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From General Semantics Bulletin Spring-Summer 1953 (Numbers 12 & 13)
K O R Z Y B S K I A N D H I S W O R K
Gaston Bachelard
La Sorbonne, Paris
Translator's Note: Professor Gaston Bachelard, honorary trustee of the Institute of General Semantics and professor of the History and Philosophy of Sciences at La Sorbonne, is director of the Section on Logic and the Philosophy of Sciences for the Bibliothèque de Philosophie Contemporaine, published by Presses Universitaires de France. His own works cover a wide range, as may be judged by such titles as Le Nouvel Esprit Scientifique, L'expérience de l'Espace Dans la Physique Contemporaine, Le Pluralisme Cohérent de la Chimie Moderne, La Fromacion de l'Esprit Scientifique, La Psychanalyse de Feu<, L'Eau et les Rêves, etc..
The pages that follow are a translation of Section VI of Chapter V of his La Philosophie du Non, published in 1940, by Presses Universitaires de France.
To a person who is not familiar with Bachelard's thinking, La Philosophie du Non p. . . sounds like a paradox ; . . . I know it from experience. At first I understood that Bachelard was philosophizing on the non of non=Newtonian, non-Euclidian and non-Aristotelian. This is true, but his thinking goes beyond that. Nis thesis is, to use E.T. Bell's words, that 'finality is not sought, for it is apparently unattainable.' Or, to quote A.N. Whitehead : 'The negative judgment is the pead of mentality.' (Both quotations from Science and Sanity, pp. 367, 369.)
Bachelard sees philosophy as teding to build systems that are all-embracing and closed. He sees science as a pluralistic and open discipline. His philosophy of science borrows its characteristics from science ; it is non-philosophial in the classical sense. It says 'no' to allness and toclosure. It is a super-philosophy, encompassing philosophy and science, both of which are in evolution, systematically refusing to step where they are. For him, the science of today negates the finality of the science of yesterday, and science-in-process must negate its own finality if it is to grow into the science of tomorrow. --J.S.A. Bois
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