A Vital Rationalist: Selected Writings of Georges Canguilhem

A Vital Rationalist Selected Writings from Georges C;J n g u i I hem

v

Edited by Fran10ois Delaporte Translated by Arthur Goldhammer \\'ith an introduction by Paul Rabinow and

a critical bibliography by Camille Limoges

ZONE

BOOKS·

1994

NEW

YORK

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© 1994 Upone, Inc.

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Contents

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No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any fOrm or by any

means, including electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording, or otherwise (except for that copying permitted by Sections

107

and

108

of

Editor's Note b_v Fran(ois Delaporte

the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public

pres~)

9

Introduction: A Vital Rationalist

without written permission from

~V

the Publisher.

Paul Rabinow

11

Sources for the excerpts are listeJ on pp. 480~81. PART ONE

METHODOLOGY

Printed in the United States of America. Distributed by The MIT Press,

II

Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England

Ill

The Historv of Science 25 The Various Models 41 The History of the History of Science

l.ibrary of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Canguilhem, Georges,

1904-

PART

Two

EPtSTI::MOLOGY

A vital rationalist; selected writings fi·om Georges Canguilhcm /edited by Franc;:ois De laporte; translated by Arthur Goldhammer with an introduction by Paul

IV V

Rabinow and a critical bibliography by Camille Limoges.

p.

A Baroque Phvsiologv

em.

1.

Delaporte, franc;:ois,

Q12~.C34

~oo-dc2o

2.

Phvsiologv

Science-Philosophy.

1941-

11.

103

The Major Problems of lVineteenth-Century

ISBN 0-942 299-72-8

Science-History.

91

An Experimental Science

Includes bibliographical reference5. 1.

Epistemology of Biology 67 Epistemology of Physiology

VI

Title.

115

Epistemology of Medicine

The Limits of Healing

1993

9]-86q CJP

129

The Nea· Situation of .+!edicinc A ,tfedical Remlution

145

133

49

PAHl THIHE

VII VIII IX PAHT

FouH. X

XI XII PAHT FIVE

HISTORY

Cell Theory 161 The Concept of Reflex Biological Objects 203

179

INTERPRETATIONS Dc~cartes

219

Auguste Comtc

237

Claude Bernard

261

Rene_

Translator's Note

PHOHI I .I\1S

The texts collected here are translated from the French for the

XIII

XIV

Knowledge and the Living

first time, but for t\vo exceptions: I have included passages from

Science and Life

my translation of Georges Canguilhcm 's Ideology and Rationali~v

287

The Concept of l.ije 303 The Normal and the Pathological lnrrodtJction to the Problem

The Identity of the Two States

321

Normality and Normativity

Books, 1989 ).

327

Implications and Counterpositions XV

337

351

Critical Rlbliography by Camille Limoges Notes

(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1988) and from Carolyn Fawcett\ translation of The Normal and the Pathological (Ne:w York: Zone

321

385

455

7

Editor's Note Fran<;:ois Dclaporte

The texts collected in this volume introduce English-language readers to an especially difficult and complex dimension of George Canguilhem's work, namely his philosophy of biology and medicine. Its primary purpose, then, is to chart the main themes of Canguilhcm's thought, which is distinguished by minute attention to developments in biology and medicine over the past fifty years. To achieve this end, importance \Vas given to questions of methodology in the history of science. This in itself was necessary because the object of historical discourse is not scientific discourse as such but the historicity of scientific discourse insofar as it represents the implementation of an epistemological project (projet de savoir). If the history of science is the history of a discourse subject to the norm of critical rectification, then it is clearly a branch of epistemology. Canguilhem recognizes that the disciplines whose history he writes give the appearance of a genesis, that is, a process opposed to the diversity of the various fOrms of pseudo-science. This, in fact, is the source of his interest in epistemological breaks. Studying the history of an activity itself defined by its reference to truth as an epistemological value forces one to focus attention on both the failures and successes of that activity. Taking a macroscopic view of the history of science, 9

A

VITAl

RATION/.LIST

Canguilhem undertook to study the t:>mcrgence of three disciplines: biology. physiology and medicine. Depending on the sub-

ject of study. Canguilhem will sometime_~ provide a histor)' of

Introduction: A Vital Rationalist

theorv sometimes a historv of concepts and sometimes a historv •

•

J

•

of biological object<.,. But the objective is always the same: to

Paul Rabinow

describe how ideology and science are at once internvined and separate. Further, his studies of Renl' Descartes, Auguste Comte and Claude Bernard clt:>arly reveal why, as Louis Althusscr once put it, Canguilhem is considered one of the b(•st "te-achers of how to read works of philosophy and science." The r(·ader, we assume, will not be surprised that the present work ends with a series of general questions concerning the relation of knowledge to life

Georges Cangui1hem was born in Castclnaudary in southvvest-

and of the normal to the pathologic.ll. Canguilhem began with

ern France on Jun(_' 4, IY04. Although his father vvas a tailor,

error and on that basis posed the philosophical problem of truth

Canguilhcm likes to refer to himself, not \vithout a certain

and

lift:-.

For Michel Foucault, this approach constituted "one of

the crucial events in the history of modern philosophy."

twinkle in his eye, a~ being of peasant stock, rootl'd in the harmonious, cyclical life of the soil and the seasons, hi'l sensibilities fom1ed by the yearl)· rmind oftht' fruit trees. The story of his sentimental education is a classic one. High marks on national e-xaminations sent him on a journey to Paris to study; once- there, he 'va:.. a grear success. After completing his studies at the prestigious Lycf>e Henri IV, he entered the mnst elite educational institution in France, the Ecole Normale Sup(Tieure, in 1024. Among his promotion, his cohort, vvcre Jean-Paul Sartrc, Raymond Aron and Paul Ni:~an; lv1aurice Me-rleau·Ponty t'ntered the Ecole a year later. Already at this time, Canguilhcm vvas interested in themes that he would return to and develop rhroughout his intellectual life: in particular, a p.1per on Auguste Comte's theory of order and progress, which Canguilhem submitted f()r a diploma, display~ the beginnings of this persistl'nt interest in the relation of reason and 'locicty - an interest he shared with his other distinguislwd classmates but which Canguilhem developed in a highly original manner. The philosopher Alain's judgment ofCanguilhem

10

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RATIONALIST

in 1924 as "lively, resolute and content" still captures the man's spirit almost three-quarters of a century latcr. 1 Once he became agrC.qi in philosophy in 1927, the young Canguilhem began his teaching tour of provincial lycc.~es, as w<1~ required of all Ecole Normale graduates in repayment to the state for their education. His initial peregrinations ended in 1936 in Toulouse, where he taught at the lycte, while beginning his medical training. In 1940, he resigned from his teaching post, because. as he \vrote the Rector of the Acad&,mie de Toulouse, he hadn't become an agnigi in philosophy in order to preach the doctrine of the Vichy regime.2 He took advantage of his newly fOund free time to complete his medical studies. Prophetically, in both a philosophic and political sense, Canguilhem n·placed Jean Cavailles, the philosopher of mathematics - he had been called to the Sorbonne- at the University of Strasbourg, which relocated to Clermont-Ferrand in 1941, when Strasbourg wa\ annexed by the Reich. He participatl:'d in the f(_>rmation of an important resistance group to which he made available his skills. All in all, a life in the century. as the French say: like so many of his compatriots, Canguilhem 's life was shaped by the conjuncture of France's enduring institutions and the contingent events of his time. In 1943, Canguilhem defended his medical thesis, "Essais sur quelques probiCmcs concernant le normal et le pathologique." The continued timeliness and exceptional durability of this work is attested to by the fact that he updated it twenty years later with significant nc\v reflections, and that it \vas translated into English decades later as The Normal and the PathologicaJ.l After the war, he resumed his post at the University of Strasbourg (in Strasbourg), where he remained until 1948. After first refusing the important administr
"

INTROr>UCT!O'\J

served until 1955, when he accepted the Chair of History and Philosophy of Sciences at the Sorbo nne and succeeded Gaston Bache lard as director of the lnstitut d'histoire des sciences ct des techniques. I lis reputation as a ferocious examiner lives on in Paris today, as docs a deep well of affection for the intellectual and imtitutional support he provided over the dec.1des. 4

History and Philosophy of Science Louio;; Althusser paid Canguilhem a compliment when he compared him (as well as Cavailles,"Bachelard, jules Vuillemin and Michel Foucault) to an anthropologist \vho goes into the field armed with "a scrupulous respect for the reality of real science."5 The comparison is revealing if not quite an accurate description of Canguilhem's method. More strictly ethnographic studies of laboratory life, like those of Bruno Latour, would come later and \Vould aim not merely at correcting a positivist and idealist understanding of science as a single unified activity achieving a cumulative understanding of nature, but also at dismantling the very idea of science- a position as far from Canguilhem's as one could imagine. Nonetheless, Althusscr's statement captures the move, first initiated by Bachelard, away from the static universalism that the French university system had enshrined in its rationalist and idealist approaches to science. For Bachclard, philosophy's new role was to analy7.e the historical de-velopment of truth-producing practices. The philosophy of science became the study of regional epistemologies, the historical reflection on the elaboration of theorie-s and concepts by practicing scientists, physicists, chemists, pathologists, anatomists and so on. The aim was not to attack science but to show it in action in it~ specificity and plurality. Canguilhcm is clear and adamant that even though philosophy had lost its sovereignty and its auton(lmy, it still had important I

l

;:.

\TAL

f<"-T

0NAIIST

work to accomplish. Unlike the task of the ~cientist, the episte-

tions on scientific objl:'cts. The objt.·ct of historical di"course is

mologist's problem i.'> to establish .. the order of conceptual prog-

"the historicity of scientific discourse, in ~o much as that his-

ress that is Yisibil' only .d"tn the fact and of \vhich the present

tory effectuates a project guided by its own internal norms but

notion of scientific truth h the provisional point of culmination."6

traversed by accidents interrupted l-ry cri-;e<;, that is to say by

Truths arc fOund in the practices of science; philosophy analyzes

moments of judgment and truth." 11 These truth-; are ahvays con-

the plurality of these truths, their historicity, and consequently

testable and in process, as it were, but no less ''real" on account

their provisionality, while affirming- not legislating, as the older

of their contingency. The history of sci...' nee is not natural his-

French philosophy of science sought to do- their normativity.

tory: it docs not identify the science with the scientist, the sci-

Epistemology is a rigorous description of the process by which

entists \vith their biographies, or sciences \vith their result..,, nor

truth is elaborated, not a list of final results. Althusser's enco-

the results with their current pedagogical use. The epistemolog-

mium takes for granted that science exists and holds a privileged

ical and historical claims assumed by this notion of the history

status, but Canguilhem, like Foucault and Pierre Bourdit:u, never

of science arc magisterial and run counter to rnuch of contem-

doubted this: "To take as one's object of inquiry nothing other

porary do.w in the social studic'i of ~cience. The texts gathered

than sources, inventions, influellCt.'S, priorities, simultaneities, and

in this volume provide the cvidt:nce kJr Canguilhem's position.

successions b at bottom to fail to distinguish between science

Fran~ois Delaporte has arranged them in a conceptual and peda-

and other a~pc<..:ts of

This assumption- Latour ha~

gogical fashion with ~uch clarity that it would be fruitless and

called it the key symbol of French philosophy and history of sci-

inappropriate to burdc·n thc::"m with extended commentary. In-

culture." 7

ence- is the cornerstonl' of the whole architecture of the house Canguilhem. 11

deed, they provide a kind of coherent "hook," which, except

Science, forCanguilhem, is

for his second doctoral dissertation,12 Cmguilhem himself never

''a discourse verified in a delimited sector of experience."Y Sci-

\vrote; he preferred, after 194 3, the essa~. form crammed with

ence is an exploration of the norm of rationality at work. But just

precise, almost aphoristic, sentencn. manv \vith the density

as firm as the belit:f in science is the belief in its historicity and

of kryptonite.

of reason inhabited by

its plurality. There are only diverse scienn.'s at work at particular historical moments: physic" is not biology; eighteenth-century natural history is not twentieth-century genetics.

