Suzanne Bachelard’s Historical Phenomenology: Recursivity in the History of the Sciences

In August 1968, the French historian and philosopher of science Suzanne Bachelard (1919-2007) gave a lecture entitled ‘Epistemology and the History of the Sciences’ at the XIIth International Congress for the History of Science in Paris. In this lecture, Bachelard draws on her commentary on Husserl’s Formal and Transcendental Logic (1929/1969) and her work in the history and philosophy of the sciences to delineate her understanding of the role of recursivity in the history of the sciences. Succeeding Georges Canguilhem as the director of L'Institut d'histoire des sciences et des techniques (IHPST) in 1971, Bachelard would come to mark more than one generation with her ideas. I present here an introduction to the life and works of Bachelard, a translation of her lecture as well as a commentary on this text contextualizing her conception of recursion.