A TIMEFUL THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE

Abstract

Hydrological landscapes played a significant role in the elaboration of Gaston Bachelard’s and Martin Heidegger’s historical epistemologies. More specifically, both philosophers relied on hydroelectric landscapes to explore nonlinear time and profound epistemological shifts in the history of knowledge. The landscapes they invoke are composed of hydroelectric dams, thunderstorms, and related landmarks like mountains, rivers, and lakes. Together, these varied yet connected elements offer rich environmental and conceptual terrains that I revisit to situate human knowledge formation within a much older natural history, and to lay the groundwork for a deep time theory of knowledge. Such theories promote timefulness and geological consciousness by establishing less anthropocentric historical narratives – or what Dipesh Chakrabarty calls “planetary history” – on more suitable epistemological grounds.

Keywords:

• historical epistemology
• deep time
• Gaston Bachelard
• Martin Heidegger
• hydroelectricity

disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 The Bachelardian idea of an “epistemological break” was particularly impactful in the development of historical epistemologies through the works of Louis Althusser and Michel Foucault, both of whom adapted it for their own purposes. It also paved the way for Thomas Kuhn’s paradigm shift theory.

2 Bachelard’s emphasis. Translation (with modifications) from Bachelard, The Right to Dream.

3 Claudel’s emphasis. The citation is from Claudel 317.

4 Bachelard uses different French expressions to convey the depth of time: “la profondeur du temps,” “la nuit des temps,” “le temps immémorial.”

5 Bachelard also adds wells.

6 My account of Heidegger’s style and terminology is particularly indebted to Richard Rojcewicz’s critical analysis and translation of the essay in The Gods and Technology.

7 See Heidegger, Hölderlin’s Hymns: “The Ister” 2–4, 135–37, 144–46, 151–53, 162; Hölderlin’s Hymns: “Germania” and “The Rhine” 29–31, 38, 51–62, 83–84, 90, 120–21, 130, 141–43, 173, 219–21, 232, 260–61.

8 Chakrabarty extolls the “Earth system scientists” for not only bringing the planetary to the fore but also for making it “a category of humanist thought” when, in light of the data on climate change, they began to describe the planetary “as a site of existential concern” (70). He follows this laudatory portrayal of scientists with a dismissal of some of Heidegger’s views: “Heidegger’s stance against science and his assumption that the nature of human dwelling can be imagined without thinking of the ‘astronomical’ object, our planet, are positions we cannot support in the time of the Anthropocene” (70–71). As my reading of Heidegger’s historical epistemology shows, he was not “against science” but critical of its current dominant version, Ge-stell, which he perceived as the driver of a dangerous technocratization.