Gaston Bachelard: Critic of Science and the Imagination (Routledge Studies in Twentieth-Century Philosophy)
Cristina Chimisso
Language: English
Pages: 304
ISBN: 0415869099
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
In this new study, Cristina Chimisso explores the work of the French Philosopher of Science, Gaston Bachelard (1884-1962) 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.
relationships assumes a fundamental significance. Indeed, not only did Bachelard not renounce the humanist and moralist approach of the French philosophical tradition, but he actually connected morality and scientific activity and the achievement of objectivity more tightly than ever before. At any rate, the appropriation of Bachelard by Marxist philosophers has been highly controversial. Several philosophers, who regard themselves as opposed to French traditional philosophy, do not accept
historiography exhibit a richer and at the same time more coherent significance if read in the light of his pedagogical concerns and the school literature of the time. Bachelard's approach to the history of science as a study of the mind in its historical development cannot be explained only in the light of his pedagogical interests. He employed ethnological, sociological and psychological literature and engaged in the discussions that emerged from these disciplines. To regard ethnology,
title, in Les ages de ['intelligence (1934), a course of lectures that he delivered at the Sorbonne in 1932-33, which is a history of philosophical and scientific thought. Abel Rey (1873-1940) started off his university career in Dijon, where he lectured in philosophy and set up a laboratory of experimental psychology. His first book, Le~ons de psychologie (1903), published when he was still a teacher in a Lycee, reflected the focus of his early research. In 1919, he was appointed professor of
intellectual history became part of epistemological projects. When Bachelard studied philosophy at the Sorbonne, he found an already consolidated tradition in this sense. Besides Laporte, whose broad interests I have mentioned in the previous chapter, and Abel Rey and Leon Brunschvicg, there were other French philosophers committed to the study of science and technology, whose work Bachelard employed in his books. Albert Rivaud (1876-1956), professor of philosophy and history of philosophy at the
techniques at the Ecole Pratique, Koyre did not mention the Sorbonne's homonymous Institute. Indeed, in the list of journals which he recommended the library of the Centre should acquire, Thales was not included. 57 In the Thirties Bachelard published in Archeion, organ of the Section d'Histoire des Sciences du Centre International de Synthese, and had his books reviewed in it. In addition, as we know, he was in the editorial board of Recherches Philosophiques together with Alexandre Koyre. After