From Metaphysics to Metachemistry

In 1940 appeared La Philosophie du Non by Gaston Bachelard. The American edition of 1968 translates the title obviously enough as The Philosophy of No and 10 years later, the German followed with Die Philosophie des Nein. And yet, Die Philosophie des Nicht would have been more appropriate and in English - impossible though it sounds - Philosophy of Non. After all, taking his cue from non-Euclidean geometry, Bachelard revels in the “non” of non- Aristotelian logic, non-Cartesian epistemology, non-Baconian science, non-Kantian ontology, non-Newtonian mechanics, and non-Lavoisian chemistry. In all these cases, the “non” does not signal a negation or antithesis but marks Euclidean geometry as a special case of a differentiated non-Euclidean geometry, Lavoisian chemistry as a limited set of practices which is dialectically reflected in non-Lavoisian chemistry, etc.