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Gaston Bachelard: poet/philosopher of the imagination and epistemological rupture

Originally posted on sciy.org by Rich Carlson on Sun 05 Jul 2009 07:21 PM PDT  

Gaston Bachelard (June 27, 1884 – October 16, 1962) was a French 20th century philosopher and poet. His most important work is in poetics and the philosophy of science. He introduced the concepts of epistemological obstacle and epistemological break (obstacle épistémologique et rupture épistémologique) and influenced many French philosophers in the latter part of the twentieth century, among them Michel Foucault and Louis Althusser. His best-known work is The Poetics of Space.


Life and work

Bachelard was a postmaster in Bar-Sur-Aube, and then studied physics before finally becoming interested in philosophy. He was a professor at Dijon from 1930 to 1940 and then became the inaugural chair in history and philosophy of the sciences at the Sorbonne.

Bachelard's studies of the history and philosophy of science in such works as Le nouvel esprit scientifique ("The New Scientific Mind") (1934) and La formation de l'esprit scientifique ("The Formation of the Scientific Mind") (1938) were based on his vision of historical epistemology as a kind of psychoanalysis of the scientific mind, or rather of the psychological factors in the development of sciences. For instance, he takes the example of Heisenberg's first chapters of the Physical principles of the quantum theory, where he alternatively defends a corpuscular theory and an undulatory theory, correcting each by the others (The New Scientific Mind, IV). This, claims Bachelard, is an excellent example of the importance of psychological training in sciences, as one should correct spontaneous defaults by taking the opposite stance.

In the English-speaking world, the connection Bachelard made between psychology and the history of science has been little understood. Bachelard demonstrated how the progress of science could be blocked by certain types of mental patterns, creating the concept of obstacle 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.

Bachelard argued against Auguste Comte's positivism, which considered science as a continual progress, that it had been superseded by such scientific developments as the theory of Relativity, which demonstrated the discontinuous nature of history of sciences. Through his concept of "epistemological break", Bachelard underlined the discontinuity at work in the history of sciences — the term itself is almost never used by Bachelard, but became famous through Althusser. For this reason, he was a tough critic of Émile Meyerson, who supported a continuist view of the history of sciences.

He showed that new theories integrated old theories in new paradigms, changing the sense of concepts (for instance, the concept of mass, used by Newton and Einstein in two different senses). Thus, non-Euclidean geometry did not contradict Euclidean geometry, but integrated it into a larger framework.

A rationalist in the Cartesian sense (although he proned a "non-Cartesian epistemology" which was to succeed, as a new theory, to Cartesian epistemology - The New Scientific Mind, conclusion), he opposed "scientific knowledge" to ordinary knowledge, and held that error is only negativity or illusion:

"Scientifically, we think the truth as the historical rectification of a long error, and we think experience as the rectification of the common and originary illusion (illusion première)"

The role of epistemology is to show the history of the (scientific) production of concepts; those concepts are not just theoretical propositions: they are simultaneously abstract and concrete, pervading technical and pedagogical activity. This explains why "The electric bulb is an object of scientifical thought… an example of an abstract-concrete object." To understand the way it works, one has to pass by the detour of scientific knowledge. Epistemology is thus not a general philosophy that aims at justifying scientific reasoning. Instead it produces regional histories of science.

Bachelard opposed the duality between rationality and irrationality, claiming that, for instance, the theory of probabilities was just another way of complexifying reality through a deepening of rationality (while someone as Lord Kelvin found it somehow irrational). One of his main thesis in The New Scientific Mind was that modern sciences had replaced the classical ontology of the substance with an "ontology of relations", which could be assimilated to something as a Process 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 as ontologically real, modern science can not distinguish matter from rays: it is thus impossible to examine an immobile thing, which was precisely the conditions of knowledge according to classical theory of knowledge (Becoming being impossible to be known, in accordance with Aristotle and Plato's theories of knowledge).

In non-Cartesian epistemology, there is no "simple substance" as in Cartesianism, 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 of constructivist epistemology.

In addition to epistemology, Bachelard's work deals with many other topics, including poetry, dreams, psychoanalysis, and the imagination. The Psychoanalysis of Fire (1938) and The Poetics of Space (1958) are among the most popular of his works.

