This article argues that historical epistemology offers the history of philosophy and science more than a mere tool to write the history of concepts. It does this, first of all, by rereading historical epistemology through Michel Foucault's “techniques of the self.” Second, it turns to the work of Léon Brunschvicg and Gaston Bachelard. In their work we see a proposal for what the subjectivity of scientists and philosophers should be. The article thus argues that their work is driven by a (...) normative psychology: a set of prescriptions for which mental constitution a scholarly self has to have. In the Conclusion, it returns to existing analyses of “open‐mindedness” as a virtue and explores in what way these cases challenge these analyses, as well as to what extent Foucault's “techniques of the self” can be applied to other cases in the history of French philosophy. (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)

Dans un nombre croissant de domaines scientifiques - sciences de la nature, sciences humaines aussi bien que sciences des artefacts -, la simulation ne joue plus le rôle de succédané temporaire d'une théorie encore en gésine parce que non encore élaborée ; c'est-à-dire qu'elle ne joue plus systématiquement le rôle d'un modèle provisoire ou d'un schéma servant à condenser les mesures. C'est qu'elle n'a pas la nature d'un signe graphique, linguistique ou mathématique. Elle joue au contraire de plus en plus (...) le rôle d'une réplication détaillée du réel : elle est une intuition reconstruite avec justesse mais sans abstraction rationnelle et généralisante, donc sans transfiguration iconique. Une des limites de l'épistémologie dialectique de Bachelard tient à ce qu'elle ne donne pas les concepts pour penser assez distinctement ces pratiques contemporaines de simulation. C'est pourquoi l'A. propose de concevoir l'idée que la science contemporaine se développe non plus selon la seule dialectique matérialisme / rationalisme, mais selon la triade rationalisme/computationalisme/matérialisme. (shrink)

In this contribution, I comment on Raffaella Campaner’s defense of explanatory pluralism in psychiatry (in this volume). In her paper, Campaner focuses primarily on explanatory pluralism in contrast to explanatory reductionism. Furthermore, she distinguishes between pluralists who consider pluralism to be a temporary state on the one hand and pluralists who consider it to be a persisting state on the other hand. I suggest that it would be helpful to distinguish more than those two versions of pluralism – different understandings (...) of explanatory pluralism both within philosophy of science and psychiatry – namely moderate/temporary pluralism, anything goes pluralism, isolationist pluralism, integrative pluralism and interactive pluralism. Next, I discuss the pros and cons of these different understandings of explanatory pluralism. Finally, I raise the question of how to implement or operationalize explanatory pluralism in scientific practice; how to structure the “genuine dialogue” or shape “the pluralistic attitude” Campaner is referring to. As tentative answers, I explore a question-based framework for explanatory pluralism as well as social-epistemological procedures for interaction among competing approaches and explanations. (shrink)

Se establece un diálogo hermenéutico entre las concurrencias y bifurcaciones del idealismo simbólico de Cassirer y el racionalismo alado de Bachelard en tres momentos. Primero, a partir de indicios bio-bibliográficos se construye el contexto de significación vital donde se anclan sus respectivas ideas; segundo, se establecen entre ellos paralelismos fundamentales, y, tercero, se ofrecen ejemplos de la terminología bachelardiana, cercana a la hermenéutica simbólica contemporánea. Con ello se expande la comprensión de los análisis de Cassirer acerca del pensamiento indirecto e (...) interpretativo hacia las relaciones del hombre y la cultura, así como al papel del símbolo en el tránsito de la naturaleza a la cultura. The article establishes a hermeneutical dialogue between the convergences and divergences of Cassirer's symbolic idealism and Bachelard's winged rationalism. First, on the basis of bio-bibliographical evidence, it reconstructs the context of vital signification in which the authors' respective ideas are rooted; secondly, it identifies the fundamental parallelisms between them; and, finally, it provides examples of Bachelardian terminology that resembles that of contemporary symbolic hermeneutics. This results in a broader understanding Cassirer's analyses of indirect and interpretive thought regarding the relations between man and culture, as well as of the role of the symbol in the shift form nature to culture. (shrink)