Gaston bachelard Biography

Gaston Bachelard

(Bar-sur-Aube, 1884-Paris, 1962) French philosopher.He was a professor at the Sorbonne (1940-1954) and specialized in epistemology ( The formation of the scientific spirit , 1938).He also studied poetic imagination in relation to the four elements, in works such as Psychoanalysis of Fire (1938), Water and Dreams (1941) and Poetics of space (1957).

Gaston Bachelard

Gaston Bachelard received his doctorate in exact sciences in 1912 and, after being employed post and telegraph clerk for several years, he taught physics and chemistry at a secondary school in his hometown.In 1930 he served as professor of philosophy at the University of Dijon, and was finally awarded the chair of History and Philosophy of Science at the Sorbonne University, which he ran until his retirement.He collaborated with F.Gouseth and P.Bernays in the direction of the journal Dialectica , and was also director of the Institut d'Histoire des Sciences.

His activity, which resulted in an important production of works, constantly presents a double character: on the one hand, a work of reflection on the sciences, especially on modern physics and chemistry, to develop a theory of science or epistemology; on the other, his work as an essayist and writer dedicated to showing the centrality in man of "imagination" and dream activity.He was inspired by both scientific rationalism and Freud's psychoanalysis and the vitalist interpretations that the latter had had in France.

His own production is quite clearly divided into two groups.On the one hand, his fundamental Essay on approximate knowledge (1928), The new scientific spirit (1934), The formation of the scientific spirit.Contribution to a psychoanalysis of objective knowledge (1938), The rationalist activity of contemporary physics (1951) and The philosophy of no.Essay of a philosophy of the new scientific spirit (1940), which together with other minor essays (on chemistry or on the problem of time and space in modern physics), constitute the nucleus of his epistemology.

On the other, his main writings on literature and imagination: Psychoanalysis of fire (1938), Lautréamont (1939), Water and the dreams (1941), The air and the dreams (1943) and The earth and the dreams of the will (1948); the influence of Carl Gustav Jung can be seen in them in some respects.Between 1949 and 1953 his interest in epistemology reappeared with force, with titles such as Applied Rationalism (1949) and Rational Materialism (1953), while in the latter period the world of "rêverie" prevails in his life: The Poetics of Space (1957), The Poetics of Dreaming (1961) and The Flame of a candle (1961).

But his works on science and writings on the imagination have a common root for him, in that they constitute two responses to the situation of man.The answer of science is based on a new relationship between scientific thought and philosophy, thanks to which scientific thought frees itself from the false concepts (or naturalizations) that philosophy produces spontaneously, since science must construct its own concepts with full theoretical autonomy.

According to Gaston Bachelard, this work is favored by the great leap that physics has made, especially with the contributions of Einstein's theory of relativity and quantum mechanics.But man is instinctively drawn into unscientific naturalization, which is reflected in the activity of imagination, fantasy, and dream, or in poetic activity.Science and imagination are equally valid, and even complementary, paths, and represent two ways to rise above the confused daily life of the concrete.Much of Bachelard's epistemological contributions have been taken up by Louis Althusser and his school.

Comments

The science of the Maya

We wanted to make an article dedicated exclusively to Science that managed to develop a culture, whose evolution remained independent of any other influence, since the existence of not only this Mayan civilization is unknown, but from all over the continent. The Maya, a civilization capable of thriving and developing surprising skills and knowledge, perhaps this is why they have been considered "the Greeks of pre-Hispanic America." The mathematical contributions , scientists, astronomers and doctors, continues to impress and surprise us, let's start by discovering what was the Science of the Maya. The Science of the Mayas | Fields of Science Of the cultures 4 most important American cultures, Mayans, Aztecs, Incas and Chiboas, Mayan culture was the most extensive in time, in addition to being the most important culture for its advanced knowledge in different sciences, such as art, architecture, crafts, astronomy, etc.It was the only culture capable o...

