Les études récentes consacrées à la pensée épistémologique de Bachelard en France et en Italie mettent en évidence le caractère créatif et propulsif assigné aux mathématiques dans la construction du réel physique. Les travaux de Bachelard consacrés à la mécanique quantique dans les années '30, et en particulier à la physique théorique de Dirac, introduisent un concept particulier, celui de« rêverie anagogique » pour comprendre le caractère toujours plus abstrait et créateur de la mathématique dans la pensée des différents niveaux (...) de la réalité physique. Sur les traces de ce que Federigo Enriques qualifiait de « poésie mathématique », Bachelard propose une véritable « nouménologie mathématique » qui fournit les bases épistémiques pour comprendre I '« efficacité rationnelle » des mathématiques et leur application au réel. Pour toutes ces raisons, Bachelard utilisera dans ces années-là un terme nouveau pour désigner son engagement rationaliste: le « surrationalisme » qui condense ce qu' Enriques appelait « la philosophie implicite » dans les sciences, soit la « pensée des sciences » où, à travers la fonction jouée par la « rêverie anagogique », les mathématiques mettent en acte les « enjeux » continus du rationnel comme tel. (shrink)

We tend to identify “real” knowledge of nature with science, and for good reasons. The sciences have developed unique ways of disclosing and modifying the intricate workings of nature, building on quantitative, experimental and technologically advanced styles of thinking. Scientific research has produced robust and reliable forms of knowledge, using methodologies that are often remarkably transparent and verifiable. At the same time, laboratories and other research settings are highly artificial environments, constituting drastically modified versions of reality, allowing nature to emerge (...) in a particular way. This book starts from the conviction that there are other ways of knowing about nature besides science. Notably, literary documents (novels, plays, poems) on nature and natural entities (landscapes, animals, plant forms) often convey careful analyses and observations, quite elaborate and true to life. Comparative epistemology is the discipline that tries to assess, in a critical manner, the relative validity and value of various knowledge forms. This volume presents a series of case studies in comparative epistemology, critically comparing the works of prominent representative of the life sciences (such as Aristotle, Darwin, Mendel and many others) with the writings of their literary counterparts (such as Andersen, Melville, Verne, Ibsen, and many others). The book aims to contribute to the expanding field of Science and Literature Studies, allowing basic insights from the sciences and the humanities to mutually challenge and enlighten one another. (shrink)

De moderne filosofie lijdt aan muziekvergetelheid. Opvallend is echter dat filosofen, wanneer ze toch aandacht schenken aan muziek, hun aandacht bij voorkeur op één bepaald genre richten, namelijk de opera. Filosofen zoals Søren Kierkegaard en Friedrich Nietzsche lieten hun gedachten over Don Giovanni, Parsifal en Carmen gaan, terwijl omgekeerd de filosofie van Arthur Schopenhauer de opera heeft beïnvloed via Wagner. Diens werk lijkt zich op het snijpunt van het grensverkeer tussen moderne filosofie en moderne muziek te bevinden. Het was zijn (...) ambitie de menselijke existentie en de menselijke geschiedenis in één panoramisch oeuvre te vatten, vanaf het primordiale begin tot en met de dramatische finale die ophanden leek: een catastrofale apotheose die een geheel nieuwe toekomst mogelijk zou maken. Dat is althans de verhaallijn van zijn meesterwerk Der Ring des Nibelungen. Aan het slot van Götterdämmerung lijkt zich een algehele verwoesting te hebben voltrokken: ‘Everything is destroyed and there is an enigmatic kind of hovering over the scene of destruction’ (Badiou 2010, p. 106), een ambivalente stemming van hoop en destructie zette Wagner op muziek. Voor Wagner is dan ook een hoofdrol in deze studie weggelegd: voor zijn muziektheoretische geschriften (waarin hij over een ‘muziek van de toekomst’ filosofeerde), maar meer nog voor de muzikale totaalkunstwerken die hij daadwerkelijk componeerde. (shrink)

