Bergson held the brain only routes information and never creates it

Evidence

In Matter and Memory, Henri Bergson develops a famous analogy between the brain and a central telephone exchange. For Bergson, the role of the brain is limited to that of centralizing information. The brain does not produce representations; it contents itself with collecting them, sending them up the line, bringing them down the line, and circulating them: ”in our opinion … the brain is no more than a kind of central telephonic exchange: its office is to allow communication or to delay it. It adds nothing to what it receives … but it really constitutes a center.” Bergson seeks to determine the role the brain plays in action: like a central telephone exchange, it puts things in relation but does not intervene in the relation itself. In this way, having no power either to create or to improvise, it does nothing beyond passing on messages. — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 119

Categorization

• DEFINE: Establishes the pre-plasticity conception of the brain as a passive router — the exact opposite of the plasticity that gives form, which the reader is distinguishing from mere flexibility.
• SHARE: A reader tracking brain metaphors in intellectual history would enjoy that even Bergson, the great critic of mechanism, still borrowed the telephone-exchange trope — the image was that pervasive.