The Normal and the Patholonical Although Canguilhcm published in the late 1930s a philosophi-

Thus, fOr Canguilhem, ''the history of science is the history of

cal treatise on ethics and epistemology, Traiti de loaique el de

an object- discourse- that is a histo;y and has a history, \vhe;eas

morale, intended as an unconventional textbook fOr advanced lycee

science is the science of an object that is not a history, that has

'ltudents, the \vork fOr \vhich he is best known starts with his

no history." 10 Science, through its usc of method, divides nature

medical

thesis~where

he

investigate~

the very definition of the

into objects. Thes(' objects are secondary, in a sense, but not

normal and the pathological. This work ~ignaled

derivative; one could say that they are both constructed and dis-

in thinking about health. Previomly, medical training in France

covered. The history of scienc<: performs a similar set of opera-

had privileged the normal; disease or malfunction w<1s under-

'I

J.

major reversal

A

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RATIONALIST

INTRODUCTION

stood as the deviation from a fixed norm, which was taken to be a constant. Medical practice \vas directed toward establishing scientifically thesc norms and, practice follmving theory, toward returning the patient to health, reestablishing the norm from which the patient had strayed. As Franyois Dagognet, the philosopher of biology, has crisply observed, Canguilhem launched a frontal attack on "that edifice of normalization" so essential to the procedures of a positivist science and medicine.l3 He did so by re-posing the question of the organism as a living being that is in no preestablished harmony with its environment. It is suffering, not normative measurements and standard deviations, that establishes the state of dbease. Normativity begins with the living being, and with that being comes diversity. Each patient whom a doctor treats presents a different case; each case displays its own particularity. One ofCanguilhem\ famous aphorisms drives this point home: "An anomaly is not an abnormality. Diversity does not signify sickness." With living beings, normality is an activity. not a steady state. The rt>sult, if one follows Canguilhcm's reasoning, is that "a number, even a constant number, translates a style. habits, a civilization, even the underlying vitality of life."l4 The recent discovery that human hody temperature has a much \vider range of normality than was previously assumed demonstrates this point. Normality -and this is one of Canguilhem's constant themes- means the ability to adapt to changing circumstances, to variable and varying environments. Illness is a reduction to constants, the very norms by which we measure ourselves as normal. Normality equals activity and flexibility. Hence there is no purely objective pathology; rather, the basic unit is a living being that exists in shifting relations with a changing environment. Arguing for a dramatic reversal, Canguilhem maintained that illness ultimately is defined hy the verv terms that had defined health, namelv stable norms, '

'

!6

unchanging values. IS Life is not stasis, a fixed set of natural laws, set in advance and the same fOr all, to \\'hich one must adhere in order to survive. Rather, life is action, mobility and pathos, the constant but only partially successfUl effort to resist death, to use Bichat's famous definition: "Life is the collection of functions that resist death." Canguilhem's work has been a consistent and disciplined historical demonstration, a laying-out of the consequences, of these principles. Life has its specificity: "Life, whatever form it may take, involves self-preservation by means of sclf-regulation."lh This specificity can- in fact, must- be elaborated perpetually, but it can never be evaded. Canguilhem's punctuate, historical essays are not a philosophy of life, like those of Hans Jonas or Maurice i\·1erleau-Ponry, which seek to fix an understanding of life \Vith a single set of concepts. Rather, C<mguilhem's tightly \Vritten didactic forays display how the life sciences, including the therapeutic one<;, have simultaneously elaborated concepts of life and the ways these concepts must be seen as an in~egrated part of the phenomenon under study: life and its norms~· ·~~ Although he has been careful not to turn these explorations into a panegyric of vitali~m. Canguilhem demonstrates the constant presence of evaluative notions like "preservation," "regulation," "adaptation" and "normality," in both everyday and scientific approaches to life. "It is life itself, and not medical judgment, that makes the biological normal a concept of value and not a concept of statistical reality." 17 Humanity's specificity lies not in the fact that it is separate from the rest of nature but, rather, in the fact that it has created systematic knowledge and tools to help it cope. This testing, parrying with pathology, this active relation to the environment, this normative mobility and projective ability, humanity's conceptual career, is central to its health. "Being healthy means being not only normal in a given situation but also

'7

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ST

normative in this and other eventual situations. What character-

iNTRODUCTION

ities with his surrounding vvorld. "Life becomes a \Vily, supple

izes health is the possibility of transcending the norm, \vhich

intelligence of the \vorld, while reason, for its part, emngcs as

defines the momentary normal, the possibility of tolerating in-

something more vital: it finally develops a logic that is more than

fractions of the habitual norm and instituting new norms in ne\v

a mere logic of identity."20 Reason and life arc intertwined, not

situations." IS Life is an activity that follows a norm. But health is

opposed, but neither legislates the other.

not being normal; health is being normative. In general, reflections on the relationships between concepts

A New Understandin9 of Life: Error

and life require clarification of the fact that at least t\vo distinct

It has become a commonplace to say that Canguilhem 's recogni-

orders are being investigated. First, there is life as form, life as

tion by an English-speaking public, beyond a few specialist<:; in

the "universal organization of matter" (le vivant), and second,

the history of the life sciences, f()llows in the wake of the suc-

there is life as the experience of a singular living being who is

cess of one of his favorite students and friends, Michel Foucault.

conscious of his or her life (/e ve'cu). By "life"- in French- one

While not exactly false, such an appreciation remains insufficient

could mean either /e vivant, the present participle of the verb "to

unless \Ve also ask what it \vas in Canguilhem's \Vork which so

live" (\<·ivre), or the past participle le ve'cu. Canguilhem is unequiv-

interested Foucault. And, even further, are these problems the

ocal on this point: the first level of life, form, controls the sec-

most pertinent for an American audience? ~anguilhem's \vork, it

ond, experience. Although it is only the first level, the power and

is \Vorth underlining, is relevant f()f di~-- The question

fOnn-giving dimensions of life, \vhich constitutes the explicit sub-

to be asked then is, \Vhy read him today? The answer lies par-

ject matter of his work, the presence of the second is frequently

tially in another frequent commonplace. Canguilhem's predeces-

felt nonetheless.1 9 For all its declarative clarity, the claim of pri-

sor, Bachelard, invented a method for a new history of the "hard

ority only thinly masks the keen awareness of suffering and search-

sciences" of chemistry, physics and mathematics; his student,

ing- in a \vord, pathos- which is the experiential double, the

Foucault, worked on the "dubious sciences" of Man; Canguilhem

constant companion, of Canguilhem 's insistent conceptualism.

himself has spent his life tracing the liniments of a history of the

The pathos of existence is always close at hand for this physician

concepts of the sciences of life. Let us suggest that today it is the

cum philosopher cum pedagogue. In fact, a not-so-latent existentialism, albeit of a distinctive and idiosvncratic sort, ~hadmvs Canguilhem's conception of med-

.

icine. One easilv hears echoes of Sartre and Merleau-Ponty's . early.

biosciences - \vith a rene\ved elaboration of such concepts of norms and life, death and information - that hold center stage in the scientific and social arena; hence the renc\vcd relevance of Georges Canguilhcm.

themes, transposed to a different register and played \vith a di5-

In his 1966 essay "Le Concept et Ia vie," Canguilhem analy1.ed

tinctive flair. Canguilhe_m's variants of"to freedom condemned"

the contemporary revolution under \vay in genetics and molecu-

and "the structure of comportment" an: composed in a different

lar biology. The essay, a historical tour de force, traces the con-

key. His individual is condemned to adapt to an environment and

cept of life as form (and experience) as vvell as knowledge of that

to act using concepts and tools that have no preestablished affin-

fonn, from Aristotle to the present. Canguilhem demonstrates the 19

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INTRODUCTION

RATIONALIST

continuity of problematintion and the discontinuity of answers

in the history of the concept of life. This historical reconstruction provides the groundwork for an analysis of our contemporary conceptualization of life. Canguilhem frames James D. Watson and Francis Crick's discovery of the structure of the double helix as an information system, one in which the code and the (cellular) milieu arc in constant interaction. There is no simple, unidirectional causal relation between genetic information and its effects. The new understanding of life lies not in the structuring of matter and the regulation of functions, but in a shift of scale and location - from mechanics to infOrmation and communication thcory.2 1 In an important sense, the ne\v understanding of life as information rejoins Aristotle insofar as it posits life as a logos "inscribed, converted and transmitted" within living matter.22 However, \ve have come a long way since Aristotle. The telos of life most commonly proposed today is more an ethological one, seeing behavior as determined and humans more as animals, than a contemplative one that assigns a special place to reflection and uncertainty. From sociobiologists to many advocates of the Human Genome Project, the code is the central dogma. Canguilhem rejects this telos. If homo sapiens is as tightly programmed as the ethologists (or many molecular biologists) think, then how, Canguilhem asks, can \ve explain error, the history of errors and the history of our victories over error? Genetic errors are now understood as informational errors. Among such errors, however, a large number arise from a maladaption to a milieu. Once again he reintroduces the theme of normality as situated action, not as a prcgivcn condition. Mankind makes mistakes when it places itself in the wrong place, in the wrong relationship \vith the environment, in the wrong place to receive the infOrmation needed to sunrive, to act, to flourish. We must move, err, adapt to survive. This condition of"crring or drifting" is not 20

merely accidental or external to life but its fundamental form. Knowledge, following this understanding of life, is "an anxious guest" (une recherche inquiete) for the right information. That information is only partially to be found in the genes. Why and how the genetic code is activated and functions, and what the results are, are questions that can be adequately posed or answered only in the context of life, le vivant, and experience, le vicu.