This volume aims to develop a philosophical diagnostic of the present, focussing on contemporary technoscience. psychoanalysis submits contemporary technoscientific discourse to a symptomatic reading, analysing it with evenly-poised attention and from an oblique perspective. Psychoanalysis is not primarily interested in protons, genes or galaxies, but rather in the ways in which they are disclosed and discussed, focussing on the symptomatic terms, the metaphors and paradoxes at work in technoscientific discourse. This monograph presents a psychoanalytical assessment of technoscience. The first four (...) chapters provide a short introduction into the psychoanalysis of technoscience, its basic concepts and methods, as developed Sigmund Freud, Carl Gustav Jung, Gaston Bachelard and Jacques Lacan. In subsequent chapters, this approach is fleshed out with the help of case histories (palaeoanthropology, classical conditioning and virology). Psychoanalysis reveals that, rather than by disinterested curiosity, technoscience is driven by desire, resistance and the will to control. Moreover, the focus is on primal scenes, such as Dubois’ quixotic quest for the missing link and Pavlov’s discovery of the conditioned reflex. In addition, psychoanalysis opts for triangulation: understanding technoscientific research by comparing it to “different scenes”: to genres of the imagination, notably novels, so that, in this volume, the discovery of a Homo erectus skull by Dubois is compared to missing link novels by Jules Verne and Jack London (dating from the same period), Pavlov’s discovery of the conditioned reflex is compared with B.F. Skinner’s novel Walden Two and virology as a research field is considered through the lens of viral fiction. (shrink)

Synthetic cells spark intriguing questions about the nature of life. Projects such as BaSyC (‘Building a Synthetic Cell’) aim to build an entity that mimics how living cells work from basic components. But what kind of entity would a synthetic cell really be? I assess this question from a philosophical perspective, and show how early fictional narratives of artificial life – such as the laboratory scene in Goethe’s Faust – can help us to understand the challenges faced by synthetic biology (...) researchers. (shrink)

In recent years, Nietzsche’s views on (natural) science attracted a considerable amount of scholarly attention. Overall, his attitude towards science tends to be one of suspicion, or ambivalence at least. My article addresses the “Nietzsche and science” theme from a slightly different perspective, raising a somewhat different type of question, more pragmatic if you like, namely: how to be a Nietzschean philosopher of science today? What would the methodological contours of a Nietzschean approach to present-day research areas (such as neuroscience, (...) astrophysics, synthetic biology or climate studies) amount to? In other words, my paper reflects a shift of focus from author studies to extrapolation. The design of my article is as follows. I will start with the question (already widely discussed in the expert literature) to what extent Friedrich Nietzsche (a classical philologist by training) managed to familiarise himself with the natural sciences of his epoch. Subsequently, I will outline some basic methodological and conceptual ingredients of Nietzsche’s philosophy of science, focussing on core issues such as “genealogy”, “interpretation”, “enhancement” and “truth”. Next, I will elucidate Nietzsche’s genealogical methodology with the help of three case studies (three representative samples if you will) taken from Nietzsche’s writings and dealing with physiology, astronomy and neuro-psychology respectively. Finally, I will present the methodological contours of a Nietzschean understanding of contemporary technoscience. (shrink)

This paper analyses the technoscientific objective of building a synthetic cell from a Jungian perspective. After decades of fragmentation and specialisation, the synthetic cell symbolises a turn towards restored wholeness, both at the object pole and at the subject pole. From a Jungian perspective, it is no coincidence that visual representations of synthetic cells often reflect an archetypal, mandala-like structure. As a symbol of restored unity, the synthetic cell mandala compensates for technoscientific fragmentation via active imagination, providing a visual aid (...) for the technoscientific turn towards reintegration. Although the biotechnological desire to reconstruct life in vitro has been compared to alchemy before, a Jungian analysis allows us to make this comparison more specific and precise. The problem of archetypal images, however, is that alluring prospects of reintegration may underestimate and obfuscate the deficiencies and tensions at work in the current situation. As a projection of a future wholeness, it fosters optimism, but may also function as a misleading façade, covering up collisions and complexities. This can be averted by the conscious employment of the mandala as a symbolic scaffold fostering processes of individuation and working through. (shrink)

