"There is no original truth, only original error"
About this Quote
Gaston Bachelard, the French philosopher of science, turns the longing for bedrock truths on its head. The first thing we have in inquiry is not certainty but misapprehension. The mind meets the world with habits, images, and common-sense shortcuts; these do not reveal reality, they disguise it. What we call truth arrives later, as the slow, disciplined rectification of these first errors. Knowledge is not a possession found intact at the origin; it is a construction achieved through critique, experiment, and conceptual overhaul.
The line belongs to Bachelard’s project in The Formation of the Scientific Mind, where he describes epistemological obstacles and the ruptures required to overcome them. Scientific progress, for him, is a history of breaks with immediate experience and with yesterday’s convictions. Experiments do not simply confirm what the eyes already see; they produce phenomena through instruments, protocols, and theory. In this view, science advances less by accumulation than by correction. There is no primordial truth waiting at the start, because the start is precisely where our cognitive biases are strongest. What counts as true is what has survived a process of systematic error-finding and error-fixing.
The aphorism also carries a pedagogical charge. Beginners should not be comforted with the myth of first principles grasped by intuition; they should be trained to doubt their beginnings and to welcome refutation as progress. Error is not an embarrassment but a resource, the engine that drives refinement. Bachelard’s stance aligns with a broader fallibilist tradition, but it has its own emphasis: a psychoanalysis of the knowing mind, a vigilance toward the images and metaphors that seduce us.
The payoff is both intellectual and ethical. Humility becomes a method. Creativity becomes disciplined. And truth becomes not the echo of an origin, but the achievement of a mind that has learned to contradict itself, again and again, until the world answers back.
The line belongs to Bachelard’s project in The Formation of the Scientific Mind, where he describes epistemological obstacles and the ruptures required to overcome them. Scientific progress, for him, is a history of breaks with immediate experience and with yesterday’s convictions. Experiments do not simply confirm what the eyes already see; they produce phenomena through instruments, protocols, and theory. In this view, science advances less by accumulation than by correction. There is no primordial truth waiting at the start, because the start is precisely where our cognitive biases are strongest. What counts as true is what has survived a process of systematic error-finding and error-fixing.
The aphorism also carries a pedagogical charge. Beginners should not be comforted with the myth of first principles grasped by intuition; they should be trained to doubt their beginnings and to welcome refutation as progress. Error is not an embarrassment but a resource, the engine that drives refinement. Bachelard’s stance aligns with a broader fallibilist tradition, but it has its own emphasis: a psychoanalysis of the knowing mind, a vigilance toward the images and metaphors that seduce us.
The payoff is both intellectual and ethical. Humility becomes a method. Creativity becomes disciplined. And truth becomes not the echo of an origin, but the achievement of a mind that has learned to contradict itself, again and again, until the world answers back.
Quote Details
| Topic | Truth |
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