Conclusion Michel Foucault, in an essay dedicated to Canguilhem, "La Vic, !'experience et Ia science," characterized a division in French thought between subject-oriented approaches, which emphasize meaning and experience, and those philosophies which take as their object knowledge, rationality and concepts.2 3 The rhetorical effect was marvelous. While everyone had heard of Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, few people beyond a sma!I circle of specialists had actually read the work of Cavailles on the philosophy of set theory in mathematics or Canguilhem on the history of the reflex arc.24 The irony \Vas made more tantalizing by allusions to the unflinching and high-stakes activities in the resistance of one side of the pair (Cavailles was killed by the Nazis after forming the resistance network that Canguilhem joined), while the_ others lived in Paris, writing pamphlets. Foucault was revealing to us a hidden relationship of truth and politics, indicating another type of intellectual, one fOr \vhom totality and authenticity bore different forms and norms. However, there is a certain insider's humor involved; t\venty years earlier, Canguilhem had employed the same distinctions, applying them to Cavailles during the 1930s while mocking those who deduced that a philosophy without a subject must lead to passivity and inaction. Cavailles, who had made the philosophic journey to Germany during the 1930s and warned early on of the dangers bre,ving there, did not, Canguilhem 21

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RATIONALIST

tells us, hesitate "'·hen the war finally camc. 2 ' Rather than writing a moral treatise to ground his actions, he joinl·d the resistance \vhile finishing his \vork on logic as best he could. Truth and politics \vere distinct domains fOr these thinkers of the_ concept; one was ethically obliged ro act in both domains while never losing sight of the specificity of each. Cavailles's example of rigorous thought and principled Jction, while still compelling today (especially given the misunderstanding and moralizing about French thought rampant acro~s the Rhine, tht' Channel and the Atlantic), would -.eem to demand a renewed conceptualization. The rise and ephemeral glory of structuralism and Althusserianism ha\'e shown rhat removing the humanist subject in the social sciences by itself guarantePs neither an epistemological jump from ideology to science nor more effE-ctive political action (any more than reinserting a guasi-transcendcntal subject 'viii provide such guarantees). While Canguilhem's work enables one to think and rethink such problems, it ob\'iously doc-; not offer any readymade ansvvers for the future. Deploying readymade solutions from the past, vvhen history ha~ moved on, concepts changed, milieus altered, would, Cmguilhem has taught us, constitute a major error- an error matched in its gravity only by those seeking to annul history. blur concepts and homogenize environments. Living beings are capahlc of correcting their errors, and Canguilhem \ work offers us tools to begin, once again, the process of doing so.

PART 0NF

Methodology

CHAPTFR

ONE

The History of Science

The Object of Historical Discourse [ 1J When one speaks of the "science of crystals," the relation between science and crystals is not a genitive, as when one speaks of the "mother of a kitten." The science of crystals is a discourse on the nature of crystal, the nature of crystal being nothing other than its identity: a mineral as opposed to an animal or vegetable, and independent of any use to which one may put it. When crystallography, crystal optics and inorganic chemistry are constituted as sciences, the "nature of crystal" just is the content of the science of crystals, by \vhich 1 mean an objective discourse consisting of certain propositions that arise out of a particular kind of \Vork. That work, the work of science, includes the formulation and testing of hypotheses, which, once tested, are forgotten in favor of their results. When Helene Metzger wrote La Genise de fa science des cristaux, she composed a discourse about discourses on the nature of crystal.1 But these discourses \vere not originally the same as what we now take to be the correct discourse about crystals, the discourse that defines v'.rhat "crystals" are as an object of science. Thus, the history of science is the history of an object - discourse that is a history and has a history, whereas science is the science

,,

~-1

E T H <j UOL0G Y

TH<:O

of an object rh<1t is not a hhtory, that has no history.

HIST()Ry

nF

C,(:•EI•iCE

paid to a significant fact about the emergence of this genre: it

The object "crystal" is a given. Even if the science of crystals

re(]uired no fe\ver than t\\'0 scientific and two philosophical rev-

must take the history uf the earth and the history of minerals into

olutions as its preconditions. One scientific revolution occurred

account, that hi'ltory's time is itself a given. Because "crystal" is

in mathematics, in which Descartes's analytic geometry was fol-

in some sense independent of the scientific discourse that seeks

lmved by the infinitesimal calculus of Leibni1 and Nevvton; the

to obtain knmdedge about it, we call it a "natural" object. 2 Of

second revolution, in mechanics and cosmology, is symbolized by

course, this natural object, external to discourse, is not a scien-

Descartes's Principles of Philosophy and Newton's Principia. In phi-

tific object. Nature is not given to us as a set of discrete scientific

losophy, and, more precisely, in the theory of knmvledge, that

objects and phenomena.!5cience constitutes its objects by invent-

is, the foundations of science, Cartesian innatism was one revo-

ing a method of formulating, through propositions capable of

lution and Lockeian sensualism the other. Without Descartes,

being combined intcgral1y. a theory controlled by a concern \vith

without a rending of tradition, there would be no history of sci-

proving itself wrong~ Crystallography was constituted as soon as

ence. [Etudes, PP- 16-17]

the crystalline sped~s could he defined in terms of constancy of face angle.;;, systems of '>ymmetry. and regular truncation of ver-

[2] Was Bernard Le Bouvier fontenellc mi<.;taken when he looked to Descartes for justification of a certain philosoph~.' of

tices. "The l''l'iential point,'' Rl·nl· Just Hai.iy writes, "is that the

the history of science? From the denial that authority holds any

theory and cry'iitallization ultimately come together and find com-

validit:v in science, Fontenelk rca<.;onc-d, it follows tha! ~~~l' con-

mon ground." 3

ditions of truth are subject to historical change. But does it then

The object of the history of sci(·ncc has nothing in common

make sensl' to propose a historicist reading of a fundamentally

with the object of science. The scientific object, constituted by

antihistoricist philosophy? If we hold that truth comes only from

methodical discourse. is secondary to, although not derived from,

the evidence and the light of nature, then truth, it would seem,

the initial natural object, which might \veil be called (in a delib-

has no historical dimension, and science exists suh specie actcrnJtatis (hence the Cartesian philosophy is antihistoricist). But per-

erate play on words) the pre-text. The history of science applies itself to these second<1ry. nonnatural, cultural objects\ but it is

haps Fontcnelle deserves credit for noticing an important but

not derived from them any more than they are derived from nat-

neglected aspect of the Cartesian revolution: Cartesian doubt

ural objects. The object of historical discourse is, in effect, the

refused to comment on prior claims to knowledge. It not only

historicitv of scientific discourse. Bv "historicity of scientific dis-

rejected the legacy of ancient and medieval physics but erected

'

'

'

course" I mean the progress of the discursive project as measured

nc\v norms of truth in place of the old. Hence, it rendered all

against its own internal norm. This progress may, moreover, meet

previous science obsolete and consigned it to the surpassed past

with accidents, be delayed or diverted by obstacles, or be inter-

[le passe depasseJ Fontenelle thus realized that when Cartesian phi-

rupted by crises, that is, moments of judgment and truth.

losophy killed tradition- that is, the unrenective continuity of

The history uf science was born as a literary genre in the

past and present- it provided at the same time a rational foun-

eighteenth century. I find that insufficient attention has been

dation fOr a possible history, fOr an emergent consciousnrss that

2b

ri1ETHOD0LOGY

the evolution of humankind has meaning. Iftht:> past \\\ls no longer judge of the present, it was, in the full ~cnse of the word, witness to a movement that transcended it, that dethroned the past in favor of the present. As Fontenelle wa~ well aware, before the Moderns could speak about the Ancients, even to praise them, they had to take their distance. [Etudes, p. 55] [ 3 J According to Descartes, however, knowledge has no his-

r

tory. It took Newton, and the rdUtation of Cartesian cosmology, f()f history- that is, the ingratitude inherent in the claim to begin anew in repudiation of all origins - to appear as a dimension of science .I The history of science is the explicit, theoretical recognition of the fact that the sciences are critical, progressive discourses fOr determining what aspects of experience must be taken as real. 'The object of the history of science is therefore a nongiven, an object whose incompleteness is essential. In no \vay can the history of science be the natural history of a cultural object. All too often, however, it is practiced as though it were a form of natural history, contlating science with scientists and scientists with their civil and academic biographies, or else conflating science with its results <md results with the fOrm in which they happen to be expressed fOr p(·dagogical purposes at a particular point in time. [Etudes, pp. 17-18]

The Constitution of Historical Discourse [4 J The historian of science has no choice but to define his object. It is his decision alone that determines the interest and importance of his subject matter. This is essentially always the case, even when the historian's decision reflects nothing more than an uncritical reo;pect for tradition. Take, for example, the application of probability to nineteenth-century biology and social science. 4 The subject does not fall within the boundaries of any nf the nineteenth century's

THE

HISTORY

OF

SL:IENCE

mature sciences; it corresponds to no natural object, hence its study cannot fall back on mere description or reproduction. The historian himself must create his subject matter, starting from the current state of the biological and social sciences at a given point in time, a state that is neither the logical consequence nor the historical culmination of any prior srate of a developed science not of the mathematics of Pierre-Simon Laplace or the biology of Charles Darwin, the psychophysics of Gustav Fechner, the ethnology of Frederick Taylor or the sociology of Emile Durkheim. Note, moreover, that Adolphe Quetelet, Sir Francis Galton, James McKeon Catell and Alfred Binet could develop biometrics and psychometrics only after various nonscientific practices had provided raw material suitable fOr mathematical treatment. Quetelet, fOr example, studied data about human sit.t:>; tht:' collection of such data presupposes a certain type of in
METHODOLOGY

THE

HISTORY

OF

SCIENCE

were originally nonscientific, such as selection, hybridization and

the elements accelerated the pace of progress in chemistry, and

orientation. Their discoverif~ were answers to qut:>stions they

eventually led to an upht>aval in atomic physics, whilt> other sci-

asked themselves in a language they had to forge for themselves.

ences maintained ,1 more measured pace. Thus, the history of

Critical study of those questions and those answers is the proper

science, a history of the relation of intelligence to truth, gener-

object of the history of science. Should anyone wish to suggest

ates its mvn sense of time. Just how it does this depends on hO\v

that the concept of history proposed here is "externalist," the klregoing discussion should suffice to dispose of tile objection.

the progress of science permits this history to reconstitute the

The history of science can of course accommodate various

po.;;sible to underst.md a discourse that \Vas not understood \vhen

theoretical discourse of the past. A new discovery may make it

kinds of objects within the specific theoretical domain that it

it was first enunciated, such as Mendel's theory of heredity, or

constitutes: there are ahvays documents to be classified, instru~

it may demolish theories once considered authorit,1tivc. Only

ments and techniques to be d('scribed, method<; and questiom to

contact with recent science can give ti1e historian a sense of his-

be interpreted, and concepts to be ,:maly;ed and criticized. Only

torical rupJure and continuity. Such contact i.;; t·stablished, J~

the last of these tasks confers the dignity of hi~ tory of scienct·

Gaston Bachelard taught, through epistemology, so long as it

upon the others. It is easy to be ironic about the importance

remains vigilant.

attached to concepts, but more difficult to understand \vhy,

The history of science is therefore always in flux. It must cor-

v,:ithout concepts, there is no science. The hi-;tory of science i-;

rect itself constantly. The relation bt·t,veen Archimedes' method

· interested in, say, the history of instruments or of academies only

of exhaustion and modern calculus is not the o;;ame for today\

insofar as they are related, in both their

usc~

and their inten-

mathematician as it was fOr Jean Etienne Montucla, the fir'Jt great

tions, to theories. Descartes needed David Ferrier to grind opti-

historian of mathematics. This is bee: a usc no definition of math-

cal glass, but it was he vvho provided the theory of the curves to

ematics was possible before there \vas mathematics, that is, befOre

be obtained by grinding.

mathematics had betn constituted through a series of discoveries

A history of results can never be anything more than a chron-

and dt:>cisions. "Mathematics is a developmental procl'ss [ un devcCav.tilli.·~.

icle. The history of science concerns an axiological activity. the

nir]," said Jean

search fOr truth. This axiological activity appears only at the level

his provisional definition of what mathematics is ffom contempo-

The historian ofmathem
of questions, methods and concepts, but nmvhere else. Hence,

rary mathematicians. Many works once relevant to mathematics

time in the history of science is not the time of everyday life.