La question du rapport de la pensée bachelardienne à la mathématique contemporaine a longtemps été éludée au profit exclusif d'une interprétation fautive. Un Bachelard formé à la physique et à la chimie qui n'auraitjamais donné sa véritable place à l'étude mathématique est l'interprétation qui prédomine depuis le colloque de Cerisy (1974). Le logicien Roger Martin affinne qu'il existe un silence coupable autour du problème des fondements (problématique ensembliste, axiomatique et logicisme). À partir d'une analyse serrée des textes, cette étude renoue (...) avec une image beaucoup plus juste d'un Bachelard pour qui la mathématique n'est rien de moins que « le sur-moi de la science ». (shrink)

Pour Gaston Bachelard, le « non » signifie dépasser et compléter le savoir antérieur, la philosophie de la connaissance scientifique doit englober les contradictions. Il établit le profil épistémologique de l’évolution, du réalisme naïf au surrationalisme en passant par le rationalisme classique et élargit le domaine de l’intuition à ce qu’il appelle une « intuition travaillée»s’exerçant dans un espace non analytique.

Dans les heures de grandes trouvailles, une image poétique peut être le germe d'un monde, le germe d'un univers imaginé devant la rêverie d'un poète. La conscience d'émerveillement devant ce monde créé par le poète s'ouvre en toute naïveté. [...] L'exigence phénoménologique à l'égard des images poétiques est d'ailleurs simple : elle revient à mettre l'accent sur leur vertu d'origine, à saisir l'être même de leur originalité et à bénéficier ainsi de l'insigne productivité psychique qui est celle de l'imagination.

Gaston Bachelard (1884-1962) was a seminal figure in contemporary French philosophy. Together with Michel Foucault, Georges Canguilhem and Jean Cavailles, he shaped the 'French epistemological' school of philosophy of science. In France, Bachelard is a towering presence; in the English-speaking world, he is little known. Now, Zbigniew Kotowicz gives us the first English language, in-depth presentation of the entire spectrum of Bachelard's work: epistemology, poetic imagination and temporality. And he explores an old philosophical tradition that Bachelard's thought opens up - (...) atomism - a doctrine that has been almost forgotten and is much misunderstood ". (shrink)

The man and his times -- Early epistemology -- The new scientific mind -- Fragmentation and the temptation of ontology -- Fire, water, and the material imagination -- Air, earth, and the dynamic imagination -- A phenomenology of the creative imagination.

L’originalité de la philosophie de Bachelard tient à la place donnée, dans ses recherches, à l’imagination et à la poésie. En proposant « de considérer l’imagination comme une puissance majeure de la nature humaine », il a ainsi ouvert de nouveaux espaces de méditation et de réflexion philosophiques dont s’inspirent encore de nombreux philosophes.

C'est bien à la croisée des chemins que doit se placer l'épistémologue, entre le réalisme et le rationalisme. C'est là qu'il peut saisir le nouveau dynamisme de ces philosophies contraires, le double mouvement par lequel la science simplifie le réel et complique la raison. Le trajet est alors écourté qui va de la réalité expliquée à la réalité appliquée. C'est dans ce court trajet qu'on doit développer toute la pédagogie de la preuve, pédagogie qui est la seule psychologie possible de (...) l'esprit scientifique. (shrink)

En 32 romans, publiés entre 1934 et 1982, cet auteur d'origine australienne a élaboré autour de son protagoniste principal, l'inspecteur Roderick Allen de Scotland Yard, un ensemble de romans policiers d'enquête dans la meilleure tradition britannique.

