Duden notes, one suspects approvingly, that Bachelard's epistemological studies cannot be "classified into existing disciplines"
Duden writes that he has investigated the "material, matter-generating power of the imagination" (6) (phrased as"[t]he materiality of elements reveals itself to him as the source of imagination," 194, in end-note)
"Bachelard repeatedly returned to this fundamental distinction between two complementary aspects of the imagination: a formal and a material one" (6)
Phrased differently, he makes a distinction between "the historicity of matter" and its form (also 6) ("[M]atter itself is historical," Duden reminds us on 7)
the ultimate conclusion Duden draws from his work is that "the imagination and perceptions of a given period have the power to generate reality" (6)
see his Water and Dreams: An Essay on the Imagination of Matter (1942, translated 1983)
see also Ivan Illich's H20 and the Waters of Forgetfulness: Reflections on the Historicity of Stuff, (1985) which sounds like it draws on Bachelard's ideas