The Formation of the Scientific Mind

The Formation of the Scientific Mind GASTON BACHELARD The Formation of the Scientific Mind A Contribution to a Psychoanalysis of Objective Knowledge GASTON BACHE LARD Introduced, translated and annotated by Mary MeAl/ester Jones ('III,j IIf tJ Ii J'Sty Copyright © Clinamen Press 2002 Translation © Mary McAllester Jones 2002 Contents Introduction © Mary McAllester Jones 2002 The right of Mary McAllester Jones to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Translator's note vii Clinamen Press Ltd Introduction by Mary MeAl/esterJo nes Unit B Aldow Enterprise Park ord Blackett Street Forew 17 Manchester MI26AE The idea ofthe epistemological obstacle 24 www.clinamen.co.uk 2 The first obstacle: primary experience 33 Published in French by Librairie Philosophique J. VRIN as La Formation de I 'Esprit ScientiJique 3 General knowledge as an obstacle to scientific �owledge 64 © J. VRIN 1938 t 6, Place de la Sorbonne F - 65005 Paris 4 An example of a verbal obstacle: sponge. On the 81 over-extension of familiar images Two slightly adapted sections of this work previously published in McAllester Jones, Mary, Gaston Bachelard, Subversive 5 Unitary and pragmatic knowledge as an obstacle to 91 Humanist © 1991. Reprinted by permission of the University of scientific knowledge Wisconsin Press 6 All rights reserved. No part of this edition may be reproduced, stored The substantialist obstacle 104 in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording 7 Psychoanalysing realists 136 or otherwise) without the written permission of the publishers. 8 The animist obstacle 154 A catalogue record for this book is available fromthe British Library 9 The myth of digestion 172 ISBN paperback 190308320 6 10 ISBN hardback I 903083 23 0 The libido and objective knowledge 185 1 3 579 8 642 11 The obstacles to quantitative knowledge 211 12 Scientific objectivity and psychoanalysis 237 Typeset in Times New Roman with Verdana display by Clinamen Press Ltd, Manchester Index Printed and Bound in the United Kingdom by 251 The Bath Press, Av on Translator's note Gaston Bachelard's The Formation of the Scientific Mind is his best known book in France, for many years on the school and university syllabus, and this is the first English translation of the work. The range of material Bachelard covers here has fa ced the translator with a number of challenges, in particular with regard to the seventeenth and eighteenth-century pre-sci entific texts he cites. I am very grateful to Bill Ross of Clinamen Press fo r tracking down some of the original English texts used by Bachelard in their French translations; I am grateful too to the librarians at Birmingham Uni versity Library who permitted me to consult Joseph Priestley's own copy of his Historyand Present State of Electricity, a book which Bachelard clearly knows well in translation. Thanks to them, I have been able to cite Boerhaave, MacBride, Hitchcock, and Priestley in the original English. I have, where necessary, amended and corrected Bachelard's fo otnotes; it has not always been possible however to remedy his omissions, despite much effort, the clues he gives regarding his sources proving at times too slender. Full details of a work cited are given in a note when Bachelard first refers to it; when subsequent references are made, readers who wish to can look back to these details by checking the author 's name in the Index; when Bachelard draws on several works by the same author, these are specified at each reference. I wish to record here my very warm thanks to friends and colleagues to whom I have turned with questions fo r the time they have given me. I am especially grateful to Ron Abbott, of the Department of Classics at Boston High School, for translations of the Latin phrases Bachelard uses here, and to Phil Cooke and Malcolm Pender, both colleagues in the Department of Mod em Languages at the University of Strathclyde, for their translations of Ital ian and German quotations respectively. I am indebted to The University of Wisconsin Press fo r kind permis sion to use translated extracts from The Formation of the ScientificMi nd that THE FORMATION OF THE SCIENTIFIC MIND first appeared in my book Gaston Bachelard, Subversive Humanist, pub Introduction lished by th em in 1991. Some small amendments have been made here to th ose original translations. I would also like to th ank very sincerely all th ose I have worked with at Clinamen Press for th eir unfailing helpfulness, pa tience, and professionalism. Th is translation owes much to the support of my husband Robert McAllester Jones, who has once again bornewit h my questions and quanda ries: for his understanding, his discussions, and his practicality in keeping th ings running in wh at has been for many months a Bachelard-dominated household, I am truly grateful. Mary McAllester Jones Published in 1938, The Formation o/ the Scientific Mind seems from its title to break with Bachelard's previous work wh ich, in the decade fo llow ing th e appearance ofhi s firstbook in 1928, had been ch iefly concernedwit h the epistemology of post-Einsteinian science, with what he came to call th e 'new scientificmin d'. 