BACHELARD, Essai sur la connaissance approchée, 1927

First edition.
Gaston Bachelard (1884-1962), agrégé in philosophy and doctor of letters, was one of the greatest French philosophers of the 20th century, specializing in epistemology and the history of science. His Essai sur la connaissance approchée (Essay on Approximated Knowledge) is one of his first major works, in which he develops the notion that scientific knowledge is never absolute, but always relative and "approximated." He examines concepts from contemporary science (relativity, quantum mechanics) and defends a philosophy of the "no" that shows how new knowledge is built by breaking with previous knowledge. This book is a landmark of French epistemology.