Gaston Bachelard anagogical reverie and surrational at stake

Abstract

The latest studies on epistemological thought of Gaston Bachelard, especially in France and Italy, they are highlighting some fundamental issues, such as creative and propulsive assigned to mathematics in the construction of physical reality. The studies of Bachelard on the quantum mechanics of the '30s, and especially on the theoretical physics of Paul Dirac, introduced a particular concept of "anagogical reverie" precisely in order to understand the increasingly abstract and creative thinking of mathematics in the various levels of physical reality. In the wake of what Federigo Enriques called "mathematical poetry", Bachelard comes to propose a real "nouménologie mathématique" which characterizes the contemporary scientific thought and which provides the basis epistemic appropriate to understand the 'rational effectiveness' of mathematics and the real meaning of their application to the real. For these reasons, Bachelard in the '30s used a new term to describe his rationalist engagement, the "surrationalisme", just to understand in depth what Enriques called the "implicit philosophy" in sciences, the "pensée des sciences", where mathematics, thanks to the "anagogical reverie", put in place continue "enjeux" of the rational.