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philosophy of science
Gary Cutting
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Gary Gutting
Because of his demand that the philosopher of science work from the
historical development of the sciences, the center of Bachelard's philosophy
of science is his model of scientific change. This model, which also provides
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his account of the nature of scientific progress, is built around four key
epistemological categories: epistemological breaks, epistemological
obstacles, epistemological profiles, and epistemological acts.
Bachelard employs the concept of an epistemological break in two
contexts. First, he uses it to characterize the way in which scientific
knowledge splits off from and even contradicts common-sense experiences
and beliefs. This sense of 'break' is fundamental for Bachelard, since it
constitutes science as a distinctive cognitive realm: '. . . scientific progress
always reveals a break [rupture], constant breaks, between ordinary
[commune] knowledge and scientific knowledge' (1953, 207). Bachelard
illustrates this claim with several examples that we can use to elucidate the
key features of epistemological breaks. He finds one simple example in a
chemistry text's comment that glass is very similar to wurtzite (zinc sulfite).
The comparison is one that would never occur to common sense, since it is
not based on any overt resemblance of the two substances but on the fact
that they have analogous crystalline structures. Thus, science breaks with
ordinary experience by placing the objects of experience under new
categories that reveal properties and relations not available to ordinary
sense perception.
But we should not think of scientific breaks as merely a matter of
discovering new aspects of ordinary objects, of taking up where everyday
experience leaves off, as a telescope reveals stars not visible to the naked
eye. New, scientific concepts are required to give an adequate account of
even familiar facts. This is very nicely illustrated by the case of Lamarck's
futile efforts to use his exceptional observational abilities to develop an
account of combustion in opposition to Lavoisier's. His approach was to
note carefully the sequence of color changes a piece of white paper
undergoes when burned. On the basis of such observations, Lamarck
interpreted combustion as a process whereby the 'violence' of the fire
'unmasks' the fundamental, underlying color of the paper (black)
by stripping away successive chromatic layers. Bachelard argues that
Lamarck's idea here is not merely wrong in the ordinary way of an
incorrect scientific hypothesis. Rather, it is essentially anachronistic
because it is based on immediate phenomenal experiences that Lavoisier
had already shown to be inadequate for the task of understanding
combustion. 'The time for direct, natural observation in the realm of
chemistry had passed' (1953, 219).
A final example shows how science may break with common-sense
even when employing models based on its language and concepts. This is
the case of Bohr's 'water-drop' model of the atomic nucleus. Via this
model, Bohr pictured the protons and neutrons of the nucleus as forming a
drop of water, the 'temperature' (internal energy) of which increased when
a neutron was added and which partially 'evaporated' when a particle was
emitted from the nucleus. This model was an excellent aid to understanding
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the process of fission, but its use of ordinary concepts must not mislead us.
As Bachelard puts it, such words as 'water-drop', 'temperature', and
'evaporation' occur only in quotation marks. In fact, the words are tacitly
redefined so that they express concepts that 'are totally different . . . from
the concepts of common knowledge' (1953,216). (Imagine, Bachelard says,
the stupidity of asking a physicist to make a thermometer to measure the
'temperature' of the nucleus.)
This last example also illustrates Bachelard's second sort of epistemo-
logical breaks: those that occur between two scientific conceptualizations.
If nuclear 'temperature' is a very different concept from ordinary
phenomenal temperature, it is likewise very different from the classical
conception of temperature as the mean kinetic energy of a collection of
molecules. This illustrates how science develops not only by breaks with
ordinary experience but also by breaks with previous scientific theories.
For Bachelard, the most striking and important such breaks came with
relativity and quantum theory, which he saw as initiating a 'new scientific
spirit.' This 'new spirit' involved not only radically new conceptions of
nature but also new conceptions of scientific method (e.g., new criteria of
explanatory adequacy). Bachelard's detailed treatments of this topic (in,
e.g., La valeur inductive de la relativite and in Le nouvel esprit scientifique)
preceded by two or three decades similar discussions by Anglo-American
historians and philosophers of science such as Kuhn and Feyerabend.
The language of epistemological 'breaks' suggests that there is
something to be broken, a barrier that must be shattered. Bachelard
follows out this suggestion with his notion of an epistemological obstacle.
