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 titled "Epistemology and the History of the Sciences" at the 12th 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) and her work in history and philosophy of science 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 in 1971, Bachelard educated more than a generation of French historians and philosophers of science. I present an introduction to the life and works of Bachelard, a translation of her lecture, and a commentary on this text contextualizing her conception of recursion.