Gaston Bachelard 'The Poetics of Space' - WordPress.com

xiiforeword to the 1964 editionplain to his public the reasons behind his recent estheticinterests.As a young philosopher, Bachelard had devoted his attentionto the problems raised by the nature of scientificknowledge, especially in physics. It was as a specialist inthe philosophy of science that he first made himself knownand established his reputation. Thirteen volumes, if I amnot mistaken, in which scientific competence went hand inhand with philosophical acumen, amply justified his reputation.Among them, one title at least should be mentionedat this place, namely The Experience of Space in ContemporaryPhysics. What I want to make dear, however,is that, as a university professor his whole career was foundedupon his philosophical critique of scientific knowledge andhis conception of a free type of rationalism, quite differentfrom the abstract mode of thinking which the word usuaIIydesignates, and wholly bent upon the art of using reasonas an instrument to achieve an always closer approach toconcrete reality.At that time, the future of Bachelard's career was easy toforetell. Having specialized, as they say, in the philosophyof science, he was likely to write a dozen more books on thesame subject. But things. were not to be that way. Bachelardfired his first warning shot when he unexpectedly publisheda book curiously entitled The Psychoanalysis of Fire. Idistinctly remember my first reaction to it. It was: Whatare they going to say? Who, they? Well, we, all of us, thecolleagues. After appointing a man to teach the philosophyof science and seeing him successfully do so for a numberof years, we don't like to learn that he has suddenly turnedhis interest to a psychoanalysis of the most unorthodox sort,since what then was being psychoanalyzed was not evenpeople, but an element.More volumes in the same vein were to follow duringthe course of years: Water and' Dreams, Air and Revery,The Earth and the Reveries of the Will, The Earth and theReveries of Rest, in which Bachelard was resolutely turningfrom the universe of reason and science to that of imaginationand poetry. Everything in them was new and I feel