Gaston Bachelard 1884 – 1962
Gaston Bachelard was a French philosopher of science and imagination whose work spanned both rigorous epistemology and a phenomenology of poetic reverie. After self-taught studies he held chairs of philosophy of science at Dijon and at the Sorbonne. His epistemological writings, including The Formation of the Scientific Mind and The New Scientific Spirit, articulated the doctrine of epistemological breaks and the conviction that science advances by overcoming earlier obstacles in our own thought. His later books on the elements, particularly The Poetics of Space, opened a new field of phenomenological aesthetics.
Key facts
- Nationality
- French
- Era
- Contemporary
- Movements
- Continental
Selected quotes
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Attributed to Gaston Bachelard:
“Science is the empire of the new.”
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Attributed to Gaston Bachelard:
“There is no first knowledge; all knowledge is the result of struggle against earlier error.”
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Attributed to Gaston Bachelard:
“The mind is essentially a factory of mistakes.”
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Attributed to Gaston Bachelard:
“All that is decisive in the soul has its source in the imagination.”
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Attributed to Gaston Bachelard:
“A house is the topography of our intimate being.”