In this new study, Cristina Chimisso explores the work of the French Philosopher of Science, Gaston Bachelard by situating it within French cultural life of the first half of the century. The book is introduced by a study - based on an analysis of portraits and literary representations - of how Bachelard's admirers transformed him into the mythical image of the Philosopher, the Patriarch and the 'Teacher of Happiness'. Such a projected image is contrasted with Bachelard's own conception of (...) philosophy and his personal pedagogical and moral ideas. This pedagogical orientation is a major feature of Bachelard's texts, and one which deepens our understanding of the main philosophical arguments. The primary thesis of the book is based on the examination of the French educational system of the time and of French philosophy taught in schools and conceived by contemporary philosophers. This approach also helps to explain Bachelard's reception of psychoanalysis and his mastery of modern literature. _Gaston Bachelard: Critic of Science and the Imagination_ thus allows for a new reading of Bachelard's body of work, whilst at the same time providing an insight into twentieth century French culture. (shrink)

Gaston Bachelard (1884-1962) was a seminal figure in contemporary French philosophy. Together with Michel Foucault, Georges Canguilhem and Jean Cavailles, he shaped the 'French epistemological' school of philosophy of science. In France, Bachelard is a towering presence; in the English-speaking world, he is little known. Now, Zbigniew Kotowicz gives us the first English language, in-depth presentation of the entire spectrum of Bachelard's work: epistemology, poetic imagination and temporality. And he explores an old philosophical tradition that Bachelard's thought opens up (...) - atomism - a doctrine that has been almost forgotten and is much misunderstood ". (shrink)

L'oeuvre de Gaston Bachelard (1884-1962) explore les deux versants de la culture moderne : la connaissance scientifique dans ses formes les plus innovantes et l'expérience poétique, de la rêverie spontanée aux grandes créations de la littérature dans ses expressions les plus immémoriales. Au-delà de ces rapports entre science et poésie, entre théorème et poème, ne pourrait-on pas trouver aussi, en filigrane, les lignes profondes d'une philosophie pratique, d'un humanisme et d'une sagesse? Les ouvrages de Bachelard livrent une mine de (...) positions et propositions, sous forme d'innombrables éclairs et éclairages sur l'être humain, toujours en devenir entre l'être et le devoir-être, entre l'être et le néant. Mais en dégageant une éthique de la connaissance et une autre de la création poétique, Bachelard dévoile une double dimension éthique, l'une plutôt marquée par la tradition chrétienne et kantienne, l'autre plutôt par un eudémonisme aristotélicien. Faut-il voir dans ce double discours éthique une contradiction, une incohérence, une négligence? Ou ne pourrait-on pas, de manière inattendue, conclure que pour Bachelard l'homme est double jusque dans sa vie morale? Contre l'éthique unidimensionnelle classique, Bachelard plaiderait donc pour une éthique plurielle. Jamais un philosophe n'avait osé s'aventurer dans pareille direction, et nous n'avons pas fini de méditer cette double racine morale de l'homme, et les conséquences théoriques et pratiques de cette proposition singulière. (shrink)

This special issue aims to redress the balance and to open up Gaston Bachelard's work beyond a small in-crowd of experts and aficionado’s in France. It aims to stimulate the discovery of new and understudied aspects of Bachelard’s work, including aspects of the intellectual milieu he was working in. Fortunately, for this purpose we were able to rely both on renowned Bachelard specialists, such as Hans-Jörg Rheinberg-er, Cristina Chimisso and Dominique Lecourt, as well as on a number of younger (...) scholars who are discovering their work in a different intellectual context. At the same time we also want to reassess the value of this oeuvre, which also entails examining the reasons and causes of the relative neglect of Bachelard’s work in recent times. Has it exhausted its possibilities? Does it have intrinsic limitations that have contributed to the eclipse, as some influential, mainly French, philoso-phers have more or less explicitly suggested? (shrink)

Comment Bachelard, fils d'un cordonnier, professeur de physique et chimie, a-t-il pu devenir cet humaniste aussi savant que philosophe, aussi penseur que poète? Il n'a pas emprunté les chemins balisés, ceux des élites universitaires et culturelles. Il a contrarié les pronostics et les conventions. Il s'est adjugé contre vents et marées le droit de penser par lui-même en bousculant les frontières des savoirs et de la culture et en dérangeant les us et coutumes établis. "Un ouvrage aussi lumineux que la (...) destinée et l'oeuvre de Gaston Bachelard. Au plus près de sa vie et de sa pensée". (Philippe Meirieu). (shrink)

Un large public apprécie en Gaston Bachelard le philosophe de la rêverie poétique et l'épistémologue. Ses oeuvres consacrées à la question du temps sont moins connues. Cet ouvrage se propose de montrer en quoi les données actuelles des neurosciences apportent un éclairage nouveau à cette réflexion. Nombre d'hypothèses formulées en neurobiologie et en neuroesthétique renforce la thèse bachelardienne de la discontinuité du temps vécu et la conception qu'avait le philosophe de "l'instant poétique".

