Perspective

Gaston Bachelard is the French philosopher who wrote "The Poetics of Space." He was a leading philosopher of Europe and a Sorbonne university professor. Bachelard begins his study in philosophy of science but eventually turns to the philosophy of art and esthetics. As an older man at the height of his renowned scientific career, Bachelard decides to take on the challenge of an entirely new body of knowledge. He admits at the outset that his acquired knowledge in science does not help him understand the poetic imagination. Bachelard leads the reader, as he explores himself, on a journey through inhabited spaces as a poet might see them. Bachelard is accustomed to use specific scientific methods, tools and "facts" to analyze and evaluate thought and appearances that is useless on this journey.

"The Poetics of Space" is an apparent self-exploration of the new, mature and revised thought of an...