Gaston Bachelard

About the author

Gaston Bachelard (1884–1962), born in Bar-sur-Aube, was a French philosopher whose dual legacy spans the philosophy of science and poetics. He introduced the influential concepts of the epistemological obstacle and epistemological break, arguing that scientific knowledge advances not smoothly but through ruptures. Rejecting the positivist view of a fixed scientific object, he treated empiricism and rationalism as complementary rather than opposed.

His ideas shaped a generation of major French thinkers, including Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Louis Althusser, Pierre Bourdieu, and Bruno Latour.