Bachelardian and Continental Epistemologies

The work of Gaston Bachelard is often taken to exemplify French historical epistemology to the point that the latter is sometimes reductively identified with the former. Bachelard teaches chemistry and physics in lycées before succeeding Abel Rey in 1940 as professor of history and philosophy of science at the Sorbonne and as director of the Institut d’histoire des sciences et des techniques (IHST). Although Bachelard belongs to the same generation as the founding members of the Vienna Circle and becomes acquainted with their works, a sustained dialogue with the views of the logical empiricists never got off the ground. This partly explains why Bachelard’s “heritage” has to a large extent remained “invisible” (Knapp and Brin‑ guier 1972) – especially outside France, where he is sometimes better known for his works of poetry and imagination than for his epistemological writing. The “missed encounter” between Bachelardian epistemology and the so‑called “Popperian school” also played a role in this relative neglect. A closer engagement with the novel epistemological elements introduced by Bachelard would have been beneficial to the unfolding of Anglophone discussions around the philosophy of scientific experiment, a pluralist philosophy of science, and the historiography of science. In this chapter, I will provide an overview of each of these three aspects of Bachelard’s reflection.