Bergson distinguishes lived duration from the spatialised model of time imposed by measurement. Duration is qualitative, heterogeneous and internally continuous; it cannot be divided into identical units without losing the movement that gives experience its form. The work’s theoretical contribution is to show that numerical time is not a neutral representation of consciousness but a conceptual construction produced by projecting spatial order onto becoming. Bergson’s method relies on philosophical introspection, yet its operation is rigorously critical: it identifies where language, mathematics and social convention replace process with static representation. The argument creates an enduring bridge to phenomenology, process philosophy, cinema theory and contemporary debates on temporality. It also reveals a political problem: institutions govern by converting duration into schedules, intervals and measurable outputs. Against this abstraction, Bergson defends a mode of thought able to remain with change before it is arrested into discrete states, categories or administrative sequences.