in an earlier period may theref<:Jrc cease to be relevant in historical

A chronicle of invcntiom or discoveries can be periodized in the

perspective; from a newly rigorous standpoint, previously impor-

:-,arne \vay as ordinary history. The dates of birth and death listed

tant works may becomt· trivial applications. [Ftudc_~, pp. IR-20]

in scientific biographies are dates ffom the ordinary calendar, but the advent of truth fOIImvs a diHCrent timetable in each discipline;

Recursion and Ruptures

the chronology of verification has its mvn viscosity, incompat-

[5] In establishing such a close connection between epistemol-

ible \vith ordinary history. Dmitry Mendeleyev's periodic table of

ogy and the hi">tury of science I am, of course, drawing on the

JO

JI

METHODOLOGY

TH!=

HISTORY

OF

SCIENCE

inspirational teachings of Gaston Bachelard. 6 The fundamental

approach. By observing th~..·~c rules he will avoid the error of, for

concepts of Bachelarrl's epistemology arc by now well known, so

instance, seeing Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis as a premature

well known, perhaps, that they have been disseminated and dis-

transfOrmist or geneticist. 4 [fdcologv and Rationali~r. pp. 10-12 J

cussed, especially outside France, in a vulgarized, not to say sanitized, fom1, devoid of the polemical fOrce ofthe original. Among

[6] When Bache lard speaks of a nonn or value, it is because in thinking of his favorite science, mathematical physics, he identi-

them are the notions of new scientific spirit, epistemological

fies theory vvith mathematics. II is rationalism is built on a frame-

[rupture], and obsolete or ''offi-

work of mathematism. In mathematics one speaks not of the

cial" science .... To my mind, the best summary of Bache lard's research and

"normal" but of the "norrned." In contrast to orthodox logical

teaching can be found in the concluding pages of his last episte-

cal content, whether actual or potential. and that progress in

obstacle, epistemological break

positivists, Bachelard holds that mathematics has epistemologi-

mological work, Le Matirialisme rationne/.7 Here the notion of

mathematics adds to that content. On this point he agrees with

epistemological discontinuity in scientific progress is supported

Jean Cavaill&s. whose critique of logical pmitivism has lost noth-

by arguments based on the history and teaching of science in

ing of its vigor or rigor. Cavaii!Cs reh1tes Rudolph C1rnap by shov.'-

the twentieth century. Bachelard concludl's with this statement:

ing that "mathematical reasoning is internallv coherent in a \vav

''Contemporary science is based on the search for true [ ~iritable]

that cannot be rushed. It is by nature nature of this progn~ss, he conclude~.

facts and the synthesis of truthful [ veridique] laws." Bv "truth-

progr~ssin:'."!Il

As to

th~·

ful" Bachdard docs not mean that scientific la\vs simply tell a truth permanently inscribed in objects or intellect. Truth is sim-

One of the fundamental problems with the doctrine of science is

ply what o;;cience .;;peaks. How, then, do we recogni1e that a state-

precisely that progress is in no way comparable to increasing a given

ment is scientific? By the fact that scientific truth never springs

,·o!umc by adding a small additional .\mount to what i_~ ,1fready there,

fully blown from the head of its creator. A science is a discourse

the old subsisting with the new. Rather, it i'> perpetual revision, in

governed by critical correction. ff this discourse has a history

which some thing<:. are eliminatf'd and other<:. cl.lhoratcrl. \Vhar Ct)mes

wh.ose course the historian believes he can reconstruct, it is be-

,1fter is greater than what went befOre, not because the present con-

cause it is a history whose meaning the epistemologist must reac-

tains or supersedes the past but because the one necessarily emerges

tivate. "Every historian of science is necessarily a historiographer

fi·om the other and in its content carries the mark of its superiority. which is in each case unique.ll

of truth. The events of science arc linked together in a steadily growing truth .... At various moments in the history of thought, the past of thought and experience can be seen in a new light."H

Nevertheless, the use of epistemological recursion as a historical

Guided by this new light, the historian should not make the error

method is not universally valid. It best fits the disciplines for thl'

ot thinking that persistent use of a particular term indicates an

study of ""-'hich it was originally dew· loped: mathematical phvs-

invariant underlying concept, or that persistent allusion to simi-

ics and nuclear chemistry. Of course. there is no reason \Vhv o,ne

LJ.r experimental observations connotes affinities of method or

cannot study a particularly advanced specialtv and then ah;tract

J?

Jl

1

METHODOLOGY

rules for the production of knowledge which may, with caution, be extrapolated to other disciplines. In this sense, the method cannot be generalized so much as it can be broadened. Yet it cannot be extended to other areas of the history of science without a good deal of reflection about the specific nature of the area to be studied. Consider, for example, eighteenth-century natural history. Before applying Bachelardian norms and procedures to the study of this subject, one must ask when a conceptual cleavage12 occurred whose effects were as revolutionary as were those of the introduction of relativity and quantum mechanics into physics. Such a cleavage is barely perceptible in the early Darwinian years,u and, to the extent that it is visible at all, it is only as a result of subsequent cataclysms: the rise of genetics and molecular biology. Hence, the recurrence method must be used judiciously, and we must learn more about the nature of epistemological breaks. Often, the historian in search of a major watershed is tempted to follow Kant in assuming that science begins with a flash of insight, a work of genius. Frequently the effects of that flash are said to be all-embracing, affecting the whole of a scientist's work. But the reality is different. Even within one man's work we often find a series of fundamental or partial insights rather than a single dramatic break. A theory is woven of many strands, some of which may be quite new ,~.rhile others are borrovved from older fabrics. The Copernican and Galilean revolutions did not sweep away tradition in one fell swoop. Alexandre Koyn~ has located what he considers to be the decisive "mutation" in Galilee's work, the decisive change in thinking that made him unable to accept medieval mechanics and astronomy. 14 For Koyre, the elevation of mathematics -arithmetic and geometry- to the status of key to intelligibility in physics indicated a rejection of Aristotle in favor of Plato. KoyrC's argument is sufliciently well known that I 34

THE

HISTORY OF

SCIENCE

need not discuss it in detail. But in painting a quite accurate picture of Galileo as an Archimedean as much as a Platonist, is not Koyre abusing the freedom of the recurrence method? 15 And is he not somewhat overstating the case in saying that the change in Galileo's thinking marked a total repudiation of Aristotelianism? Is not Ludovico Geymonat right to point out that KoyrC.'s interpretation neglects all that Galileo preserved from Aristotelian tradition even as he was proposing that mathematics be used to bolster logic?l6 Thus, Koyre is himself challenged on the very point on which he challenged Pierre Duhem when he wrote, "'The apparent continuity in the development of physics from the Middle Ages to the present [a continuity that Jean-Paul Caverni and Pierre Maurice Duhem have so assiduously stressed] is illusory.... No matter how well the groundv,rork has been laid, a revolution is still a revolution." 17 [Ideology and Rationalnv, pp. 13-15]

Science and Scientific ldeoloyies What is scientific ideology? [7] Scientific ideology. unlike a political class ideology, is not false consciousness. Nor is it false science. The essence of false science is that it never encounters falsehood, never renounces any-1 thing, and never has to change its language. for a false science ' there is no prescientific state. The assertions of a false science can never be falsified. Hence, false science has no history. By contrast, a scientific ideology does have a history. A scientific ideology comes to an end when the place that it occupied in the encyclopedia of knowledge is taken over by a discipline that operationally demonstrates the validity of its own claim to scientific status, its own "norms of scientificity." At that point, a certain form of nonscience is excluded from the domain of science. I say "nonscience" rather than usc Bogdan Suchodolski's term "anti-

MFTH0D0L0Gl'

THE

HISTt-JFif

OF""

SCIENCf':

science" simply in order to take note of the fact that,fin a scien-

probabilities to decide whether the frequency of a particular

tific ideology, there is an explicit ambition to be science. in

abnormality within a particular family wa'i or \\'as not fOrtuitous,

imitation of some already constituted model of what science is.\

and explained hybridization by assuming the existt>nce of semi-

This is a crucial point. The existence of scientific ideologies

nal atoms. hereditary ~lcments that combined during copula-

implies the parallel and prior existence of scientific discourses.

tion. But it is enough to compare the \\'ritings of i\laupertuis and

Hence, it also presupposes that a distinction has already been

Mendel to see the magnitude of the gap betwccn a science and

made bc-tween science and religion.

the ideology that it replaces. The facts that Mendel studies are

Consider thC' case of atomism. Democritus, Epicurus and

not those gleaned by a casual obsen·er; they are olHained through

Lucretius claimed scientific status fOr tlwir physics and psychol-

systematic research- research dictated by the nature of Mendel's

ogy. To the antiscience of religion they opposed the anti religion of

problem, for \vhich there is no precedent in the pre-J\lendelian

science. Scientific ideology neglects the methodological require-

literaturt·. Mendel invented the idea of a ch~..mJCli!f, by which he

ments and operational possibilities of science in that realm of

meJ.nt not the elementary agent of hereditary transmission but

experience it chooses to explore; but it is not thereby ignorance,

the element of heredity itself. A Mendelian charactn could enter

and it does not scorn or repudiate the function of science. Hence,

into combination with n other characters, and one could mea-

scientific ideology is by no means the same thing as superstition,

sure the ffequency of its appearance in successive generations.

fOr ideology has its pl.1ce, possibly usurped, in the realm of knowl-

Mendel ,.,-as not interested in structure, fertilization or develop-

edge. not in the realm nf religious belief. Nor is it superstition

ment. For him. hvbridizJtion was not a wa\'• of c~tablishing the • c

in the strict etymological sense. A super~tition is a belief from

constancy or inconstancy of a global type; it was a way of decom-

an old religion that persists despite its prohibition by ant'\\' reli-

posing a type, an instrument o~ analysis, a tool k)r separating char-

gion. Scientific ideology docs indeed stand over [superstore 1a site

acters that made it necessary to work with large s,1mples. Hence,

that will eventually be occupied by science. But science i.;; not

Mendel was interested in hybrids despite his repudiation of an age-

merely overlain; it is pushed aside [deport are J by ideology. There-

old tradition of hybrid research. He was not interested in sexual-

fore, when sciencr t:>Ycntually supplants ideology, it is not in the

ity or in the controversy over innate versus acquire-d traits or over

site· expected. [ideo/oar and Ratiorwlrtl', pp. 32-34]

prctOrmatinn versus cpigene-.o;,is. He was interested only in verifying his hypothesis via the- calculation of combinatiom. 1x Mendel

