Les intuitions atomistiques: essai de classification

SUNY Series in Contemporary French Thought

by Gaston Bachelard, Daniel Parrochia

Sixieme livre de Gaston Bachelard, Les Intuitions atomistiques (1933), constituent une curiosite des son sous-titre: essai de classification. Loin de la methode habituelle des philosophes, familiers des monographies, l'auteur se livre ici a des comparaisons de doctrines. Une discontinuite revelant des symetries et des antisymetries, deux systemes de pensees, ramenes a leurs intuitions, sont parfois reductibles a une forme unique. L'auteur n'hesite donc pas a regrouper des mondes que tout separe: l'atomistique ancienne de Democrite et Lucrece, l'atomisme positiviste et criticiste, l'atomisme axiomatique de la physique moderne. Bachelard n'est pas un historien. C'est un classificateur.

Genres: Philosophy

180 pages, Paperback

Published March 22, 2016

About the author

Gaston Bachelard was a French philosopher who rose to some of the most prestigious positions in the French academy. His most important work is on poetics and on the philosophy of science. To the latter he introduced the concepts of epistemological obstacle and epistemological break (obstacle épistémologique et rupture épistémologique). He influenced many subsequent French philosophers, among them Michel Foucault and Louis Althusser.

Reviews

[Jenny Webb]

Epistemology of science, specifically an investigation of the history of atomism and its continuing pulse in the light of the early twentieth century physics. Personally I found the chapter “Metaphysics of Dust” the most useful, but I readily admit that my readings in atomism generally are insufficient to fully grasp Bachelard’s project here. That said, this book has made me want to learn more.