Legacy

Thomas S. Kuhn used Bachelard's notion of "epistemological rupture" (coupure or rupture épistémologique) as re-interpreted by Alexandre Koyré to develop his theory of paradigm shifts; Althusser, Georges Canguilhem (his successor at the Sorbonne) and Michel Foucault also drew upon Bachelard's epistemology.

Bachelard's daughter, Suzanne, translated Husserl's Formale und transzendentale Logik in French.

Bibliography

His works include:

  • 1932: L'intuition de l'instant

  • 1934: Le nouvel esprit scientifique ISBN 2-13-044374-5

  • 1938: La formation de l'esprit scientifique ISBN 2-7116-1150-7

  • 1938: La psychanalyse du feu

  • 1940: La philosophie du non ISBN 2-13-052578-4

  • 1942: L'eau et les rêves ISBN 2-253-06099-2

  • 1943: L'air et les songes

  • 1946: La terre et les rêveries du repos ISBN 2-7143-0299-8

  • 1948: La terre et les rêveries de la volonté

  • 1949: Le Rationalisme appliqué (PUF, Paris)

  • 1958: La Poétique de l'espace English translation The Poetics of Space ISBN 0-8070-6473-4

  • 1960: La poétique de la rêverie

  • 1961: La flamme d'une chandelle ISBN 2-13-053901-7

....................................................................Quotes........................................................................................

L'eau et les rêves (Water and Dreams) 1942

  • To disappear into deep water or to disappear toward a far horizon, to become part of depth of infinity, such is the destiny of man that finds its image in the destiny of water.
    • Introduction
  • A man is a man to the extent that he is a superman. A man should be defined by the sum of those tendencies which impel him to surpass the human condition.
    • Introduction
  • True poetry is a function of awakening. It awakens us, but it must retain the memory of previous dreams.
    • Introduction
  • The reflected world is the conquest of calm
    • "Clear Waters, Springtime Waters"

La poétique de l'espace (The Poetics of Space) (1958)

  • If I were asked to name the chief benefit of the house, I should say: the house shelters day-dreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace.
    • Ch. 1
  • Words ... are little houses, each with its cellar and garret. Common sense lives on the ground floor, always ready to engage in ‘foreign commerce’ on the same level as the others, as the passers-by, who are never dreamers. To go upstairs in the word house is to withdraw step by step; while to go down to the cellar is to dream, it is losing oneself in the distant corridors of an obscure etymology, looking for treasures that cannot be found in words. To mount and descend in the words themselves—this is a poet’s life. To mount too high or descend too low is allowed in the case of poets, who bring earth and sky together.
    • Ch. 6
  • The mollusk's motto would be: one must live to build one's house, and not build one's house to live in.

 La poétique de la rêverie (The Poetics of Reverie) (1960)

  • Poetry is one of the destinies of speech.... One would say that the poetic image, in its newness, opens a future to language.
    • Introduction, sect. 2
  • Ideas are refined and multiplied in the commerce of minds. In their splendor, images effect a very simple communion of souls.
    • Introduction, sect. 4
  • A word is a bud attempting to become a twig. How can one not dream while writing? It is the pen which dreams. The blank page gives the right to dream.
    • Introduction, sect. 6
  • I am a dreamer of words, of written words. I think I am reading; a word stops me. I leave the page. The syllables of the word begin to move around. Stressed accents begin to invert. The word abandons its meaning like an overload which is too heavy and prevents dreaming. Then words take on other meanings as if they had the right to be young. And the words wander away, looking in the nooks and crannies of vocabulary for new company, bad company.
    • Introduction, sect. 6
  • Childhood lasts all through life. It returns to animate broad sections of adult life.... Poets will help us to find this living childhood within us, this permanent, durable immobile world.
    • Introduction, sect. 6
  • The subconscious is ceaselessly murmuring, and it is by listening to these murmurs that one hears the truth.
    • Ch. 2, sect. 2
  • Reverie is not a mind vacuum. It is rather the gift of an hour which knows the plenitude of the soul.
    • Ch. 2, sect. 3
  • The repose of sleep refreshes only the body. It rarely sets the soul at rest. The repose of the night does not belong to us. It is not the possession of our being. Sleep opens within us an inn for phantoms. In the morning we must sweep out the shadows.
    • Ch. 2, sect. 3
  • Man is an imagining being.
    • Ch. 2, sect. 10
  • The words of the world want to make sentences.

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