How scientific ideologies disappear and appear

neglected everything that interested those who in rfality \vere not

[8] For another, I hope convincing, example of the way in \vhich

his predecessors at all. The seventeenth-century ideology of hercd-

scientific ideologies are supplanted by "icience, consider the i\kn-

itarv transmission is replete with observations of animal and plant

delian theory of heredity. Most historians of biology believe that

hybrids and monsters. Such curiosity served o;everal purposes. It

i\laupertuis wa') rhe forerunner of modern genetics because in his

supported one side or the other in the debates between prcf(Jr-

Ve'nus physiqllc he considered the mechanisms by which normal

mationio::.ts and epigenesists, ovi~ts and animalculi':lt~. As a result,

and abnormal trait~ are transmitted. He also used the calculus of

it was u~dUI in resolving legal questions concerning the subor-

J6

17

METHODOLOGY

THE

HISTORY

OF

SCIENCE

Everything, in other words, evolves from more to less homogeneity and from lesser to greater individuation: the solar "Ystem, the animal organism, living species, man, society, and the products of human thought and activity, including language. Spencer explicitly states that he derived this law of evolution by generalizing the principles of embryolog)· contained in Karl-Ernst von Bacr's Uber Entwickelung.
dination of the sexes, paternity, the purity of bloodlines and the legitimacy of the aristocracy. These concerns were not unrelated to the controversy between innatism and sensualism. The technology of hybridization was perfected by agronomists in search of advantageous varieties, as well as by botanists interested in the relations between species. Only by isolating Maupertuis's Ve'nus physique from its context can that work be compared with the Versuche iibcr Pjlanzenhybridcn. Mendel's science is not the end point of a trail that can be traced back to the ideology it replaced, for the simple reason that that ideology followed not one but several trails, and none was a course set by science itself. All were, rather, legacies of various traditions, some old, others more recent. Qyjsm and animalculism were not of the same age as the empirical and mythological arguments advanced in favor of aristocracy. The ideology of heredity 19 was excessively and naively ambitious. It sought to resolve a number of important theoretical and practical legal problems without having examined their foundations. Here the ideology simply withered away by attrition. But the elimination of its scientific underpinnings brought it into focus as an ideology. The characterization of a certain set of observations and deductions as an ideology came after the disqualification of its claim to be a science. This was accomplished by the development of a new discourse, which circumscribed its field of validity and proved itself through the consistency of its results.

nineteenth-century English industrial society, in particular, his advocacy of free enterprise, political individualism and competition. From the law of differentiation, he deduced that the individual must be st~pported against the state. But perhaps this "deduction" was contained in the principles of the Spencerian system from the very beginning. The laws of mechanics, embryology and evolution CJnnot validly be extended beyond the domain proper to each of these

[9] Instructive as it is to study the way in which scientific ideologies disappear, it is even more instructive to study how they appear. Consider bridly the genesis of a nineteenth-century scientific ideology. t'volutionism. The work of Herbert Spencer makes an interesting case study. Spencer believed that he could state a universally •.:aJid law of progress in terms of evolution from the simplt' to the complex through successive differentiations.

sciences. To what end are specific theoretical conclusions severed from their premises and applied out of context to human expcriPnce in gpneral, particularly social experience? To a practical end. Evolutionist ideology was used to justify industrial society as against traditional society, on the one hand, and the demands of workers, on the other. It vvas in part anti theological, in part antisocialist. Thus, e\·olutionist idl'ology 'vas an ideology in the l9

'

MFTHODOLOGY

Marxist sense: a representation of nature or society \vhose truth

CHAPTEH

Two

lay not in \\'hat it said but in what it hid. Of course, evolutionism was far broader than Spencer's ideology. But Spencer's views had

The Various Models

a lasting influence on linguists and anthropologists. II is ideology gave meaning to the word primithre and salved the conscience of colonialists. A remnant of its legacy can still be found in the behavior of advanced societies toward so-called underdeveloped countries, even though anthropology has long since recognized

the plurality of cultures, presumably making it illegitimate for any one culture to set itself up as the yardstick by which all others are measured. In freeing themselves from their evolutionist origins, contemporary linguistics, ethnology and sociology have

The Positivist Tradition

shown that an ideology disappears when historical conditions

[10] Events completely extrinsic to science and logic, portrayed

cease to be compatible with its existence. The theory of evolu-

conventionally if at all in standard histories of scienti fie research,

tion has changed since Darwin, but Danvinism is an integral part

yield an account that claims, if only in ritual f~1shion, to trace the

of the history of the science of evolution. By contrast, evolution-

logical development of a scientific idea. This would be surpris-

ist ideology is merely an inoperative residue in the history of the

ing only if then.' \vcre no distinction between science and the his-

human sciences. [Ideology and Rationalitr, pp. 34-37]

tory of science. In that case, a biologist could vvrite a history of his V\'ork in exactly the same way as he \vould write a scientific paper, relying on exactly the same criteria he \vould use in evaluating the truth of a hypothesis or the potential of a particular line of research. But to proceed in this \Vay is to treat hypotheses and research programs not as projects but as objects. \Vhen a scientific proposition is judged to be true, it takes on a retroactive validity. It ceases to be part of the endless stream of forgotten dreams, discarded projects, failed procedures and erroneous conclusions- things, in short, fOr which someone must shoulder the responsibility. The elimination of the false by the true- that is, the verified- appears, once it is accomplished, to be the quasimechanical effect of ineluctable, impersonal necessity. Importing such norms of judgment into the historical domain is, therefore, an inevitable source of misunderstanding. The retroactive effect 4'

'

METHODOLOGY

of the truth influences even one's assessment of the respective contributions of various investigators to a scientific discovery (an assessment that only a specialist is competent to make), because the tendency i.'J to see the history of the subject in the light of today's truth, which is easily confused with eternal truth. But if truth is eternal, if it never changes, then there is no history: the historical content of science is reduced to zero. It should come as no o;;urprise that it was positivism, a philosophy of history based on a gencraJi1ation of the notion that theory ineluctably succeeds theory as the true supplants the false, that led to science's contempt for history. Over time, a research laboratory's library tends to divide into two parts: a museum and a working reference library. The museum section contains books whose pages one turns as one might examine a flint ax, whereas the reference section contains books that one explores in minutt' detail, as with a microtome. [Formation du n'Jlexe, pp. 155-56] [II J Eduard Jan Dijksterhuis, the author of Die Mechoni.ncrung des Weltbildes, thinks that the history of science is not only science's memory but also epistemology's laboratory. This phrase has been quoted frequently. The idea, which has been accepted by numerous specialists, has a less well known antecedent. Pierre Flourcns, referring in hio; eulogy of Georges Cuvier to the HistClire des sciences naturt!llcs published by Magdelalne de Saint-Agy, states that the history of science "subjects the human mind to experiment ... makes an experimental theory of the human spirit." Such a conception is tantamount to modding the relation between the history of science and the science of which it is the history on the relation between the sciences and the objects of which they arc scit.·nccs. But experimentation is only one of the \Vays in \Vhich science relates to objects, and it is not self-evident that this is the relevant analogy for understanding history's relation to it.;; object. Furthermore, in the hands of its recent champion, the meth-

'

THE

VARIOUS

MODELS

odological statement has an epistemological corollary, namely, that there exists an eternal scientific method. In some periods this method remains dormant, \\'hilc in others it is vigorous and active. Gerd Buchdahl has characterized this corollary as naive,2° and one would be inclined to agree if he were willing to apply the same description to the empiricism or positivism underlying his own view. It is no accident that I attack positivism at this point in the argument: for after Flourens but before Dijksterhuis, Pierre Lafitte, a confirmed disciple of Auguste Comte, comparerl the history of science to a "mentdl microscope." 21 The use of such an instrument, Lafitte suggests. reveals hidden truths: the understanding of science is deepened through discussion of the difficulties scientists faced in making their discoveries and propagating their results. The image of the microscope defines the context as the laboratory, and there is, I think,
Historical Epistemolony

[12] To undt.'rstand the function and meaning of the hi-;tory of science, one can contrast the image of the laboratory with that of a school or tribunal, that is, an institution \Vherc judgment is passed on either the past of knuwledgc or knowkdge of tlw past. But if judgment is to be passed, a judge is essential. Episternal- ' ogy provides a principle on \vhich judgment can be based: it ) teaches the historian the language spoken at some point in the evolution of a particular scientific discipline, say, chemistry. The 43

METHODOLOGY

historian then takes that knowledge and searches back ward in time until thl' later ,·ocJ.bulary ceases to be intelligible, or untif it can no longer be tramlared into the less rigorous lexicon of an earlier period. Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier, for example, introduced a new nomenclature into chemistry. lienee, the language spoken by chemists after La,·oisier points up semantic gaps in the language of earlier practitioners. It has not been sufficiently noticed or admired that Lavoisier, in the "Discour'\ preliminaire" to his Tru1tC i/Cmcntaire de chimic, Jssumed full responsibility for two decisions that left him open to criticism: "revising the languagt spoken by our teachers" and fJiling to provide "any histori-, cal account of the opinions of my predecessors." It was as though he understood the lesson of Descartes, that to institute a new branch of knowledge is in effect to sever one's ties to whatever had presumptively usurped its place. There are in fact two versions of the history of sciencl': the history of obsolete knm·\'ledge and the history of sanctioned knowledge, by which I mean knowledge that plays an active [aaissant] role in its mvn time. Without epistemology it is impossible to distinguish bet\veen the two. Gaston Bachclard \vas the first to make this distinction. 22 I-I is decision to recount the history of scientifk experiments and concepts in the light of the latest scientilk principles has long since demonstrated its worth. Alexandre Koyre's idea of the history of science \vas basically simil.u to Bachelard's. True, Koyre's epistemology was closer to

rHE

VARIOUS

r_,0DELS

note that Koyre and Bachelarrl were interested in different periods in the history of the exact -:;cicnces. Furthnmore, these periods were nor equally equipped to deal m. with transcended doctrines in the foreground ,md today's truth way offJ.r the "vanishing point." It is, rather, an effort to discover and explain to what extent discredited notions, attitudes or methods were, in their day, used to discredit other notions, attitudes or methodsand thercfiJrt:> an effort to discover in what respects the discredited past remains the past of an activity that still deserves to be called scientific. It is as important to understand what the past taught dS it is to find out why we no longer he!ieYc in its lf'sson_'t. [ Etudn,

Emile Meyerson's than to Bachelard\, and more keenly attuned to the continuity of the rational function than to the dialectics of rationalist activity. Yet it was because he recognized the role of epistemology in doing history of science that he cast his Etudes aalilfennes and The Astronomical Revolution in the form that he did.

