Bachelard as a Reader

Bachelard was a voracious reader, and it would be impossible to provide a list of all the authors with whom he was familiar. It would be very long and perhaps very confused, because not only did he read extensively, but his interests were also remarkably eclectic. He freely quoted the most diverse authors in the same context. Bachelard's references ranged from seventeenth-century texts on electricity, optics, alchemy, hermetic philosophy, to modern physics, chemistry, mathematics, philosophy, fiction, poetry, ethnology, psychoanalysis and so on. Apart from the obvious references to philosophers and historians of science, even in his epistemological books references are to be found to the work of such contemporaries as André Breton and Tristan Tzara, whose interests were far removed from philosophy of science. Bachelard connected all these references. In his work romantic poets, modern physicists, philosophers, novelists and alchemists find themselves next to one other. For instance, on the very same page of Le rationalisme appliqué, ¹ he quoted Bouligand, ² Hegel and Rudyard Kipling. In ‘L'actualité de l'histoire des sciences,’ he mentioned within a few lines Bernard Palissy, Victor Hugo on Shakespeare, and Comte. ³