The Poetics of Space

Gaston Bachelard (1884-1962) began his career as a postal clerk and later studied and taught physics and chemistry at the secondary level. When he earned the Doctor of Letters from the Sorbonne in 1927, at age 36, the French teacher’s career turned to philosophy. Bachelard’s work originally focused on science, but he soon expanded the scope of his work to exploring the philosophy of the imagination. After completing multiple volumes on scientific epistemology, Bachelard grew frustrated by the rationalism of contemporary science. Because science was rooted in the research and works of the past, Bachelard turned to poetics for its emphasis on newness and creativity.

Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space explores the phenomenology of the imagination. He navigates how space contributes to consciousness and form and how design can evoke emotion and connect people with the cosmos. Bachelard’s work rejects the scientific principles he utilized earlier in his career and embraces mystery, mysticism, and reverie.

Carl Jung (1875-1961) was an important psychologist and psychoanalyst in the early 20th century. Jung developed the theory of the collective unconscious, the part of the mind that connects to all other minds in a web of ancestral memory and thought.