Categories: Biographical notes
Gaston Bachelard (27 June 1884 – 16 October 1962) was a French philosopher of science and poetics (and a school teacher). His work has been highly influential (although perhaps not as well-known as it should be in the Anglophone world). One of his key ideas was that scientists' conceptions were multifaceted as scientific concepts retain traces of earlier thinking that had supposedly been surpassed – so one's concept of 'energy', say, could be considered to have a profile of elements informed by different philosophical traditions. These ideas have clear relevance to science education. He wrote about discontinuities in scientific thinking (akin to, but long before, Kuhn's discussion of 'revolutions') known as epistemological breaks.