'Formation' does not th ough signal a sh iftin interest to th e history of how the scientific mind was fo rmed: Bach elard makes it clear from th e beginning th at he writes as an epistemologist and not as a historian, carefullydemarcating th ese two activities. 'Historians of science' , he says, 'have to take ideas as facts. Epistemologists have to take facts as ideas and place th em within a system of th ought. A fa ct that a whole era had misunderstood remains a/act in historians' eyes. For epistemologists how ever, it is an obstacle, a counter-thought' (27). Bachelard stresses th at episte mology is normative, dealing with ideas th at 'have had an intellectual des tiny' (22) and working from 'the standpoint of developed reason, fo r it is only now th at we can really judge th e errors of th e mind's past' (27). As an epistemologist, he is concerned th erefore with th e forming of th e scientific mind. This active sense of 'formation' in Bachelard's use of th e word is very clear wh en he argues th at 'the scientific mind must be formed by being re formed' (33), implying that far from being complete and achieved, th e fo r mation of the scientific mind is an ongoing process. It is clear too when he discusses teaching - 'formation' inFrench also means teaching or training a discussion he not only pursues throughout this book but with wh ich he chooses to conclude it, affirming that 'the principle of continued culture is moreover at th e root of modem scientific culture ... There is science only if schooling is permanent' (249). Th ere is another strand in th is active sense of 'fornlation', fo r twice Bachelard uses the phrase 'psychologically formative' to describe modem VIII THE FORMATION OF THE SCIENTIFIC MIND GASTON BACHELARD scientific th ought (103, 246). Th is can be set alongside two key statements. situations that arise, so that our actions may be adjusted to fit new Early in th e book, Bachelard offers th e fo llowing definition of human be circumstances? It is this inflection of the mind's past as a result of the ings: 'Through th e mental revolutions that scientific invention requires, hu attractive fo rce exerted by an inexhaustible reality that constitutes the mankind becomes a mutating species, or to put it better still, a species that dynamic element ofknowledge.3 needs to mutate, th at suffers if it does not ch ange. Mentally, humans need to need' (26). Th en in his final ch apter, he clarifies th is notion of a 'mutating Ten years later, Bachelard has realised th at th e senses are not so easily species' wh en he writes th at 'An objective discovery is at once a subjective relegated, and th at th e mind's past can obstruct rather th an advance knowl rectification. If th e object teaches me, th en it modifiesme. I ask th at th e ch ief edge. He is now convinced th at 'the problemof scientificknow ledge must be benefitth e obj ect brings sh ould be an intellectual modification' (246). posed in terms of obstacles', epistemological obstacles 'at th e very heart of Bachelard's use of 'I' sh ows his commitment to th e idea of intellectual modi th e act of cognition' (24). Th ey require wh at he terms 'cognito-affective con fication wh ich , like th ose of mental revolution and mutation, helps us to un trol' (29) and psychoanalysis. derstand his view of modem scientific th ought as 'psychologically forma Psychoanalysis may well seem an odd concept to use in a book con tive'. We see th en th at Bachelard is also concernedhe re with th e fo rmation cernedwit h epistemology, especially wh en we remember th at in French th is of th e mind by modem science. Th e word 'formation' is a rich one th erefore is defined as th e study of scientific knowledge. Psychoanalysis is surely to and although Bachelard came to regard his title as ill-chosen! - perhaps be do with irrationality, so how can reason and objective knowledge be psycho cause of th e tendency fo r th is book to be seen as history, as an often enter analysed? Early in th e book, Bachelard explicitly links psychoanalysis to taining narrative of human error and fo lly - it is also very apt, its plurality philosophy of science, arguing th at 'the task of th e ph ilosophy of science is and variation obliging readers to ask questions, to have the 'sense of th e very clear: it is to psychoa nalyse interest, to destroy all utilitarianism, how problem' th at fo r Bachelard 'marks out th e true scientific mind' (25).

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