As Canales notes... Henri Piéron suggested there that both Einstein and Bergson's perspectives could in fact be experimentally demonstrated, in the laboratory (Canales 2015, 244-246; Anon 1922, 112-113). On the one hand, Einstein's physical time was revealed in the operation of the experimental psychologists' instruments. On the other, Bergson's 'duration' (the name he gave to his own conception of time) could be identified with an experimentally demonstrable temporal experience – was in fact a psychological phenomenon entirely separate from physical time, just as Einstein had suggested.

In response to these challenges, Bergson began to re-consider the relation between his philosophy and the sciences. Though he sought to remain open to the conclusions of experimental endeavour, his approach to science as a whole became more circumspect. Creative Evolution had confidently asserted the harmony of its appeal to an introspectively-derived 'duration' with emerging biological and psychological research. Duration and Simultaneity (1922) would in contrast cast philosophy and physical science as 'unlike disciplines... meant to implement each other' (Bergson [1922] 1999, xxvii; Canales 2015, 14).'