Gaston Bachelard occupies a unique position in the history of European thinking. As a philosopher of science, he developed a profound interest in genres of the imagination, notably poetry and novels. While emphatically acknowledging the strength, precision and reliability of scientific knowledge compared to every-day experience, he saw literary phantasies as important supplementary sources of insight. Although he significantly influenced authors such as Lacan, Althusser, Foucault and others, while some of his key concepts are still widely used, his oeuvre (...) tends to be overlooked. And yet, as I will argue, Bachelard’s extended series of books opens up an intriguing perspective on contemporary science. First, I will point to a remarkable duality that runs through Bachelard’s oeuvre. His philosophy of science consists of two sub-oeuvres: a psychoanalysis of technoscience, complemented by a poetics of elementary imagination. I will point out how these two branches deal with complementary themes: technoscientific artefacts and literary fictions, two realms of human experience separated by an epistemological rupture. Whereas Bachelard’s work initially entails a panegyric in praise of scientific practice, he becomes increasingly intrigued by the imaginary and its basic images, such as the Mother Earth archetype. (shrink)

The article deals with the phenomenon of French historical epistemology and Gaston Bachelard's role in its theoretical and institutional establishment. It analyses the place of history of sciences in French historical epistemology, which was considered in France as epistemology perse from the beginning of XX century. The article accompanies first Russian translation of Bachelard's lecture "Topicality of the History of Science" and argues that this text represents Bachelardian program for reformation of scientific history as an academic discipline. The importance (...) of this text for French epistemological tradition bases on, firstly, the analysis of methodology of the historical investigation, which subject is a scientific discipline, and secondly, historian's and epistemologist's theoretical approaches. (shrink)

The man and his times -- Early epistemology -- The new scientific mind -- Fragmentation and the temptation of ontology -- Fire, water, and the material imagination -- Air, earth, and the dynamic imagination -- A phenomenology of the creative imagination.

In an elegant translation, Mary McAllester Jones brings to English-speaking readers the writings of a singular French philosopher of science whose rich intellectual legacy is too little known. Gaston Bachelard, who died in 1962, left us twelve works on the philosophy of science, nine on the poetic imagination, and two on time and consciousness, written in an image-laden style that rejected traditional academic discourse in favor of a subversive, allusive, highly metaphorical way of thinking and writing. Gaston Bachelard, (...) Subversive Humanist gives us a generous introduction to Bachelard's brilliant and idiosyncratic writings about the relation of science, poetry, and human consciousness. The extracts are framed in succinct critical essays that explicate the development of his ideas and clarify his relation to the contemporary French intellectual revolution more commonly associated with Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida. The matrix of Bachelard's thought is twentieth-century science, the "new scientific mind" that he dates from 1905 and Einstein's special theory of relativity. Like the discovery of America five hundred years before, the discoveries of mathematics and physics today have undermined our familiar epistemologies. Modern science has forced us to revise our conception of the rational subject and of the relation between reason and reality, subject and object. A "psychic revolution" has accompanied this revolution in reason. If we try to grasp the dialectics of matter and energy in physics, or the dualism of waves and particles, we shall learn to maintain difference and handle complexity; we are shaken out of the reductive, identity-ridden habits of ordinary life and thought. As a writer of science, Bachelard deliberately aimed to rid us of the preconceptions that blind us to the facts, to science as it is now. The same wariness with regard to theory is present in his approach to poetry. For Bachelard, mathematical equation and poetic image alike break with everyday experience. Reading poetic images brings us "the experience of openness, of newness", says Bachelard. The reader "is called upon to continue the writer's images, he is aware of being in a state of open imagination." There is little place for abstract critical theory in Bachelard's view of Poetry. _Gaston Bachelard, Subversive Humanist_ will interest literary scholars, philosophers, and intellectual historians. (shrink)

: The paper aims at an analysis of the oeuvre of the French historian of science and epistemologist Gaston Bachelard (1884–1962). Bachelard was the founder of a tradition of French thinking about science that extended from Jean Cavaillès over Georges Canguilhem to Michel Foucault. In the past, he has become best known and criticized for his postulation of an epistemological rupture between everyday experience and scientific experience. In my analysis, I emphasize another aspect of the work of Bachelard. It (...) is the way he conceptualizes the relation between scientific thinking and technology in modern science. Within this framework, the notion of "phenomenotechnique" is of crucial importance. It is one of the organizing concepts of Bachelard's historical epistemology, and it serves as the organizing center of this paper. (shrink)