"Entre la connaissance commune et la connaissance scientifique, la rupture nous paraît si nette que ces deux types de connaissance ne sauraient avoir la même philosophie. L'empirisme est la philosophie qui convient à la connaissance commune. Au contraire, la connaissance scientifique est solidaire du rationalisme et, qu'on le veuille ou non, le rationalisme est lié à la science, le rationalisme réclame des buts scientifiques. Par l'activité scientifique, le rationalisme connaît une activité dialectique qui enjoint une extension constante des méthodes". Voici (...) un livre sur l'activité rationaliste du chimiste contemporain. On y voit à l'oeuvre une "phénoménotechnique" qui construit ses multiples substances en éliminant progressivement l'irrationnel. Souligner l'engagement de pensée qui se manifeste dans cette activité, telle est la volonté de Bachelard inscrite dans son projet général d'attirer "l'attention des philosophes sur le caractère spécifique de la pensée et du travail de la science moderne". (shrink)

In wisselende mate van virtuositeit beheersen wij drie talen: de taal van de beelden, de taal van de woorden en de taal van de getallen. In wetenschappelijk onderzoek tekent zich echter een onmiskenbaar verlangen af om beelden door woorden en, uiteindelijk, door getallen te vervangen. Vigerende beeldvorming en gevestigde wereldbeelden moeten plaats maken voor geijkte termen en voor cijfers en symbolen (aanduidingen van getallen), Daarin berust de arbeid die wetenschap verricht. Paradoxalerwijze echter heeft juist ook wetenschap behoefte aan inspirerende en (...) oriënterende beelden. Juist wetenschappers blijken door de eeuwen heen bijzonder creatieve leveranciers van krachtig en invloedrijk beeldmateriaal. Beelden die aanvankelijk uit het wetenschappelijke vertoog worden verdrongen, doen (gerevitaliseerd en gezuiverd) vroeg of laat weer van zich spreken. Deze studie onderzoekt de fundamentele beelden (archetypen) die de wil tot weten (de cupido sciendi) door de eeuwen heen structureerden. Van het antieke beeld van het universum als een serie concentrische sferen (bollen) via de monsterbeelden van de moderne levenswetenschappen (zoals de gigantische gedrochten van het fossielenonderzoek of de minuscule monstertjes van de virologie) tot en met de hardnekkige gedachte dat we aan de vooravond staan van een door onszelf bewerkstelligde catastrofe, een beeld dat zich in de loop van de geschiedenis telkens weer aan nieuwe vormen van collectieve bezorgdheid weet te hechten: van Zondvloed en atoomoorlog via millenniumwisseling tot en met klimaatverandering. Dergelijke beelden moeten kritisch worden benaderd, ze kunnen de werkelijkheid vertekenen en verhullen, maar ons ook op risico’s attenderen. Zo zullen laboratoriumonderzoekers bij tijd en wijle daadwerkelijk monsters in de wereld zetten, die domesticatie en inburgering vergen, terwijl mondiale rampen bij tijd en wijle harde werkelijkheid worden. (shrink)

We tend to identify “real” knowledge of nature with science, and for good reasons. The sciences have developed unique ways of disclosing and modifying the intricate workings of nature, building on quantitative, experimental and technologically advanced styles of thinking. Scientific research has produced robust and reliable forms of knowledge, using methodologies that are often remarkably transparent and verifiable. At the same time, laboratories and other research settings are highly artificial environments, constituting drastically modified versions of reality, allowing nature to emerge (...) in a particular way. This book starts from the conviction that there are other ways of knowing about nature besides science. Notably, literary documents (novels, plays, poems) on nature and natural entities (landscapes, animals, plant forms) often convey careful analyses and observations, quite elaborate and true to life. Comparative epistemology is the discipline that tries to assess, in a critical manner, the relative validity and value of various knowledge forms. This volume presents a series of case studies in comparative epistemology, critically comparing the works of prominent representative of the life sciences (such as Aristotle, Darwin, Mendel and many others) with the writings of their literary counterparts (such as Andersen, Melville, Verne, Ibsen, and many others). The book aims to contribute to the expanding field of Science and Literature Studies, allowing basic insights from the sciences and the humanities to mutually challenge and enlighten one another. (shrink)

