- Bachelard] is neither a self-confessed and tortured atheist like Satre, nor, like Chardin, a heretic combining a belief in God with a proficiency in modern science. But, within the French context, he is almost as important as they are because he has a pseudo-religious force, without taking a stand on religion. To define him as briefly as possible - he is a philosopher, with a professional training in the sciences, who devoted most of the second phase of his career to promoting that aspect of human nature which often seems most inimical to science: the poetic imagination ...- - J.G....

Das grundlegend Neue im wissenschaftlichen Denken seiner Zeit zu erfassen und systematisch auf seine wissenschaftstheoretischen Konsequenzen zu untersuchen, diese Aufgabe stellt Bachelard sich in Der neue wissenschaftliche Geist (Originalausgabe 1934).

Gaston Bachelard ist der eigentliche Begrnder der zeitgenssischen Epistemologie. Er hat einen neuen Forschungsbereich nicht nur entdeckt, sondern zum Teil auch bereits erforscht und aufgehellt. Strenggenommen ist seine Epistemologie eine Phnomenologie der Naturwissenschaften. Letzten Endes zeigt uns die ganze Epistemologie Gaston Bachelards, wie der Wissenschaftler allmhlich erst die Grundlagen seines Gebiets erobert. (Jean Hyppolit)

Bachelards epistemologische Grundauffassung, die ihn zu seinen Versuchen einer "Psychoanalyse der objektiven Erkenntnis" veranlaßte, lautet: die Wissenschaftstheorie ist von den Ergebnissen der empirischen Disziplinen abhängig, nicht umgekehrt. Alltägliche und wissenschaftliche Erfahrung sind voneinander getrennt; wenn die Wissenschaft Fortschritte macht, dann gegen die Hindernisse, die ihr aus der alltäglichen Erfahrung erwachsen. Die Wissenschaft geht nicht von Vorgegebenheiten aus, sondern konstruiert.

A beloved multidisciplinary treatise comes to Penguin Classics

Since its initial publication in 1958, The Poetics of Space has been a muse to philosophers, architects, writers, psychologists, critics, and readers alike. The rare work of irresistibly inviting philosophy, Bachelard's seminal work brims with quiet revelations and stirring, mysterious imagery. This lyrical journey takes as its premise the emergence of the poetic image and finds an ideal metaphor in the intimate spaces of our homes. Guiding us through a stream of meditations on poetry, art, and the blooming of...

In The Dialectic of Duration Gaston Bachelard addresses the nature of time in response to the writings of his great contemporary, Henri Bergson. The work is motivated by a refutation of Bergson's notion of duration - 'lived time', experienced as continuous. For Bachelard, experienced time is irreducibly fractured and interrupted, as indeed are material events. At stake is an entire conception of the physical world, an entire approach to the philosophy of science. It was in this work that Bachelard first marshalled all the components of his visionary philosophy of science, with its steady...

In The Dialectic of Duration Gaston Bachelard addresses the nature of time in response to the writings of his great contemporary, Henri Bergson. The work is motivated by a refutation of Bergson's notion of duration - 'lived time', experienced as continuous. For Bachelard, experienced time is irreducibly fractured and interrupted, as indeed are material events. At stake is an entire conception of the physical world, an entire approach to the philosophy of science. It was in this work that Bachelard first marshalled all the components of his visionary philosophy of science, with its steady...