Gaston Bachelard, the French epistemologist and philosopher of science, was born at Bar-sur-Aube. He was a postal employee until 1913, when he gained his licence in mathematics and science and became a teacher of physics and chemistry at the Collège of Bar-sur-Aube. In 1927 he received his doctorate of letters and in 1930 became professor of philosophy at the University of Dijon. From 1940 to 1954 he held the chair of history and philosophy of science at the University of Paris.

Bachelard expounded a dialectical rationalism, or "dialogue" between reason and experience. His philosophy was a departure from the view of rational discovery as a process whereby new knowledge is assimilated into a system that changes only insofar as it grows. He rejected the Cartesian conception of scientific truths as immutable elements of a total truth that is in process of being put together like a jigsaw puzzle...