Gaston Bachelard | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | (1884-06-27)27 June 1884 Bar-sur-Aube, France |
| Died | 16 October 1962(1962-10-16) (aged 78) Paris, France |
| Education | |
| Education | University of Paris (B.A., 1920;[1]Dr. ès L., 1927) |
| Doctoral advisor | Abel Rey Léon Brunschvicg |
| Philosophical work | |
| Era | 20th-century philosophy |
| Region | Western philosophy |
| School | Continental philosophy[3] French historical epistemology[4] |
| Institutions | University of Dijon[2] University of Paris |
| Main interests | Historical epistemology constructivist epistemology,history and philosophy of science,philosophy of art,phenomenology,psychoanalysis,literary theory,education |
| Notable ideas | Epistemological break, the poetics of space, rationalmaterialism,[5]technoscience (techno-science)[6][7] |
| Signature | |
 | |
Gaston Louis Pierre Bachelard (/bæʃəˈlɑːr/;French:[baʃlaʁ]; 27 June 1884 – 16 October 1962) was a Frenchphilosopher.[8] He made contributions in the fields ofpoetics and thephilosophy of science. To the latter, he introduced the concepts ofepistemological obstacle andepistemological break (obstacle épistémologique andrupture épistémologique). He influenced many subsequent French philosophers, among themMichel Foucault,Louis Althusser,Dominique Lecourt andJacques Derrida, as well as the sociologistsPierre Bourdieu andBruno Latour.
For Bachelard, thescientific object should be constructed and therefore different from thepositivist sciences; in other words,information is in continuous construction.Empiricism andrationalism are not regarded asdualism or opposition but complementary, therefore studies ofa priori anda posteriori, or in other wordsreason anddialectic, are part ofscientific research.[9]
Bachelard was born inBar-sur-Aube, France in 1884.
He was apostal clerk in Bar-sur-Aube, and then studiedphysics andchemistry before finally becoming interested inphilosophy. To obtain his doctorate (doctorat ès lettres) in 1927, he wrote two theses: the main one,Essai sur la connaissance approchée, under the direction ofAbel Rey, and the complementary one,Étude sur l'évolution d'un problème de physique: la propagation thermique dans les solides, supervised byLéon Brunschvicg.
He first taught from 1902 to 1903 at the college ofSézanne, but turned away from teaching to consider a career intelegraphy. Literary by training, he took the technological path before moving towards science andmathematics. In particular, he was fascinated by the great discoveries of the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century (radioactivity,quantum andwave mechanics,relativity,electromagnetism andwireless telegraphy).[10]
Discharged in March 1919 and unemployed, Bachelard searched and obtained a job in October as a professor ofphysics andchemistry at the college ofBar-sur-Aube.
At the age of thirty-six he began a completely unexpected philosophical career. Starting decisively in 1922, he acquired the title ofDoctor of Letters at theSorbonne in 1927. His theses, supported byAbel Rey andLéon Brunschvicg, were published.[11] He became alecturer at the Faculty of Letters ofDijon from October 1927, but remained at the college of Bar-sur-Aube until 1930. He even participated in the municipal elections of 1929 to defend the project of a college for all.[12] He nevertheless accepted a professorship at theUniversity of Burgundy when his daughter Suzanne entered the second degree.
From 1930 to 1940 he was a professor at theUniversity of Dijon and then was appointed chair in thehistory andphilosophy of science at theUniversity of Paris. On 25 August 1937 he was made a Knight of theLegion of Honor. He became a professor at the Sorbonne from 1940 to 1954. He held the chair of the history and philosophy of science, where he succeeded Abel Rey, director of the Institute of History andPhilosophy of Science and Technology (IHST), which in 1992 became IHPST.[13][14]When he was appointed to theSorbonne as a university professor and director of the Institute for the History of Science and Technology in 1940, he accompanied his daughter in her higher educations.[15]
In 1958, he became a member of theRoyal Academy of Science, Letters and Fine Arts of Belgium.[16]
Bachelard married Jeanne Rossi, a schoolteacher, in 1914. She was transferred toVoigny. His daughter Suzanne was born on 18 October. He travelled the six kilometers to Bar-sur-Aube on foot every day, was provided a very useful education, and enrolled for aphilosophy degree. Jeanne died in June 1920, and Bachelard raised his daughter alone.[17] Despite the sex role expectations at the time, Bachelard showed great concern in supporting his daughter's development into an academic career.[18] Counter to stereotypes, he wanted to make his daughter, Suzanne, a scholar. Suzanne became amathematician and philosopher involved inphenomenological andepistemological research of high standing.[19]
In 1962, he died inParis.