Carlos Alberto Arroyo del Rio Biography

Carlos Alberto Arroyo del Río (Guayaquil, 1894-1969) Ecuadorian politician.Lawyer and professor, he served as head of the Liberal Party.He was elected to the presidency in 1940, but abuses in using extraordinary powers for his personal political ends caused widespread discontent that culminated in the revolutionary movement in Guayaquil in 1944, in which Arroyo was overthrown.

Joseph Goebbels Biography

Joseph Goebbels (Rheydt, Germany, 1897-Berlin, 1945) German politician.The son of a wealthy Catholic family, he received a careful education and was soon noted for his brilliant intelligence.A physical defect in the legs exempted him from joining the ranks in the First World War.In 1921 he graduated in Germanic philology from the University of Heidelberg and tried to live as a writer and journalist, but had little success. Joseph Goebbels At the same time, his views were drifting towards approaches increasingly closer to National Socialism, until he ended up joining the Nazi party in 1923.After a rapid rise to the top of power, in 1926 he was appointed Gauleiter (zone leader) of Berlin, a position in which he began to demonstrate his skill as a provocative orator and skilled propagandist in a series of local campaigns. In 1930 he became the head of the Propaganda Division; Goebbels translated his regional strategy to a national level and established the principles of manipul...

Giambattista Tiepolo Biography

Giambattista Tiepolo (Giambattista or Giovanni Battista Tiepolo; Venice, 1696-Madrid, 1770) Italian painter.He studied the works of Sebastiano Ricci, Veronese and Giovanni Battista Piazzetta, and imitated the chromaticism, with its violent chiaroscuro effects, of the latter.In his early ceiling paintings (Archinti and Dugnani palaces in Milan) he reaffirmed his decorative talent, based on architectural perspectives, trompe-l'oeil paintings and moving crowds. His first important work, the decorative cycle of the archiepiscopal palace of Udine (1727-1728), composed of biblical narratives, already denotes in the conformation of the figures (of great naturalism) and in the composition of the same contributions from the artist himself, although certain influences from Sebastiano Ricci and Veronese are still detected. Feast of Antony and Cleopatra (c.1743), by Tiepolo In Milan he worked in the Clerici Palace; in Venice he did it in the Scalzi church and in the Labia palace.The...

Adolfo Bioy Casares Biography

Adolfo Bioy Casares (Buenos Aires, 1914-1999) Argentine writer, one of the most prominent authors of universal fantastic literature.Member of a family of Buenos Aires landowners, in 1929 he wrote Prologue , a manuscript that his father revised and had it printed.His early vocation for letters was encouraged by his family, and in 1933 he published the volume of short stories Seventeen shots against the future . Adolfo Bioy Casares Soon he became culturally linked to the cosmopolitan circle of Sur magazine; his friendship with Jorge Luis Borges would be decisive in his literary career.In 1932 he met Borges at the home of Victoria Ocampo, and also his sister Silvina Ocampo, who became his wife in 1940.The close friendship with Borges lasted until his death in 1986 and gave rise to a series of written works.in collaboration and signed with the pseudonyms of B.Suárez Lynch, H.Bustos Domecq, B.Lynch Davis and Gervasio Montenegro: Six problems for Don Isidro Parodi (1942), Two mem...

Bruno Bettelheim Biography

Bruno Bettelheim (Vienna, 1903-Los Angeles, 1990) American psychoanalyst of Austrian origin.During the years of his formation he was in contact with the strong Viennese cultural environment, and especially with the first generation of Freud's disciples.Bettelheim, however, would soon depart from the orthodox approaches of psychoanalysis, highlighting the importance of the family educational environment in the psychological balance of the child. Bruno Bettelheim After being interned in the Dachau and Buchenwald camps (he was of Jewish origin), Bettelheim managed to go into exile to the United States in 1939, where he was a professor of Educational Psychology, director of the Chicago Orthogenic School (1947-1973) and, since 1963, professor of Psychiatry at the University of Chicago. His first study, which can be registered, like the rest of his work, within the current of American "ego psychology", is based on his personal experience of internment in concentration ...

