Abstract
The work of Gaston Bachelard is known for two crucial concepts, that of the epistemological rupture and that of phenomenotechnique. A crucial question is, however, how these two concepts relate to one another. Are they in fact essentially connected or must they be seen as two separate elements of Bachelard’s thinking? This paper aims to analyse the relation between these two Bachelardian moments and the significance of the concept of phenomenotechnique for today. This will be done by examining certain historical uses of the concepts of Bachelard have been used from the 1960s on. From this historical perspective, one gets the impression that these two concepts are relatively independent from each other. The Althusserian school has exclusively focused on the concept of ‘epistemological break’, while scholars from Science & Technology Studies (STS), such as Bruno Latour, seem to have only taken up the concept of phenomenotechnique. It in fact leads to two different models of how to think about science, namely the model of purification and the model of proliferation. The former starts from the idea that sciences are rational to the extent that they are purified and free from (epistemological) obstacles. Scientific objectivity, within this later model, is not achieved by eradicating all intermediaries, obstacles and distortions, but rather exactly by introducing as many relevant technical mediators as possible. Finally, such a strong distinction will be criticized and the argument will be made that both in Bachelard’s and Latour's thought both concepts are combined. This leads to a janus-headed view on science, where both the element of purification (the epistemological break) and the element of proliferation (phenomenotechnique) are combined.
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Notes
I’m ignoring here the more complex history, for instance on how this notion of a break has influenced the work of Michel Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu or even Thomas Kuhn. Focusing only on Althusserianism is a biased narrative, but it is precisely this bias that I want to highlight.
In France, the work of Bachelard is still too often reduced to a mere philosophy of science, while ignoring his books on imagination or his more metaphysical works. In the English speaking world, on the other hand, it is often the other way around, in the sense that his work is equated with his work on imagination.
The term itself is not systematically used by Bachelard, but present in the background. He does however use the term literally in rationalisme appliqué (1949, 104).
The effects of this reception are still seen today, for instance in the work of Steve Fuller. Fuller tries to link Latour and STS to Bachelard, but through the work of Lecourt which is “still the most relevant introduction” (Fuller 2000, 24). He concludes that “the academic Marxists perspective that gave Bachelard his widest reception in France […] portray[s] scientists as a proletariat exploited by bourgeois philosophers who held them accountable to standards not of their own making” (Fuller 2000, 24–25).
I thank this reference to Terence Blake. Söderberg (2017) goes even further and claims that STS as a whole field is deeply influenced by Althusserianism “because of its omnipresence in French intellectual milieus during the formative years of the STS discipline.” (Söderberg 2017: 187) According to him, they are continuing Althusser’s focus on multiplicity and his opposition to the Hegelian notion of ‘totality’ (see Althusser 1965). Similarly, Söderberg notes how Latour’s Laboratory Life was even taken up by Althusserians to counter criticisms by E.P. Thompson (e.g. Wolff 1981). Although Söderberg claims that Latour is positively influenced by Althusser, this is not incompatible with my own claim. One could explain the specific criticisms of Latour I’m highlighting by the profound role Althusser played in Latour’s formative years.
This comes very close to Hacking’s claim of “the creation of phenomena. Traditionally scientists are said to explain phenomena that they discover in nature. I say that often they create the phenomena which then become the centrepieces of theory.” (Hacking 1983, 220) More recently, he has indeed claimed that his “position is strikingly similar to that evolved by Gaston Bachelard’s (1953) ‘applied rationalism and technical materialism.’” (Hacking 2002, 44–45)
This formulation is nowhere found in the work of Bachelard in this literal sense. Closer to this formulation are certain remarks by Eduard Le Roy (see Le Roy 1899).
Moreover, these essays might also be targeted because they discuss the case of Louis Pasteur, one of Latour’s favourite authors. Canguilhem is criticized numerous times in Latour’s book on Pasteur (Latour 1988, 31, 75).
Moreover, Canguilhem seems to make the exact same criticism of Thomas Kuhn that could be made of the Althusserian model. Similar to how Althusser overgeneralizes Bachelard’s idea of an epistemological rupture, Kuhn’s general model of paradigm shifts is too broad and cannot just be transplanted “to other areas of the history of science without a good deal of reflection about the specific nature of the area to be studied” (Canguilhem 1988: 14). At the same time, the work of Kuhn is very revealing of the different attitudes towards philosophy of science of the work of Bachelard and Canguilhem on the one hand and the recent generation of Latour and Stengers on the other (see Simons 2017b).
These examples are taken from Elliott (2007: 332).
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Acknowledgements
A previous version of this paper was presented at the Troisièmes journées d’études épistemologie historique: Pour une épistémologie historique des transformations techniques in Paris at 18-20 May 2017. I thank the organizers and participants of that conference. I would also like to thank Katleen Pasgang for her numerous insightful remarks on this paper.
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This work was supported by the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO).
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Simons, M. The Janus head of Bachelard’s phenomenotechnique: from purification to proliferation and back. Euro Jnl Phil Sci 8, 689–707 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13194-018-0206-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13194-018-0206-8