Si l'on veut bien définir le rationalisme comme une pensée d'organisation, on devra lui accorder une matière à organiser, des éléments à assembler, des expériences à ajuster. On devra le juger au terme même de cette organisation, après son effort synthétique, après son travail de mise en ordre. Il y a peu de justice à le taxer d'incapacité à propos d'une analyse de ce qu'il prend comme éléments de sa construction. Autant dire que le rationalisme est une philosophie fonctionnelle, une (...) philosophie d'opérations - ou plutôt, comme nous le montrerons plus explicitement dans notre livre sur la Mécanique ondulatoire, une philosophie d'opérateurs. Ce n'est pas une philosophie existentielle. Le rationalisme ne prétend pas pénétrer dans l'individualité d'une existence. Il ne commence à penser qu'en établissant des relations. (shrink)

In this essay, I show how the French philosopher of science, Gaston Bachelard, reacted to the idea of phenomenology at different stages of his philosophical development. During the early years, Kantianism (through a Schopenhauerian reading of Kant) had the greatest influence on his understanding of phenomenology. Even if he always considered phenomenology a valuable method, Bachelard believed that the term noumenon is necessary, not for a full description of reality, but for probing possible sources of reality. For him, phenomena are (...) not only static objects or things observed in nature, but dynamic objects that can be produced or even created (hence phenomenotechnique). The noumenal realm lies beyond the structure of the phenomenal world. In his later “poetical” years, Bachelard did not make a strict distinction between noumena and phenomena, but instead situated the poetical (literary) image, a phenomenon of literary consciousness, in specific zones between subjectivity and objectivity; the term phenomenotechnique no longer plays any role in his study of imagination or daydreams. For the later Bachelard, phenomenology became the method or attitude that can best lead us into the unexplored regions of our consciousness (reverie) which remain largely forgotten by Western philosophy, or drowned out by its exclusive concern with other aspects of consciousness, such as rational thought. (shrink)

: The paper aims at an analysis of the oeuvre of the French historian of science and epistemologist Gaston Bachelard (1884–1962). Bachelard was the founder of a tradition of French thinking about science that extended from Jean Cavaillès over Georges Canguilhem to Michel Foucault. In the past, he has become best known and criticized for his postulation of an epistemological rupture between everyday experience and scientific experience. In my analysis, I emphasize another aspect of the work of Bachelard. It is (...) the way he conceptualizes the relation between scientific thinking and technology in modern science. Within this framework, the notion of "phenomenotechnique" is of crucial importance. It is one of the organizing concepts of Bachelard's historical epistemology, and it serves as the organizing center of this paper. (shrink)

This paper aims to trace the evolution of Bachelard's thought as he gropes toward a concrete formulation of a philosophy of the imagination. Reverie, the creative daydream, occupies the central position in Bachelard's emerging metaphysic, which becomes increasingly “phenomenological” in a manner reminiscent of Husserl. This means that although Bachelard does not use Husserlian terms, he appropriates the following features of (Husserlian) phenomenology: 1. a desire to “embracket” the initial (rationalistic) impulse; and 2. an aspiration to apprehend in its entirety, (...) the creative epiphany of an image. Ultimately, this paper aims to show that there is a sense in which Bachelard's metaphysical concerns in his poetics are an outgrowth of (rather than radical break from) his earlier scientific and epistemological concerns. What results in reverie is an aesthetic intentionality providing a metaphysic of the imagination: the aesthetic object, such as fire or water, is an object only insofar as it enables/calls forth a subject to enter into a receptive, self-aware and cosmic state of being; subject-ness and object-ness are intimately and archetypally intertwined. Bachelard's “new poetics” results from his transplantation/cross-fertilization of the general epistemology of the “new scientific spirit” on to/across his aesthetics. (shrink)

Biology and politics have always been permeable to one another, trading metaphors back and forth. This is nowhere more blatant than when people claim to talk about ‘the planet’ as a whole. James Lovelock’s concept of Gaia has often been interpreted as a godlike figure. By reviewing in some detail a critical assessment of Lovelock’s Gaia by one scientist, Toby Tyrrell, the paper tries to map out why it is so difficult for natural as well as social scientists not to (...) confuse Gaia with some sort of Providence. (shrink)