[ 13 J It is easy to distinguish between what Bache lard calls "normalitv"B and what Thomas Kuhn calls "normal science.".l 4 The

h the dating <'\an "epistemological break" a contingent or o;ubjecti\'e judgment? To see that the ans\ver is no, one need only

two epistemologies do share certain points in common: in particular, thl' obstTvation that 'cientific textbooks overemphasitt:>

44

4\

pp. ll-14]

Empiricist Lonicism

METHODOLOGY

the continuity of scientific research. Both stress the discontinuous nature of progress. Nevertheless, while the fundamental concepts share a 1;1mily resemblance, they do not really belong to the same brJ.nch. This has been noted by Father Franc;:ois Russo, who, despite reservations about the claims of superiority to which epistemological historians are sometimes prone, argues that Kuhn is mistaken about the nature of scientific rationality as such.25 Though ostensibly concerned to preserve Karl Popper's emphasis on the necessity of theory and its priority over experiment, Kuhn is unable to shake off the legacv of logical positivism and join the rationalist camp, where his key concepts of"paradigm" and "normal science" would seem to place him. These concepts premppose intentionality and regulation, and as such they imply the possibility of a break with established rules and procedures. Kuhn would have them play this role without granting them the means to do so, for he regards them as simple cultural facts. For him, a paradigm is the result of a choice by its users. Normal science is defined by the practice in a given period of a group of specialists in a university research setting. Instead of concepts of philosophical critique, we are dealing 'vith mere social psychology. This accounts for the embarrassment evident in the appendix to the second edition of the Structure of Scientific Revolutions when it comes to answering the question of how the truth of a theory is to be understood. [!deologr and Rationalitv, pp. 12-13]

lnternalism and Externalism [ 14 J How does one do the history of science, and how should one do it? This question raises another: what is the history of science a history of? ~ny authors apparently take the answer to this second question for granted, to judge by the fact that they never explicitly ask it. Take, for example, the debates between what English-speaking writers call internalists and externalists.26 Exter-

THE

VARIOUS

MODELS

nalism is a \vay of writing the history of science by describing a set of events, which are called 1'scientific" fOr reasons having more to do with tradition than with critical analysis, in terms of their relation to economic and social interests, technological needs and practices, and religious or political ideologies. In short, this is an attenuated or, rather, impoverished vt:>rsion of ~·1arxism, one rather common today in the world's more prosperous mcietics.n 'Internalism (which externalists characterize as "idealism") is the view that there is no history of science unless one places oneself within the scientific endeavor itself in order to analyze the procedures by which it seeks to satisfy the specific norms that allow it to be defined as science rather than as technology or ideology. In this perspective, the historian of science is supposed to adopt a theoretical attitude toward his specimen theories; he therdOn.· has as much right to formulate models and hypotheses as scientists themselves. Clearly. both tht> internalist and externalist positions conOate the object oftht~ history of science vvith the object of a science. The externalist sees the history of science as a matter of explaining cultural phenomena in terms of the cultural milieu; he therefore confuses the history of science \Vith the naturali':!t sociology of institutions and fails to interpret the truth claims intrinsic to scil'ntific discourse. The internalist sees tht· facts of the history of Kience, such as instances of simultaneous discovery {of modern calculus, fOr example, or the law of conservation of energy), as facts whose history cannot be written vvithout a theory. Thus, a fact in the histor:y of science is treated as a fact of science, ,1 procedure perfectly compatible with an epistemology according to which theory rightfully takes priority over empirical data. [Etudes, pp. 14-1 S]

47

CJ-L\PTrR

THHEE

The History of the History of Science

A History of Precursors [ 15 J Every theory is rightly expected to provide proofs of practical efficacy. \\!hat, then, is the practical effect fOr the historian of science of a theory wh05e effect is to make his discipline the place \vhnc the theoretical questions raised by scientific practice are studied in an cs~entially autonomous manner? One important practical effect is the elimination of what J.T. Clark has called "the precursor virus."-JX Strictly speaking, if precursors existed, the history of science \\'otdd lose all meaning, since science itself would merely appear to have a historical dimension.

'

Consider the work of Alexandre KoyrC. Koyre contrasted, on epistemological grounds, the "closed vmrld" of antiquity with the "infinite universe" of modern times. If it had been possible for some ancient precursor to have conceived of "the infinite universe" before its time, then Koyre's whole approach to the history of science and ideas would make no sense.)';) A precursor,

Wl'

are told, is a thinker or researcher who pro-

ceeded some distance along a path later explored all the way to its end by someone else. To look for, find and celebrate precursors is a 'lign of complacency and an unmistakable symptom of 49

METHODOLOGY

THE

HISTORY

OF

THE

HISTORY

OF

SCIENCE

incompctcncl' f()r epistemological criticism. Tvm itineraries can-

Ferchault de RCaumur and Maupertuis as precursors of Mendel

not be compared unless the paths followed are truly the same.

without noticing that the problem that Mendel set himself was

In a coherent system of thought, every concept is related to

every other concept. Just because Aristarchus ofSamos advanced

of his own devising, or that he solved it by inventing an unprecedented concept. the independent hereditary character. 32

the hypothesis of a heliocentric universe, it does not follow that

So long as texts and other works yoked together by the heu-

he was a precursor of Copernicus, even if Copernicus invoked his

ristic compression of time have not been subjected to critical

authority. To change the center of reference of celestial motions

analysis for the purpose of explicitly demonstrating that two

is to relativize high and low, to change the dimensions of the uni-

researchers sought to answer identical questions for identical

verse- in short, to constitute a

SY'~tl·m.

But Copernicus criticized

reasons, using identical guiding concepts, defined by identical

,11l astronomical theori(·s prior to his own on the grounds that they

systems, then, insof:1r as an authentic history of science is con-

were not rational systems. 30 A precursor, it is said, belongs to

cerned, it is completely artificial, arbitrary and unsatisfactory to

more than one age: he is, of course, a man of his own time, but

say that one man finished what the other started or anticipated

he is simultaneously a contemporary oflater investigators credited

what the other achieved. By substituting the logical time of truth

with completing his unfinished project. A precursor, therefore, is

relations for the historical time of these relations' invention, one

a thinker whom the hi~torian believes can be extracted from his

treats the history of science as though it Wt~n.-· a copy of science

cultural milieu and inserted into others. This procedure asmmes

and its object a copy of the object of science. The result is the

that concepts, discourses. speculations and experiments can be

creation of an artifact, a counterfeit historical object -the pre-

shifted tTom one intellectual environment to another. Such adapt-

cursor. In Koyre's words:

ability, of course, is o~ned at the cost of neglecting the "historicity" of the object under sturly. Hmv many historians, for

The notion of a ''lim,. runner" is

,1

very dangerous one for the histo-

example, have looked l(H precursors of Darwinian transf()rmbm

rian. It is no doubt trut' that ideas have

among eighteenth-century naturalists, philosophers and even journalists?-~1 The list is long.

opment, that is to say. they are born in one mind, and reach maturity

Louis Dutens's Recherches sur l'ori,qine des diwuvertes attribuies

their solutions can bt' traced. It is equally true that the historical

,1

quasi independent devel-

to bear fruit in another; consequently, the history of problems and

aux modernes ( 1776) may be taken as an (admittedly extreme) case

importance of a doctrine is measured by its fruitfulness, and that later

in point. \\'hen Dutens writes that Hippocrates knev..· about the

generations are not concerned with those that precede them except

circulation of the blood, and that the Ancients possessed the sys-

in so fM as they

tem of Copernicus, we smile: he has fOrgotten all that \Villiam

quit~

~ee

in them their "ancestors" or "forerunners." It is

obvious (or should be) that no-one h.ls ever regarded himselt

Harvey mvcd to Renaissance anatomy and mechanical models, and

as the "fOrerunner" of someone else, nor been able to do 'lo. Conse-

he fails to credit Copernicus's originality in exploring the math-

quently. to regard anyone in

ematical possibility of the earth's mo\'ement. \Ve ought to smile

oneself from understanding

thi~

light is tht' best way of preventing

him.~)

just as much at the more recent writers who hail Rene- Antoine

\I

METHODOLOGY

THE

HISTORY

OF

THE

HISTORY

Of-

SCit'~CEo

A precursor is a man of science 'vho, one knows only much later,

from De _functionibus systematis nervosi, and concluded that the

ran ahead of all his contemporaries but before the person whom

entire theory of the reflex action inhere-nt in the spinal cord \vas

one takes to be the \vinner of the race. To ignore the fact that he

there "preformed and preestablished" (priiformirt und priiswbilirt ).

is the creature of a certain history of science, and not an agent of

Although not interested in investigating whether Hall and MUller,

scientific progress, is to accept as real the condition of his possi-

who may not have knov·m Prochaska's \vork directly. might have

bility, namely, the imaginary simultaneity of"bef()re" and "after"

been influenced by vvord of it filtered through "the scientific

in a sort of logical space.

milieu of his contemporaries and epigones" (in die fJieichzciti,qc und

In making this critique of a false historical object, I have

epigonische wisscnscha_ftliche 11Clt transpirirte), Jeitteles asks hmv this

sought to justify by counterexample the conc':pt I have proposed

work could have been ignored for so long. His answer, \vhich

according to \vhich the history of scicncl' defines its object in

seems judicious to me, is that Albrecht von Haller's authority is

its own intrinsic terms. The history of science is not a science,

a sufficient explanation. The theory of irritability, of a strength

and its object is not a sci~tific object. To do history of science

inherent in the muscle, diverted attention from the intrinsic func-

(in the most operative sen~- of the verb "to do") is one of the

tions of the spinal cord. This only makes Prochaska's merit all the

functions (and not the easiest) of philosophical epistemology.

more apparent: rather than rehearse the ideas of the period, his

[Etudes, pp. 20-2 3]

\vork contradicted them. The final lines of the article arc an appeal to some generous historian to revive the great Prochaska

A History in the Service of Politics

as a model for future generations. Jeitteles thought that the man

[16] It was in 1858 that a new oolemic, initiated this time by

to do this was the current occupant of Prochaska's chair at the

George Prochaska's growing renov.:n, resulted in Descartes\ name

venerable and celebrated University of Prague, the "illustrious

being brought into the history of the reflex fOr the first time. The

forerunner of all German universities." That man was the distin-

occasion was an article by A.L. Jeitteles, a professor of medicine

guished physiologist Jan Purkinje (1787-1869).

at Olmiitz, entitled Who Is the Founder of the Theon of Reflex

The impetuosity of this plea, which naturally and pathetically

A1ovement?l 4 Jeittcles summarized Marshall Hall's first paper, said

combines a claim for the originality of a scholar with an affirma-

a few words about Hall's priority over Johannes MUller, ackno\i\'1-

tion of the cultural values of an oppressed nationality, is equaled

edgcd the great value of both men's work, yet claimed that the

only by the brutality and insolence of the reply it received from an

impetus for research into reflex action came from else,vherc,

oflicial representative, not to say high priest, of German physiol-

ffom an earlier time, and ffom another source. "It was none other

ogy. Emile Du Bois-Reymond (1818-1896), Muller's student and

than our eminent, and today insufliciently honored, compatriot,

successor in the chair of physiology at the University of Rcrlin-

George Prochaska, who richly deserves to be preservl'd in the

who became a member of the Re-rlin Academy of Sciences in 1851

eternally gratefUl memory of our Czech fatherland, so rich in supe-

and \vho was already celebrated not only fOr his work in neuro-

rior men of every kind." Jcittelcs asserted that Prochaska \vas the

muscular electrophysiology but also for his numerous professions

true founder of the theory of reflex movement, quoted excerpts

of philosophical faith in the universal validitv of mechanistic

METHODOLOGY

determinism and the inanity of metaphysical questions 35 - summarily dismissed Prochaska and gave Descartes credit for ha\'ing had the genius to anticipate both the word and the idea of "reflex." In a commemorative address delivered at the time of Muller's dt•ath in 1858, ~Bois-Reymond stated that he had found ( wic ich gcjunden habe) that Descartes. roughly a century and a half before Prochaska, had correctly described reflex rnovement ( erstens beschrieb ... Descartes ... die Rcflexbewegungcn vO!lig

richtig); he had used the same analogy (with reflection) to de-

scribe the phenomenon; and he also deserved credit for the law

of peripheral manifestation ·of sense impressions. '16 The passages that precede and follow these lines on Descartes give a clear indication of Du Bois-Reymond's intention. It \vas, first of all, to protect Miiller's "copyright," as it were: MUller may not have known about Descartes, but Prochaska \vas another matter. If Prochaska was not the father of the notion of reflex, then he himself fell under the shadow of the judgment proposed in his name against his successors. Furthennore, Descartes was. according to DuBoisRcymond, a self-conscious mechanist physiologist, a theorist of the animal-machine, and therefore descrYing of the same admiration extended to Julien Offray de La Mcttrie, the theorist of the man-machine. 37 By contrast, Prochaska was a vague and inconsistent thinker in whose mind the notion of reflex was associated "',..ith that of consensus nervorum, an anatomical myth of animist inspiration. lX Indeed, if Prochaska had formulated the principle of the reflection of sense impressions in 1784, he failed to mention it in his Physiolosic oder Lehre von der Natur des .Henschen in

