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Which book did Henri Bergson write for his doctoral degree in 1889?
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Henri Bergson
Henri Bergson, 1928.
In 1889, Henri Bergson wrote his doctoral dissertation titled Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience (published in English as Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness).
In this work, Bergson sought to establish the concept of duration—or lived time—as a qualitative experience, contrasting it with the spatialized, clock-measured time utilized by science. By analyzing human consciousness, he argued that psychological facts are qualitatively unique and cannot be accurately quantified or numbered, ultimately using these findings to challenge the arguments for scientific determinism.1