Bachelard's studies of the history and philosophy of science in such works asLe nouvel esprit scientifique ("The New Scientific Spirit", 1934) andLa formation de l'esprit scientifique ("The Formation of the Scientific Mind", 1938) were based on his vision of historicalepistemology as a kind ofpsychoanalysis of the scientific mind.
In theEnglish-speaking world, the connection Bachelard made betweenpsychology and the history of science has been little understood.[citation needed] Bachelard demonstrated how the progress of science could be blocked by certain types of mental patterns, creating the concept ofobstacle épistémologique ("epistemological obstacle"). One task of epistemology is to make clear the mental patterns at use in science, in order to help scientists overcome the obstacles to knowledge. Another goal is to “give back to human reason its function of agitation and aggressiveness” as Bachelard put it in ‘L'engagement rationaliste’ (1972).[20]
Bachelard was critical ofAuguste Comte'spositivism, which considered science as a continualprogress. To Bachelard, scientific developments such as Einstein'stheory of relativity demonstrated the discontinuous nature of thehistory of sciences. Thus models that framed scientific development as continuous, such as that of Comte andÉmile Meyerson, seemed simplistic and erroneous to Bachelard.
Through his concept of "epistemological break", Bachelard underlined the discontinuity at work in the history of sciences. However the term "epistemological break" itself is almost never used by Bachelard but became famous throughLouis Althusser.
He showed that new theories integrated old theories in newparadigms, changing the sense of concepts (for instance, the concept ofmass, used byNewton andEinstein in two different senses). Thus,non-Euclidean geometry did not contradictEuclidean geometry, but integrated it into a larger framework.
Bachelard never saw how seemingly irrational theories often simply represented a drastic shift in scientific perspective. For instance, he never claimed that thetheory of probabilities was just another way of complexifying reality through a deepening of rationality (even though critics likeLord Kelvin found this theory irrational).[21]
One of his main theses inThe New Scientific Mind was that modern sciences had replaced the classicalontology of thesubstance with an "ontology of relations", which could be assimilated to something like aprocess philosophy. For instance, the physical concepts of matter and rays correspond, according to him, to the metaphysical concepts of the thing and of movement; but whereas classical philosophy considered both as distinct, and the thing asontologically real, modern science can not distinguish matter from rays. It is thus impossible to examine an immobile thing, which was precisely the condition for knowledge according to the classicaltheory of knowledge (Becoming being impossible to be known, in accordance withAristotle andPlato'stheories of knowledge).
In non-Cartesian epistemology, there is no "simple substance" as inCartesianism, but only complex objects built by theories and experiments and continuously improved (VI, 4).Intuition is therefore not primitive, but built (VI, 2). These themes led Bachelard to support a sort ofconstructivist epistemology.
Bachelard was arationalist in theCartesian sense, although he recommended his "non-Cartesian epistemology" as a replacement for the more standard Cartesian epistemology.[22] He compared "scientific knowledge" to ordinary knowledge in the way we deal with it, and saw error as only illusion: "Scientifically, one thinks truth as the historical rectification of a persistent error, and experiments as correctives for an initial, common illusion (illusion première)."[23]
The role ofepistemology is to show the history of the (scientific) production ofconcepts. Those concepts are not just theoretical propositions: they are simultaneously abstract andconcrete, pervading technical andpedagogical activity. This explains why "The electric bulb is an object of scientific thought… an example of an abstract-concrete object."[24] To understand the way it works, one has to take the detour of scientific knowledge. Epistemology is thus not a general philosophy that aims at justifying scientific reasoning. Instead, it produces regionalhistories of science.
In addition to epistemology, Bachelard's work deals with many other topics, including poetry, dreams,psychoanalysis, and theimagination.The Psychoanalysis of Fire (1938) andThe Poetics of Space (1958) are among the most popular of his works:Jean-Paul Sartre cites the former and Bachelard'sWater and Dreams in hisBeing and Nothingness (1943), and the latter had a wide reception inarchitectural theory circles, and continues to be influential in literary theory and creative writing. In philosophy, this nocturnal side of his work is developed by his studentGilbert Durand.
His works include:
Though most of Bachelard's major works on poetics have been translated into English, only about half of his works on the philosophy of science have been translated.
Bachelard influenced many subsequent French philosophers, among themMichel Foucault,Louis Althusser,Dominique Lecourt andJacques Derrida, as well as the sociologistsPierre Bourdieu andBruno Latour.[14]
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Academics | |
| Artists | |
| People | |
| Other | |