Josef Willem Mengelberg Biography

Josef Willem Mengelberg (Utrecht, 1871-Zuort, 1951) Dutch conductor.He studied in his hometown with Richard Hol, Henri Wilhelm Petri and Anton Averkamp and later moved to Cologne (Germany), in whose conservatory he studied theory and counterpoint with G.Jensen, piano with I.Seiss and organ with F.W.Franke, in addition to directing and composing with Franz Wüllner. He was musical director of the Lucerne Conservatory in 1892 and years later, in 1895, he obtained the position of director of the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra, a position he held until 1945.He also continued directing the Museum Concerts group in Frankfurt between 1907 and 1920.From 1899 he annually conducted the Amsterdam Toonkunst Choir in its interpretation of the Passion According to Saint Matthew by JS Bach. He also conducted the American National Symphony Orchestra in New York between 1920 and 1929 and was principal conductor of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra from 1921 until he left it due to differen...

Aimé Bonpland Biography

Aimé Bonpland (Aimé, Amado or Amadeo Jacques Alexandre Bonpland; La Rochelle, 1773-Saint Anne, 1858) French naturalist.A member of the scientific expedition that accompanied Humboldt to South America, he collected the results of that trip in several volumes.His work Journey to the equinoctial regions of the new continent (1813 and 1815) stands out. Amado Bonpland, a French scholar who lived in Argentina in 1817 in 1858, he was a doctor and botanist, academic and horse gaucho, farmer and industrialist, scholar and simple man; He rendered multiple services to Argentina and his biography could serve as a plot for a novel.The son of a doctor and farmer, he was born in La Rochelle on August 28, 1773.He studied medicine in Paris, but his vocation inclined him to the natural sciences, particularly botany, and he listened with fervor to the classes of the greats: Jean-Baptiste by Lamarck, René Desfontaines and Antoine Laurent de Jussieu. Bonpland later moved to Rochefort, where he stu...

Giovanni leone Biography

Giovanni Leone (Naples, 1908-Rome, 2001) Italian politician, President of the Republic from December 1971 to December 1978.He obtained a law degree in 1930 and a year later he graduated in Social and Political Sciences from the University of Camerino, where he was a student of Enrico de Nicola, future President of the Republic.In 1933, after obtaining a doctorate in both specialties, he began his teaching career, which throughout his life would alternate with politics and the practice of law from his Neapolitan law firm. He held the chair of Law at the universities of Camerino, Messina, Bari, Naples and Rome.He enrolled in the Christian Democracy (DC) in 1944, and in 1945 he was elected political secretary of the Neapolitan section.Likewise, with the end of the war he was awarded the rank of lieutenant colonel of the military justice system.In 1946 he was elected deputy in the Constituent Assembly and was part of the "Commission of 75" that drew up the Constitution. Ag...

Henri Cartier-Bresson Biography

Henri Cartier-Bresson (Chanteloup-en-Brie, 1908-Montjustin, 2004) French photographer.After a first stage as a draftsman and painter, from 1930 he began a decisive turn towards photography through his publications in Vu magazine. Henri Cartier-Bresson In 1937 he filmed Victoire de la vie , a documentary film about republican Spain; from then on he specialized in photographic reporting, being one of the first to use the 35mm camera.During the Second World War he was interned in various German prison camps.He managed to escape at last and reach Paris, where he joined the French Resistance.He made photographic reports on the German occupation and withdrawal from France. In 1945 he directed the documentary Le retour for the United States war information office, and two years later he organized an exhibition of his photographs at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MOMA).That same year he founded with Robert Capa, David Seymour and other photographers the international coopera...

History Today Online

Search This Blog