Kuhn's missed opportunity and the multifaceted lives of Bachelard: mythical, institutional, historical philosophical, literary, scientific

摘要

At the end of the 1940s, Thomas Kuhn (1924-1994), carrying with him a letter of recommendation from historian of physics and astronomy Alexandre Kloyre, visited Gaston Bachelard (1884-1962) in his Paris apartment at the rue St. Gene-vieve. A couple of years prior to that meeting, Kuhn had read Bachelard's La philosophie du non: Essai d'une philosophie du nouvel esprit scientifique (1940) with great interest suspecting that they might share important philosophical and historical insights on scientific progress. But the encounter with Bachelard was utterly disappointing. As Kuhn recollects, 'I delivered the note, was invited to come over, climbed the stairs ... I'd heard he did brilliant work on American literature, and on Blake and other things of the sort. I assumed he would greet me and be willing to talk in English. A large burly man in his undershirt, came to the door, invited me in; I said, "My French is bad, may we talk in English?" No, he made me talk French. Well, this all didn't last very long.