Reveries of Water in Bachelard

MANILA, Philippines -- Fr. Jett Villarin, Ateneo's new president, is a Jesuit scientist and poet who reminds me of my favorite philosopher Gaston Bachelard. He was born in 1884 in the small Champagne town of Bar-sur-Aube in France. A son and a grandson of a cobbler, he struggled to sustain his studies as a postman. He finished Etudes secondaires at the College de Bar-sur-Aube, became a practising physical chemist while teaching physics and chemistry in the same school. In 1930, he taught at the Faculte de Lettres at Dijon. He chaired the departments of history and philosophy of science at the Universite de Sorbonne. He was elected to the Academie des Sciences morales et politiques in 1955 and won the Grand Prix National des Lettres in 1961. In the 20 years of his illustrious career, he influenced French philosophy's most prominent post-modernist thinkers such as Georges Canguilheim, Jean Hyppolite and Michel Foucault. An amphitheater in the Universite de Sorbonne is dedicated to him.

The honoris causa of Bachelard is to change the fundamentalist attitudes in scientific teaching by changing the rationalist metaphysics that supports it. From the Jungian psychology of the archetype and the shadow, Bachelard conceived of an ontology that thrives not on reason but imagination. Bachelard lived in the …

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Publication information: Article title: Reveries of Water in Bachelard. Contributors: Not available. Newspaper title: Manila Bulletin. Publication date: July 24, 2011. Page number: Not available. © 2009 Manila Bulletin Publishing Corp. COPYRIGHT 2011 Gale Group.

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