An epistemological obstacle is any concept or method that prevents an
epistemological break. Obstacles are residues from previous ways of
thinking that, whatever value they may have had in the past, have begun to
block the path of inquiry. Common-sense is, of course, a major source of
epistemological obstacles. Thus, the animism of primitive common-sense,
which inclined people to explain the world on analogy with vital processes
(sex, digestion, etc.) was an obstacle to the development of a mechanistic
physics. Likewise, the still strong common-sense idea that phenomena
must be the attributes of an underlying substance blocked the rejection of
the ether as the locus of electro-magnetic waves. More generally,
Bachelard regards the common-sense mind's reliance on images as a
breeding ground for epistemological obstacles. Images may have heuristic
use in science, but they have no explanatory force; and, if they do their job
properly, they are eventually eliminated from scientific thought. Thus, of
Bohr's planetary model of the atom, Bachelard says: 'The diagram of the
atom provided by Bohr . . . has . . . acted as a good image: there is
nothing left of it' (1940,119). But epistemological obstacles may also arise
from successful scientific work that has outlived its value. The most striking
cases occur when the concepts and principles of an established theory lead
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have to think that the basis of our science will prove any firmer than did
that of our forebearers? But, beyond this, Bachelard argues that there are
no grounds for according Cartesian intellectual intuitions (or any other sort
of claim to direct intuitive knowledge) the privileged certainty that
Descartes does. His critique of intuition centers on the two poles of an
intuitive experience: its subject and its object.
With respect to the latter, the object of a foundational intuition must be
analyzable into a set of simple elements, each known fully and unambigu-
ously. To the extent that the objects of our experience contain hidden
complexities, our judgments about them are subject to correction in the
light of more penetrating analyses. This is why Descartes, in particular,
required that clear and distinct perceptions effect a reduction of their
objects to 'simple natures'. (Similarly, foundationalists in the modern
empiricist tradition take unanalyzable sense data as the ultimate objects of
experience.) Bachelard's criticism of this aspect of foundationalism is that
even the most apparently simple objects of our intuition have later proved
to have complex hidden structures. Their apparent simplicity was really
only an ultimately misleading simplification. Specifically, Bachelard sees
major breaks in the history of science as due to the discovery of hidden
complexities in objects that had been regarded as simple intuitive givens.
One famous example is Einstein's analysis of time and simultaneity.
Another less known but very striking example is the twentieth-century
study of hydrogen through the analysis of its atomic spectrum. (Cf. 1934,
148ff.) Here physicists did at first proceed in accord with the Cartesian
ideal. They began with the simple case of the hydrogen atom (a single
proton orbited by a single electron) and tried to show how the empirical
formula that described its spectrum (the Balmer formula) could be
generalized to arrive at formulae describing the spectra of more complex
atoms. In this way, it seemed that knowledge of complex cases could be
developed from knowledge of the simple case. But in fact the development
was in exactly the opposite direction. 'In order to give a detailed account of
the spectroscopic data, the more complicated spectrum (here that of the
alkaline metals) had to be treated first' (1934, 154-5). For example, the
fine structure of spectral lines (i.e., the doubling noted in what at first seem
to be single lines) was found first in the spectra of more complex atoms;
and, only because it was noted there, did scientists look for it in the
spectrum of hydrogen. Similarly, the role of the angular momentum of the
nucleus (and of the orbiting electrons) was discovered only by paying
attention to the more complex spectra.
In sum, according to Bachelard, the Cartesian approach of beginninng
with the simplest case turned out to be a 'positivism of the first glance'
(1934, 154) that emphasized the most apparent features of the hydrogen
atom over those that are in fact central to an understanding of it. As it
turned out, the spectrum of hydrogen could be properly understood only
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will think as I have to the extent that I make you aware of the problem to
which I have found the solution'. In this way, we achieve the 'sanctioning
[consecration] of our method, the proof of the efficacy of our thought, the
'socialization of truth' (1949, 58).
In this connection, Bachelard speaks of a move from the solitary cogito
to the communal cogitamus (1949, 57) and from individual existence to
social surexistence (1949, 60). (He also speaks of the community of truth as
based on a corationalism.) His key point is that this move from the
personal to the interpersonal is a move from the merely psychological to
the genuinely epistemological whereby 'a psychological value becomes an
epistemological value' and 'personal knowledge acquires a certain security
by becoming the knowledge of the scientific community [une connaissance
de la cite scientifique]' (1949,48). Indeed, he even exploits the psychological
connection by developing a notion of an 'intellectual superego' {surmoi)
(1949, 75) that is the internal expression of objective epistemological
norms. This notion is the basis of Bachelard's complex account of the
'intellectual surveillance of the self, whereby rational thinkers monitor
and evaluate various levels of their cognitive activity (1949, Chapter 3).
As presented here, Bachelard seems to hold a consensus account of
scientific justification and objectivity. The validity of knowledge-claims is
assured by the agreement of the community of inquirers. However, he at
one point poses a standard objection to such an account - the possibility of
a false consensus - and, in responding to it, seems to move in the direction
of a coherence account. While agreeing that 'two minds can agree in the
same error,' he points out that truth and error are not simply inverses of
one another in the process of the development of inquiry.
. . . error and truth are not symmetrical, as a purely logical and formal
philosophy might lead us to believe. In the sciences, truths group into
systems, whereas errors are lost in a formless mixture. In other words,
truths are linked together apodictically while errors accumulate
assertorically (1949, 58-9).
