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Many authors have claimed that the prevalence of a rationalist and positivist philosophy among French physicists was an obstacle in the reception of quantum mechanics in France. Without challenging the basic tenet of this thesis, the present study tends to qualify it. An overview of the epistemological reception of quantum mechanics among the main theoretical physicists of the 30s and 40s shows that these theorists negotiated a reading of quantum mechanics that enabled them to maintain their philosophical outlook. In this perspective, what I call a « crypto-mechanist » interpretation of the measurement process, despite its ambiguity, played an important role, making it possible to reconcile a causal rationalism with a positivist posture.