Gaston Bachelard's thought remains a continual source of inspiration for a phenomenological psychology that takes human habitation as a fundamental given and as an abiding mystery of the human condition. the following essay explores the ideas Bachelard developed in the course of his study of poetry. It examines in particular his vision of imagination as a unique passage way by means of which we reach an inhabitable, intersubjective and fully human world. Within that perspective, our lives are constantly renewed (...) by the appearance of a revealing image or a telling metaphor. Each time that we are awakened by this appeal we commemorate the birth and rebirth of a human world. (shrink)

Gaston Bachelard began his academic career as a teacher of physics and chemistry, turning eventually to the history and philosophy of science: a personal evolution not uncommon in France, which since the turn of the century has also offered the examples of Duhem, Poincaré and Meyerson. Unlike these older contemporaries, however, Bachelard took as his special province not the logical structure of scientific theory, or the norms of theory construction, but the inventive spontaneity or “dynamism” of scientific thought. While (...) celebrating science as the ultimate expression of reason, he paid as much attention to its imaginative false starts as to the rational explanations it adopts. By 1938, moreover, he had turned explicitly to the activity of imagination: this became the general theme of a number of works that revolve freely about the four elements of an earlier and more poetic “science,” and the philosopher's field eventually was to become nothing less than his total experience, whether reasoned, lived or dreamed. (shrink)

In this essay, I show how the French philosopher of science, Gaston Bachelard, reacted to the idea of phenomenology at different stages of his philosophical development. During the early years, Kantianism (through a Schopenhauerian reading of Kant) had the greatest influence on his understanding of phenomenology. Even if he always considered phenomenology a valuable method, Bachelard believed that the term noumenon is necessary, not for a full description of reality, but for probing possible sources of reality. For him, phenomena (...) are not only static objects or things observed in nature, but dynamic objects that can be produced or even created (hence phenomenotechnique). The noumenal realm lies beyond the structure of the phenomenal world. In his later “poetical” years, Bachelard did not make a strict distinction between noumena and phenomena, but instead situated the poetical (literary) image, a phenomenon of literary consciousness, in specific zones between subjectivity and objectivity; the term phenomenotechnique no longer plays any role in his study of imagination or daydreams. For the later Bachelard, phenomenology became the method or attitude that can best lead us into the unexplored regions of our consciousness (reverie) which remain largely forgotten by Western philosophy, or drowned out by its exclusive concern with other aspects of consciousness, such as rational thought. (shrink)

Bachelard’s works on imagination have been used primarily by literary critics interested in the archetypal imagery of writers. His treatment of the imagination of matter has led to a method of classifying poets according to their favorite substances, based on a view of Bachelard as a “psychoanalyst” of the elements. But the phenomena of imagination, the images themselves, are not his fundamental concern. Bachelard’s physics and chemistry of imagination also imply a metaphysics. Definition of the contents and function of imagination (...) illustrating a philosophy of imagination in itself is the purpose of the present essay. (shrink)

The paper deals with the engraving hand of Albert Flocon and its poietic description by the pen of Gaston Bachelard. It proceeds by discussing examples of the group of collaborative works that emerged from the cooperation between Flocon, the copperplate engraver and theoretician of perspective and Bachelard, the philosopher of science and scholar of literary images in mid-twentieth century Paris.

A psychology, Phenomenology and ontology of creativity developed by this french epistemologist and historian of science (1884-1962) are systematically described. Starting from analysis of image networks in literature, Bachelard presents imagination as autonomous, A power of human transcendence, A force preceding perception and memory. He ultimately surpasses psychological reductionism. Imagination of form is inferior to imagination of matter (depth); yet they both are secondary to dynamic imagination. Bachelard's fundamental method is a phenomenological study of images as origins of consciousness; a (...) phenomenology of reverie and writing underlies his ontology. Reverie is the model upon which imaginative consciousness is judged. Man should extend the freedom and beauty of his inner cosmos to enhance relation with the world. (shrink)

