Bergson’s theory was incredibly difficult to read, let alone understand and analyse what it was that he was getting across, so I was grateful to find this book, which contains essays discussing Bergson’s theories in a more accessible format. It was of great relief to find this;
The task of thinking real time – durée – is fundamental to Bergson. This is difficult however, because the structure of the human intellect has evolved to work in homogeneous space, a form of thinking that is incapable of representing the continuous change that is duration’s very essence. Bergson’s deduction of durée thus begins negatively. To obtain an intuition of duration, all forms of spatial symbolism must be put out of play. (p301)
This is fitting with my previous analysis – essentially we cannot, as humans, easily separate time and space in order to perceive it, our measure of time is often based on space, for example, we count days and hours not in time, but in the movement of the sun, the more it is examined the more abstract the concept of time becomes.