Sigmund Freud – ein bekannter osterreichischer Psychiater, Psychoanalytiker und Neurologe. Er ist der Begrunder der Psychoanalyse, die einen wesentlichen Einfluss auf die Psychologie, Medizin, Soziologie, Anthropologie, Literatur und Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts ausubte. „Die Traumdeutung“ ist die erste bedeutende Monographie des Psychoanalytikers. In diesem Traktat erlautert Freud erstmals einen solchen Schlusselbegriff der Psychoanalyse, wie es das Unbewusste ist.

This classic work is reissued with a new preface by the author. Written for non-scientists the idea is put forward that life on Earth functions as a single organism.

"The Invention of Modern Science proposes a fruitful way of going beyond the apparently irreconcilable positions, that science is either "objective" or "socially constructed." Instead, suggests Isabelle Stengers, one of the most important and influential philosophers of science in Europe, we might understand the tension between scientific objectivity and belief as a necessary part of science, central to the practices invented and reinvented by scientists."--pub. desc.

J'etudie! Je ne suis que le sujet du verbe etudier. Penser je n'ose. Avant de penser, il faut etudier. Seuls les philosophes pensent avant d'etudier. Dans son dernier livre La flamme d'une chandelle, Gaston Bachelard s'est defini comme un etudiant. Nous n'avons pas cru lui etre infidele en presentant ces Etudes reflechies, qui portent trace d'itineraires de recherche et de problematiques. Sont ici rassembles les textes suivants: Noumene et microphysique, La critique du concept de frontiere epistemologique, Idealisme discursif, Lumiere et (...) substance et Le monde comme caprice et miniature. (shrink)

Utilisant les concepts psychanalytiques, l'auteur montre comment, dans la science, le language constitue le véhicule privilégié de l'anthropomorphisme et comment les projections affectives constituent autant d'obstacles épistémiologiques à son développement.

In this new study, Cristina Chimisso explores the work of the French Philosopher of Science, Gaston Bachelard 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. (shrink)

The work of Michel Serres is often presented as a radical break with the work of Gaston Bachelard. The aim of this paper is to partly correct this image, by focusing on Serres’s early Hermes series (1969-1980). In these books Serres portrays himself as a follower of Bachelard, exemplarily shown in his neologism of the ‘new new scientific spirit’ (le nouveau nouvel esprit scientifique), updating Bachelard in the light of more recent scientific developments. This allows a reinterpretation of the relation (...) between both authors, one where there is room to acknowledge how the roots of Serres’s philosophy lie not in a radical break with Bachelard, but can be partly understood as a Bachelardian criticism of Bachelard himself. This Bachelardian criticism consists in what could be called his ‘surrationalism’: the sciences do not follow the categories imposed by philosophers, but are always more flexible and open than these categories allow. Specific critiques of Serres, such as those concerning the novelty of Bachelard’s thought, the role of epistemology and finally the political dimension of science will be evaluated through a reappraisal of this Bachelardian move that underlies Serres’s criticism. (shrink)

Gallileo described the universe in his most famous line: "This grand book is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometrical figures." Why should the laws of nature be subject to statement in such elegantly basic algebra? Why does gravity work by the principle of inverse squares? Why do simple geometrics pervade nature--from the hexagons of the honeycomb, to the complex architecture of crystals? D'Arcy Thompson, author of Growth and Form and my earliest (...) intellectual hero (along with my father and Charles Darwin), wrote that "the harmony of the world is made manifest in Form and Number, and the heart and soul and all the poetry of Natural Philosophy are embodied in the concept of math ematical beauty." Many scientists, if only to coin a striking metaphor, depict a creating God as a mathematician from the realm of Plato or Pythagoras. The physicist James Jeans wrote: "From the intrinsic evidence of his creation, the Great Architect of the Universe now begins to appear as a pure mathematician.". (shrink)