1820. I<J Firh1ily, Prochaska did not know \\'hat he wa-; doing the

f

THE

HISTORV

OF

THE

HISTORY

OF

SCIENCE

in diminishing Prochaska, Du Bois-Reymond was really trying to

discredit a group of biologists manifestly guilty in his eyes of the sin of metaphysics, n<1mely, the Naturphilosophie school. Du Bois-Reymond's 1858 text was published in 1887 in the second volume of his Reden along with explanatory notes. The notes concerning the passages of Descartes on which Du BoisReymond based his comments are particularly valuable for our purposes; 4 1 some of the relevant passages arc from Article 13 of The Passions of the Soul, where the palpebral reflex is described. I must point out that Du Bois-Reymond makes no di.;;tinction between a description and a definition, and that it is rather disingenuous of him to reproach Prochaska, as he does in one note, for having used the same example as Descartes. It would be laughable to maintain that Charles Scott Sherrington should not have studied the "scratch rdlex" because it meant borrowing from Thomas Willis. In any case, Prochaska \vas an ophthalmologist and, strictly speaking, had no need of DC'~(:artes to know that there is such a thing as involuntary occlusion of the cyelich. 42 The second text of Descartes's cited by Du Bois-Reymond is Article 36 of The Po mons of the Soul. Although it does contain the expression "esprits rijlichis" (reflected spirits), this expression, unique in Descartes's work, is used to explain the mechanism of a form of behavior that is not a reflex in the strict sense of the word. If: in fact, Du Bois-Reymond is right to contend that Prochaska did not knmv what he \VJS doing when he devoted pagt.' after page of his Com mentation of 1784 to the "reflection" of sensory into motor impressions, whJ.t are we to say, applying the samt..' criterion of judgment, about an author who uses a pair of word-. only

only author who might justly be credited with priority over MUller was Hall, and that was a priority of two months. 4 0 It may be that

once? [Formation du rijlexe, pp. 138-40] [17] We therefore impute to Du Bois-Reymond, at his request, full responsibility for his historical discovery. If I have dwelt on the details of this controversy, it is because it enables

\4

II

first time he had the opportunity to describe correctly the reflection of sense impressions. As for MUller's contemporaries, the

ME IIIODO:...OGY

THE'

HISTORY

OF

THE

HISTORY

OF

SC

ENCE

us at last to establish the precise origin of the \videly accepted

voice of one of its official representatives, defended its political

vinv that paternity of both the word "~reflex" and some rudimen-

superiority of the moment against another culture. One philoso-

tary version of the idea can be traced back to Descartes, a vie . .,·

phy of life, constrained within the framework of a biological

that franklin rearing, as \ve have seen, repeats several times, but

research method, treated another philosophy as a mythology alleg-

whose origins he never examines:H Along with the origin of the

edly incapable of fOstering effective scientific research. It was

assertion, we have discovered its meaning. As for the circum-

mechanism again;;t vitalism. [Formation du rCfles.e, p. 15 5 J

stances, Du Hois-Reymond's address \vas meant as a rebuke to a C/.ech professor insufficiently persuaded of the superiority of German civilization. But as far as its scientific implications are concerned, this address can be attributed to a concern- a con-

A Canonical History [ 19] An emperor's wish to glorify and justif)' ne\v academic institutions led to a ne\v departure in the history of science. In 1807

cern, that is, on the part of a physiologist for whom "scientism''

Napoleon I ordered a report on the progress that had been made

did duty fOr philosophy- to discover, in Descartes's alleged antici-

in science since 1789. Georges Cuvier, as permanent secretary of

pation of a discovery that was beginning to justifY a mechanistic

the lnstitut pour les Sciences Physiques ct Naturclles since 1803,

interpretation of a whole range of psychophysiological phenom-

was assigned n:sponsibility for the Report that was eventually

ena, a guarantee and, in a sense, an authentication of the use that

published in 1810, while Jean Baptiste Joseph Delambre was made

people now proposed to make of it. It was not so much for rea-

responsible fOr a similar report on the mathematical sciences. The

sons of pure physiology as fOr reasons of philosophy that Descartes

authorities could pride themselves on having fOund a ne\V Bernard

V\'as anointed a great physiologist and illustrious precursor. [Formation du refle.c, pp. 141-42]

analyses of the work of the academy with eulogies of deceased

[18] In the history of the concept of the reflex, very differ-

academicians. But anyone who would examine the history of a

ent circumstances and motivations account for the appearance of

life devoted to research must consider other, 'iimilar research con-

Le Bouvier Fontenelle, a man capable of supplementing the yearly

Descartes, Willis, Jean Astruc and Prochaska, \vith Johann August

temporary \vith, or prior to, that of his subject. And when one

Unzer generally being left shrouded in shadow. Prochaska's name

has received a Germanic education - an education that \vas, in

came up in the course of a polemic between Marshall llall and

Henry Ducrotay de Blainville's words, "encyclopedic and philo-

certain of his contemporaries, a polemic that gradually turned

logical"44 - one could conceive of giving a "course in the history

into what is commonly called a settling of scores. The story be-

of natural science." And vvhcn nne had chosen, as Cuvier had

longs, along with countless other tales of rivalry bet\veen scien-

toward the end of his studies at the Caroline Academv in Stutt-

tific coteries, to the anecdotal history of science. Descartes's

gart, to study "cameralistics," or the science of administration

name came up in the course of a diatribl' against one dead man

and economics, 4 ~ it was only natural to devote space to technol-

for the apparent purpose of honoring another. In fact, it vvas a

ogy in one's report to the emperor and to adumbrate a theory of

matter of liquidating an opposition, or nTn- when one looks at

the social statu-; of modern science in the 1816 RCjlnions .mr Ia

it closely- two oppositions. One culture, speaking through the

marche actuelle des sciences et sur leurs rapports avec fa sociCtC, as well

'7

METHODOLOGY

I

as in the Discours sur l'itat de l'histoire naturelle et sur ses accroissements depuis le retour de Ia paix maritime (1824). The reader of volume three of the Histoire des sciences naturelles is not surprised, then, to find that the first lecture is devoted to a reminder, inspired by the Marquis de Condorcet in the Esquisse of 1794, of the debt that modern science owes to the technological innovations of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries: alcohol, clear ; glass, paper, artillery, printing, the compass. In the same lecture, I Cuvier, a Protestant and the official within the ministry of the interior responsible for overseeing non-Catholic religious worship, could not help noticing the encouragement and support that men of learning had found in the Reformation: freedom of thought and the gradual emancipation of philosophy from subservience to theological doctrine. Blainville and Franc;ois Louis Michel Maupied's Histoire des sciences de /'organisation et de leurs progres, com me base de Ia philosophie is constructed on the basis of diametrically opposed judgments. To be sure, the chapter devoted to Conrad Gesner recalls the positive contributions of technology to Renaissance science (vol. 2, pp. 134-35), but immediately thereafter the Reformation is denounced fOr "reviving the unfortunate reactions that we have previously seen arising out of various struggles of the human spirit, applying method without authority to the explication of dogma" ( p. 136 ). Because of the friendship between the principal author and those two cultural agitators, Blainvillc and Maupied, the work contains numerous passages concerning the relation of the sciences and their teaching to the new social needs of an emerging industrial society, but these excurses almost always end in sermons.

[ ... ] Blainville and Maupied's Histoire is also different from, even diametrically opposed to, that of Cuvier when it comes both to determining the method, or ways and means, of the science of

THE

HISTORY

OF

THE

HISTORY OF

SCIENCE

living things, and to appreciating the eflects of seventeenth-century philosophies on the development of that science. Cuvier thinks that philosophy encourages the sciences if it disposes minds toward observation but discourages the sciences if it disposes minds toward speculation.4 6 Wherever Aristotle's method, based on experience, was adopted, the sciences progressed, whereas Descartes chose the opposite path, and the regrettable consequences of that choice lasted until the middle of the eighteenth centurv, when the sciences were countered by "another philosophy that was a copy of the true Peripateticism and that has been called the philosophy of the eighteenth centurv or of the skeptics." A rather sweeping judgment, it might seem, although it was current at the time in one form or another. Blainville and Maupied's judgment is equally broad, as well as considerably more prolix: Descartes, Bacon and all the others (sic), they say, are merely the logical consequence, the elaboration, of Aristotle; 47 Bacon's philosophy is nothing but Aristotle's; 4 X Descartes worked in an Aristotelian direction;4 9 Descartes built on the work of the great Stagirite;SO and so on. What is the significance of our two historians' fascination with Aristotle? The ans\ver to this question, I think, determines what view the history of science ought to take of Blainvillc and Maupied's project. The first step toward answering it, moreover, must come from a final comparison \Vith Cuvier's Histoire. The third lecture in Cuvier's third volume is devoted to Leibniz, and Cuvier dwells at length on the great chain of being and on Charles Bonnet's development of this Leibnizian theme. Cuvier states that "physiology does not follow mathematics in admitting unlimited combinations," and that, in order to accept the notion that there exists a continuous chain of beings, as Bonnet and others do, or that beings can be arranged along a single line, one must have a very incomplete view of nature's organization. '> 1 1'1 hope," 59

MCTHODOI OGY

THE=

HIS lORY

OF

THE

HISTORY

Ot

SCICNCE

Cuvicr says, "to have proven that this system is false,"5J alluding

ending finally with man, proclaimed to be the "master" of all that

to \Vhat he knmvs he has demonstrated through comparative anat-

\vent before. Now, it so happPns that there is a \Vestnn philoso-

omy and paleontology, namely, that there is no unity of organic

pher of Greek antiquity \vho \vas able to read that order, which

gradation, no unity of structural plan, no unity of composition

\vas unknmvn to Eastern mythology: that philosopher was Aristotle, "who understood that there is in nature a collection of

and no unity of type. Nmv, if Blainville, for his part, acknovvledges five distinct types

groups, and that each group fOrms a veritable series \vhose degrees

of creation, he nevertheless argues that they are arranged in a

pass imperceptibly ffom one to the other, from the most imper-

series, each one being the distinct expression of a general plan

fect to the one in \vhich life achieved its highest perfection.''' 6

whose progressive or regressive order, if one looks at the level of

.. ~ristotle's goal, clearly, was to achieve knowledge of man regard-

the species for gradations and degradations that ought to apply

ing all those aspects that make him superior to the animals, a

only to genera, does not proceed without apparent hiatus. If the

being possessing a touch of the divine. '>7

numerous papers, reports and dissertations published by Blainville

This key to reading the forms of life gives us the key to reading

can be seen as the a posteriori of his Yoological system, then the

Hlainville and Maupied's Histoirc. That key is the notion of "mea-

a priori is described in his Histoirc des sciences de !'organisation as

sure," an absolute term of reference and comparison. "J\-1easure"

an a priori not of rational intuition but of divine revelation. This

is a word that recurs frequently in the l/istoirc. The measure of

affirmation can bl' read in the Introduction, signed by Blainville

organized beings in their serial disposition is man. 51\ And it was

himself: "I conceived and carried out my I listoire de !'organisation

because Aristotle made man the measure of animality that Aris-

as a possible foundation fOr philosophy, while at the same time

totle himself is the measure of truth for the series of investiga-

demonstrating that philosophy is one and the same thing as the

tions that took animals as their object. Through the ccnturil's

Christian religion, \vhich is so to speak only an a priori, revealed

Aristotle is the measure of the sciences of organization. [ ... J

to man by God himself \vhen the state of society required it.''Sl

Nmv that \Ve possess the key to the Histoire des sciences de

And further: "Science in general is knowledge a posteriori of the existence of God through his works."54

cluded in the book while others were excluded. Unlike eclec-

How, then, does knowledge proceed? Through reading. The

tics such as Cuvier (who was frequently characterized as such,

preliminary analysis of zoological notions at the beginning of vol-

cover- that is, to read in the structures and functions of living

both scientifically and politicaJiy5 9 ), lllainville based his choices on an explicit criterion: "In this history a number of eminent men <;tand as landmarks of scientific progress. I chose them because their own work and the work of their legitimate predecessors pushed science in the right direction and \vith an impetus appropriate to the age" (vol. 1, pp. viii-ix).