But even here, Bachelard may still be giving priority to consensus, since he
immediately goes on to contrast rational systems of truths that are codified
into books 'provided with the guarantee of the scientific community' with
the errors found in books that are 'most often characterized by a detestable
originality' (1949, 59). It seems that, in the end, he does not provide an
entirely clear and cogent account of the grounds of scientific objectivity.
Correlative to Bachelard's critique of foundationalism is his rejection of
realism. The correlation is apparent from the definition of realism he offers
in an early book: '. . . realism [is] . . . any doctrine that maintains the
organization of impressions on the level of the impressions themselves,
that places the general after the particular, as a simplification of the
particular, that consequently believes in the prolix richness of the
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it to x-rays: 'Thanks to the slow cooling of the ball of wax, the surface
molecules will be oriented in a precise way relative to the surface of the
drop. This orientation will determine the diffraction pattern of the x-rays
and yield spectrograms similar to those obtained . . . for crystals.' On the
basis of established results with crystals, the scientist will expect these
spectrograms to provide explanations of many of the wax's surface
properties (smoothness, adherence, oiliness, etc.). Bachelard goes on to
suggest how further techniques might be employed to determine the
molecular structure of the wax at deeper levels. But the essential point
should be already clear: scientific observation consists in the systematic
manipulation of an object on the basis of a theoretical preunderstanding of
it. The scientist treats the object as he does because an already accepted
theory tells him that this is how to reveal the object's secrets. The very
process of scientific observation is based on a theoretical redescription of
the object that characterizes it in terms of very different categories (e.g.,
'chemically pure sample', 'orientation of surface molecules') from those of
untutored experience. 'For science, then, the qualities of reality are
functions of our rational methods . . . "Objective meditation" [in contrast
to Descartes' "subjective meditation" on the wax] in the laboratory
commits us to a path of progressive objectification that gives reality to both
a new form of experience and a new form of thought' (1934, 171). In this
process, the familiar sensory objects enshrined by realism are left far
behind.
It is apparent that what Bachelard calls 'realism' is a variety of what
current analytic philosophers of science call 'antirealism' and that
Bachelard's own view is a form of what they call 'scientific realism'.
Moreover, Bachelard's defense of scientific realism has important advan-
tages over some more recent defenses. For one thing, it does not present
realism as merely the result of a peremptory demand for further,
theoretical causes of phenomena that are already adequately accounted for
by empirical generalizations. Like Wilfrid Sellars, Bachelard bases his case
for realism on the inadequacy of the 'manifest framework' of everyday
observation-language and the corresponding explanatory superiority of
theoretical frameworks. Further, whereas many recent versions of realism
find themselves in tension with historical accounts (a la Kuhn) of radical
changes in scientific concepts, Bachelard's realism is built on a model of
scientific development that allows such changes. Specifically, his notion of
I'histoire sanctionee provides a way of reconciling the scientific progress
required by realist accounts with historical discontinuity.
However, while Bachelard provides a valuable approach to the defense
of scientific realism (i.e., of the ontological superiority of the framework of
theoretical science), he is not willing to accept a full-blooded metaphysical
realism. That is, he is not willing to assert baldly the mind-independent
existence of the entities encountered by science. Instead, he proposes what
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NOTE
REFERENCES
Bachelard, G. (1927), Essai sur la connaissance approché, Vrin.
Bachelard, G. (1929), La valeur inductive de la relativité, Vrin.
Bachelard, G. (1933), L'histoire des sciences dans l'enseignment, Publications de
l'enseignment scientifique, no. 2.
Bachelard, G. (1934), Le nouvel esprit scientifique, Presses Universitaires de
France. References will be to the English translation by Arthur Goldhammer,
The New Scientific Spirit, Beacon Press, 1984.
Bachelard, G. (1938), La formation de l'esprit scientifique, Vrin.
Bachelard, G. (1940), La philosophie du non, Presses Universitaires de France.
References will be to the English translation by G.C. Waterson, The
Philosophy of No, Orion Press, 1969.
Bachelard, G. (1949), Le rationalisme appliqué, Presses Universitaires de France.
Bachelard, G. (1951), L'activité rationalist de la physique contemporaine, Presses
Universitaires de France.
Bachelard, G. (1953), Le matérialisme rationnel, Presses Universitaires de France.
Canguilhem, G. (1970), Etudes d'histoire et de philosophie des sciences (second
edition), Vrin.
Canguilhem, G. (1977), Idéologie et rationalité, Vrin.
Foucault, M. (1985), 'La vie: l'expérience et la science', Revue de métaphysique et
de morale, LXX.
Smith, Roch C. (1982), Gaston Bachelard, Twayne.
Tiles, M. (1984), Bachelard: Science and Objectivity, Cambridge University Press.
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