by posi­tion­ing philo­soph­i­cal intu­ition not in oppo­si­tion to sci­ence, but as its extension—one that builds on sci­en­tif­ic under­stand­ing to reach deep­er truths. Rather than reject sci­en­tif­ic inquiry, Hen­ri Berg­son insists that true phi­los­o­phy depends on it while going beyond its lim­its. Sci­ence gives us clar­i­ty and struc­ture, but it can­not ful­ly express the flow of life. Where sci­ence cat­e­go­rizes and defines, philosophy—through intuition—touches the essence that lies beneath. This intu­ition doesn’t replace knowl­edge; it enrich­es it. By urg­ing thought into greater ten­sion and aware­ness, phi­los­o­phy enables a leap into real­i­ties that ana­lyt­i­cal tools can only point toward but nev­er cap­ture com­plete­ly.

The philosopher’s aim is not to pro­duce images for emo­tion­al effect, as an artist might, but to use imagery to launch the mind beyond sen­so­ry rep­re­sen­ta­tion. While both art and phi­los­o­phy spring from intu­ition, their des­ti­na­tions dif­fer. Art exter­nal­izes inner emo­tion into form, while phi­los­o­phy reach­es inward to pro­voke insight. Berg­son envi­sions intu­ition as a bridge that con­nects direct expe­ri­ence to intel­lec­tu­al real­iza­tion, expand­ing con­scious­ness rather than just describ­ing it. In doing so, phi­los­o­phy becomes a trans­for­ma­tive exer­cise, one that reshapes how real­i­ty is per­ceived. It calls not for pas­sive admi­ra­tion but for active par­tic­i­pa­tion in think­ing. Thought becomes a path not only to under­stand­ing but to inhab­it­ing truth.

This process leads to a rad­i­cal rede­f­i­n­i­tion of how real­i­ty should be approached—not as some­thing sta­t­ic to be dis­sect­ed, but as a dynam­ic force to be entered. For Berg­son, the world is not a col­lec­tion of objects, but a con­tin­u­ous stream of becom­ing. Con­cepts fall short because they freeze motion into fixed out­lines. Intu­ition, how­ev­er, allows the mind to move with life’s rhythm. In this sense, phi­los­o­phy is no longer about reach­ing defin­i­tive answers but about learn­ing to stay in tune with expe­ri­ence. It replaces the illu­sion of con­trol with a deep­er sense of engage­ment. To grasp real­i­ty through this method is to feel its pulse, not just mea­sure its sur­face.

Bergson’s thought resides at the inter­sec­tion of the poet­ic and the sci­en­tif­ic. He uses metaphors not to sim­pli­fy but to pro­voke, to awak­en the intel­lect to a broad­er field of vision. His phi­los­o­phy calls for a kind of cog­ni­tive flexibility—a will­ing­ness to move between dis­ci­plines and dis­card famil­iar cat­e­gories. Sci­en­tif­ic knowl­edge is not dis­card­ed; it is made fuller through intu­ition. Like­wise, art’s sen­so­ry insight is drawn upon, not to escape truth, but to approach it from a dif­fer­ent angle. Through this inte­gra­tion, Berg­son chal­lenges the bound­aries between emo­tion and rea­son, between know­ing and liv­ing. He sug­gests that con­scious­ness itself can­not be reduced to for­mu­la; it must be felt, nav­i­gat­ed, and lived from with­in.

Such a phi­los­o­phy asks more than understanding—it demands trans­for­ma­tion. Berg­son pro­pos­es that we break free from intel­lec­tu­al habits that con­fine us to rigid think­ing. Real­i­ty, in his view, can­not be accu­rate­ly under­stood through detached obser­va­tion alone. Instead, we must risk step­ping into the stream, let­ting go of the desire to fix mean­ing in place. This is not a rejec­tion of intel­lect but an expan­sion of its pos­si­bil­i­ties. When thought is ground­ed in intu­ition, it becomes flex­i­ble, alive, capa­ble of fol­low­ing the flu­id nature of con­scious­ness itself. Through this shift, phi­los­o­phy becomes not just an aca­d­e­m­ic pur­suit, but a prac­tice of per­ceiv­ing the world more deeply.

The result is a vision of phi­los­o­phy that feels both ancient and new. It echoes old­er tra­di­tions of wis­dom that pri­or­i­tized lived expe­ri­ence, yet it speaks direct­ly to mod­ern con­cerns about frag­men­ta­tion and dis­con­nec­tion. In a world increas­ing­ly gov­erned by mea­sure­ment and cat­e­go­riza­tion, Bergson’s approach offers a coun­ter­point root­ed in the rich­ness of direct per­cep­tion. He does not deny the use­ful­ness of sys­tems, but he warns against their ten­den­cy to replace life with abstrac­tion. To think intu­itive­ly is to keep con­tact with real­i­ty, to allow knowl­edge to remain open, incom­plete, and vibrant. This approach does not weak­en truth—it pre­serves its depth.

In the end, Berg­son presents a way of think­ing that resists sim­pli­fi­ca­tion and embraces com­plex­i­ty with­out fear. His phi­los­o­phy invites us to live with our minds ful­ly present, open to change and guid­ed by an inner sense of motion. He doesn’t offer easy con­clu­sions, but he does offer a deep­er way to begin. To read Berg­son is not to gath­er facts but to prac­tice a form of per­cep­tion that brings one clos­er to the liv­ing core of real­i­ty. It is a phi­los­o­phy of becoming—alive, unfold­ing, and nev­er ful­ly fin­ished. Through it, we are remind­ed that to under­stand life, we must live it with atten­tion, with imag­i­na­tion, and with an intel­lect that moves as freely as the world it seeks to grasp.