Gaston Bachelard
Gaston Bachelard
Gaston Bachelardwas a French philosopher. He made contributions in the fields of poetics and the philosophy of science. To the latter he introduced the concepts of epistemological obstacle and epistemological break. He influenced many subsequent French philosophers, among them Michel Foucault, Louis Althusser, Dominique Lecourt and Jacques Derrida, as well as the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth27 June 1884
CountryFrance
fire fields rich
At all times and in all fields the explanation by fire is a rich explanation.
dream house steps
To go upstairs in the word house is to withdraw step by step; while to go down to the cellar is to dream
substance nouns body
What action could bodies and substances have if they were not named in a further increase of dignity where common nouns become proper nouns?
happiness lasts illusion
The reverie would not last if it were not nourished by the images of the sweetness of living, by the illusions of happiness.
knowledge cutting exercise
In scientific thought, the concept functions all the better for being cut off from all background images. In its full exercise, the scientific concept is free from all the delays of its genetic evolution, an evolution which is consequently explained by simple psychology. The virility of knowledge increases with each conquest of the constructive abstraction.
metaphor
The metaphor is~ an origin, the origin of an image which acts directly, immediately.
shells stories clamor
Words are clamor-filled shells. There's many a story in the miniature of a single word!
childhood lasts
Childhood lasts all through life.
feminine ifs
If we did not have a feminine being within us, how would we rest ourselves?
destiny men deep-water
To disappear into deep water or to disappear toward a far horizon, to become part of depth of infinity, such is the destiny of man that finds its image in the destiny of water.
water mind purity
The human mind has claimed for water one of its highest values-the value of purity.
world calm conquest
The reflected world is the conquest of calm
would-be response scientific-knowledge
All knowledge is in response to a question. If there were no question, there would be no scientific knowledge. Nothing proceeds from itself.
reflection glasses mankind
It is not a question of observation which propels mankind forward as if toward a looking glass of great magnitude; it is an instance of aggrandized reflection that insinuates the human psyche to the inhuman.