RésuméL'auteur analyse la conception de la méthode dialectique chez Gaston Bachelard et Ferdinand Gonseth qui est à L'origine de la «philosophie ouverte». Lorsqu'il s'est agi de donner un nom à la revue qu'ils allaient fonder avec Paul Bernays, le choix s'est porté sur celui de Dialectica, en accord avec L'orientation qu'ils comptaient donner à leurs publications.SummaryThe author describes Gaston Bachelard's and Ferdinand Gonseth's dialectical method which is at the origin of their so‐called open philosophy. When faced with the (...) task of giving a name to a planned review, edited together with Paul Bernays, they settled their choice on Dialectica in order to announce the orientation of the future publications.ZusammenfassungEs werden Gaston Bachelards und Ferdinand Gonseths Auffassungen der dialektischen Methode dargelegt, die zur Entwicklung der «offenen Philosophie» geführt hat. Die Tatsache, dass sich die beiden Philosophen, die gemeinsam mit Paul Bernays Dialectica gegründet haben, über die Vorzüge dieser Methode einig waren, hat für die Wahl des Namens der Zeitschrift den Ausschlag gegeben. (shrink)

The article deals with the phenomenon of French historical epistemology and Gaston Bachelard's role in its theoretical and institutional establishment. It analyses the place of history of sciences in French historical epistemology, which was considered in France as epistemology perse from the beginning of XX century. The article accompanies first Russian translation of Bachelard's lecture "Topicality of the History of Science" and argues that this text represents Bachelardian program for reformation of scientific history as an academic discipline. The importance (...) of this text for French epistemological tradition bases on, firstly, the analysis of methodology of the historical investigation, which subject is a scientific discipline, and secondly, historian's and epistemologist's theoretical approaches. (shrink)

L'éthique bachelardienne est une éthique simple, mais pas du tout simpliste : l'homme du théorème est complété par l'homme du poème. Mais si l'éthique est une direction de la pensée qui doit maîtriser notre avenir, la poétique est la source ontologique de cette pensée. C'est-à-dire, la liberté de rêver doit être à l'origine de la liberté créatrice de la pensée ou de l'homme des théorèmes. En fait, il ne s'agit pas d'une éthique fermée dans les modèles artificiels d'une pensée techniciste, (...) mais toujours d'une éthique soutenue, à l'origine, par une poétique de la pensée ouverte. (shrink)

La teneur d'un ouvrage philosophique dépend à la fois des thèses qui y sont déployées par son auteur et des références dont celui-ci se nourrit. Dans l'oeuvre de Gaston Bachelard, le système référentiel est tout particulièrement abondant : comme si le philosophe redoutait secrètement la vaticination, préférant étayer ses affirmations par des matériaux qu'il puise dans l'univers, pour ainsi dire illimité, de ses lectures. De fait, il n'a jamais caché avoir été un lecteur boulimique, insatiable. Ce faisant, il oublie (...) de dire que toute sa vie est aussi bien un acte d'écriture, dont la table d'existence, c'est-à-dire la table de travail, est le support fondamental. Écriture et lectures s'avèrent pour lui intimement liées. C'est bien pourquoi l'Index que nous proposons ici présente un intérêt majeur. Il dévoile de façon ordonnée l'abondance impressionnante d'une culture qui se met sans arrêt au service d'une pensée. En même temps il agit à la manière d'un spectrographe, qui révèle des zones privilégiées de références et de préoccupations. Dans le cas de Gaston Bachelard, le champ des affinités philosophiques est particulièrement révélateur : il s'y noue un réseau globalement cohérent de références récurrentes, qui apparaît en même temps sur un fond de désaffections implicites : c'est dire qu'il y a de grands absents dans le répertoire bachelardien. De fait, et globalement, il cite beaucoup plus largement les savants et les poètes que les grands philosophes de la tradition classique. D'une utilisation particulièrement aisée, cet Index permettra aux chercheurs, aux étudiants et à tous les lecteurs passionnés de repérer les sources explicites de Gaston Bachelard disséminées à l'intérieur de son oeuvre. (shrink)

Cet article porte sur la collaboration entre le philosophe des sciences Gaston Bachelard et le graveur sur cuivre Albert Flocon durant la première décennie suivant la Seconde Guerre mondiale. De leurs échanges résultèrent plusieurs ouvrages dont le contenu est analysé ici.

My paper examines the potential of Gaston Bachelard’s concept of phenomenotechnique through a critique of its historical reception and an analysis of its epistemological implications. Vis-a-vis constructivist and pragmatist interpretations, I argue that the core issue at stake in this concept is not just to regard scientific knowledge as ‘fabricated’ through technical means, but also to understand the radical difference that lies between the experience of a world given to and measured by scientists, and one that is ontologically expanded (...) by the conceptual creations of science. In his reflections on the ‘phenomenotechnical realisation’ of noumena in microphysics, mathematics and chemistry, Bachelard not only anticipated a new epistemic modality which has become eminent now in computerised, data-centric approaches to nature and culture; he also became one of the first philosophers to explore the human experience of a reality inherently built from, and no longer just described by mathematical tools and models. (shrink)