beings- only what the Book of Genesis atlirms about the order

Consequently, the history of the science of organintion is

of those beings' creation, in the waters, in the air and on earth,

governed by the fundamental. which is to say, divine, law of the

ume threl' confirms this unambiguously: "One does not create in science, one reads what is created. The pretension to create is absurd, even in the greatest geniuses.''"' In virtue of this heuristic imperative, the sciences of organintion should be able to dis-

6o

/'organisation, \ve can understand why certain authors \vere in-

v'

METHODOLOGY

organization of organisms - the ascending series. Blainville, by always taking the idea of the animal series (which fOr him was merely the reading of an ontological fact) as the measure of the importance of men and their works, composed his Histoire in the image of God creating the series. ["De Blainvil1e," Revue d'histoire, pp. 75-82] [20] All history of science that is not strictly descriptive may

be said to be implicitly normative insofar as its author, owing to his culture at that moment, can do nothing to prevent himself fi·om reacting, as would a chemical reagent, with the meanings he thinks he sees emerging on their own from the past. But Blainville and Maupied's Histoire is more than nonnative in this strong sense: it is a canonical history in the strict sense of the word. How else can one characterize a work in \vhich a man of science, such as Blainville, could \vrite in his signed Introduction that he took account "only of those steps that fell on the straight line between the starting point and the end or goal," and that he neglected "the works of individuals \vho, voluntarily or involuntarily, veered, as it were, to the left" 00- a work, moreover, in which Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and Lorenz Oken are called "errant naturalists,"61 a work that claims to profess the vie\VS of the "Christian Aristotle"?62 In virtue of this, the authors "'rite, "As for those lost children who appear in nearly every era of science, \vho have struck a bold but misplaced blow, or who fired befOre being ordered to do so, their efforts have almost always been without effect when not positively harmful. We must not speak of them."63 Jfthe expression "canonical history" seems too severe for characterizing a work written jointly by a scholar who was a legitimist in politics and a priest who would one day serve as a consultant to the Index, one can nevertheless say, having noticed that the authors took several quotations from Fram;:ois-RenC Vicomte de Chateaubriand's Etudes historiques, 6 4 that their Histoire is, in its mvn way and for the nat62

THE

HISTORY OF

THE

HISTORY OF

SCIENCF.

ural sciences, a complement to that author's Ginie du christJ'anisme. ["De Blainville," Revue d'histoire, pp. 90-91]

If I

PART

Two

Epistemology

-

CHAPTER.

FOUR.

Epistemology of Biology

Orinins of the Concept [21] Ari~totle vvas the first to attempt a general definition of lift~: "Of natural bodie~ [that is, those not fabricated by man], some posseo;;s vitality, others do not. \Ve mean by 'possessing vitality' that a thing can nourish itself and grow and dccay." 1 Later he says that life i~ what distinguishes the animate body from the inanimate. But the tt:'rm "life," like "soul," can be understood in several ~t.~nses. It is enough that one of them should accord with some object of our experience "for us to affirm that [that object] b alive." 2 The vegetal state is the minimal expression of the soul's functions. Less than this and there is no life; any richer form of life presupposes at lca<;t this much. 1 Life, identified with animation, tim!'. differs lfom matter; the life-soul i'> the form, or act, of which the living natural body i~ the content: ~uch was Aristotle's conu·ption of lift~. ,tnd it remained as vigorous throughout the centuries as Aristotelian philosophy itself did. All the medical philosophies that

held, down to4 beginning of the nineteenth century, that life \vas either a unique principle or somehmv associated with the soul, es<;entially different from matter and an exccprion to its la\VS, were directly or indirectly indebted to that part of Aristotle's .sys·

tern which can e-qually well be called biology nr psychology.

EPIS'EMOI OGY

EPI'STE'VIOLOGY

OF

E:\ICL OUT

But through the end of the eighteenth century, Aristotle's phi~

ers who \vould later deny his identification of life with the soul

losophy w.1s also responsible f()r a method of studying the nature

still never fOrgot his fOrceful definition of lik as the power tem-

and properties of living things, especially animals. rute fonns were

porarily to suspend a destiny of corruptibility. In terms less freighted \vith metaphysics, Xavier Hichat began

classified anording to similarities and differences in their parts (or organs), actions, functions and modes of lif'c..l Aristotle gave naturalists reason to look at life fOrms in a particular way. The method sidc':ltcpped the question of life as such. Its aim was to exhibit, without gaps or redundancies, the observable products of what Aristotle had no difficulty imagining as a plastic pmvrr. Hence eighteenth~century naturalists such as Comte Buflon and Carolus Linnaeus could describe and classif)r life forms \Vithout t'\'l'r defining what the;' meant by "aliv('." In the '5eventeenth and eightf'cnth ccnturin. the study of life as such was pursued by phy-.ician.-. rather than naturalists, and it \vas natural fOr them to a<;<;ociate life with its nnrmal mode, "health." From the mid sf'vcntecnrh century onward. then, the study of life became the subject of ph:siolog~ (narrowly construed). The purpose of this '\tudy

his Recherches phvsiologiqucs sur Ia vic ct Ia mort ( 1800) with this celebrated maxim: "Life is the collection of function'> that resist death." In defining life in terms of a conflict between, on the one hand, a body composed of tissues of specific structure and properties (elasticity, contractility, sensitivity) and, on the other, an environment, or milieu, as Auguste Comte would later call it, governed by laws inditfen.'nt to the intrinsic needs of living things, Bichat cast himself as" Stahl purged of theology. [ ... ] In the very year of Bichat's death, 1802, the term "biolog;" was used fOr the first time in Germany hy Cottfril'd Reinhold heviranus and simultaneou~ly in France by Jean-Bapti'ite Lam.-ut.·k (in fi.rdmgCologie); they thereby 'ltaked a claim tn inclqwndence on behalf of the life sciences. Lamarck had long planned to gin·

was to determinf' tht· di'5tin<:tin· features of the living, not to

the title

divine thl..· t.'.'>'lt.'nn· of this rem.ukable power of nature. [ ... J

life \Try early in his teaching at the MusCum d'llistoirt· Natun:lle

Hiolofl_l'

to one of hi' works, having prnposed


theory of

It "·"sa German phpician, Georg Ernst Stahl (1660-1734),

in Paris. By studying the simpk•;r organisms, he argued, one

who more than anyom· d~c insisted that a theory of life \vas a

c.'ould determine .,.,. hat was "e~~cntial to dw cxistenn· ot life in

necessary

prcrt.·qui~ite

of medical thought and practice. No phy-

sician used the term "life" more often. If a doctor has no idea

a body."[ ... ] Lamarck conceived of life as a continuous, steady accumula-

what the purpose of the \'ital functions is, hO\v can he explain

tion and assimilation of fluids by ':.olids, initially in the form of a

why he dues what he does? Now, what confers life- life being

cellular tissue, "the matrix of all organization." Life originates

the directed, purposeful mo\'ement without which the corporeal

in matter and motion, but its unique pmver is evidl..·nt only in

machine would decompose- is the soul. Living bodies are com-

the orderly pattL..,...,of its effects, the series of life fOrms, which

posite suhstances with the faculty to impede or resist the ever-

gradually increase in complexity and acquire new faculties. 4 Life

present threat of dissolution and corruption. This principle of

begins \vith an "act of vitalization," an effect ofheat, "that mate-

conservation, of the autocracy of living nature, cannot be passive,

rial soul of living bodies."S Individuals must die, yet lilf., partic-

hence it must not be material. The faculty of self~prcservation is

ularly in its most advanced animal f()rms, come.;;, over time, to

the basis of Stahl's Thcorio medica vera (1708). Certain careful read-

bear ever-less resemblance to the inert passivity of inanimate 6y

EPISTEMOLOGY

EPISTEMOLOGY

OF

BIOLOGY

objects. To call Lamarck's theory of life "materialist" is to forgrt

tion. From this point on it makes sense, thcrcf<m:·, to me the term

that fOr him "all the crude or inorganic composite matter that one

"vita!

f6r<.:e~." 7

observes in nature" is the re:,idue of organic decomposition, fOr Thus, death is present in l-ife, as both uni\'ersal armJ.ture and in-

only living things arc capable of chemical synthesis. Georges Cuvier's conception was very different. Unlike

eluctable fate of individual compont:"nts organized into compat-

Lamarck, Bichat and Stahl, Cuvier saw life and death not as opposites but as elements of what he called "modes of life." This

ible yet fragile systems. The work of naturalists like Lamarck and Cuvier led. albeit

concept was intended to capture the way in which highly specialized internal organizations could entertain compatible rela-

in different ways, to a conceptual and methodologic<1l revolution in the representation of the world of living things. Theories of

tions \vith the "general conditions of existence." "Life," Cuvier argued,

life subsequently found a logical place in the teachings of physiologists \Vho, nevertheless, believed that their experimental methods harl exorci')cd the specter of metaphysics. Thu'i, f(w example,

is a continual turbulence,

,1

Johannes MUller discussed ''life" and th<~ "vital organization ' ot 1

flow whose direction, though complex, compo<~ed

of molecules, which chMtgc

the organism in the introduction to his J!andbuch dcr Ph_vsiologie

individually yet remain always the same type. Indeed, the actual mat-

des Menschens (1833-34). And Claude Bernard, who recorded his

ter that constitutes a living body will soon ha\·e dispersed, yet th,1 t

intellectual progress during thC' most fertile period of his cart~er (1850-60) in his Cahicr de note~. always regarded the nature of life

remaim constant. This flux is

matter

~nn·s

martn

tq

as the repository of a force that will compel future

move in the same direction. Thus, tht.· fOrm of a living

a-; the fundamental que:-;tion of general biology. The carc·ful con-

body is more essential than its matter, since the latter changes constantly while the fOrmer is preserved.h

clusions he reached an.' set forth in l.c~ons sur les phtinomCnes de Ia

vic communs aux animau.,· et aux nfgCtaux ( 1878, especiJIIy the first three lectures) more systematically than they are in lntroduction

Life thus bt·ars a clear rf'lation to death.

a

Ia midecine expCrimentale (1865). Of course, thr Bernardian theory of life involved relat<.~d explanations of two drliberatdy opposed

It is a mi:-.t.ake to look upon [life] as a mere bond holding together the various elements of a Jiying body, when it is actually a spring

maxims: life is creation (1865) and life is death (1875 ). Having gained eminently scientific status in the nineteenth

that keeps tho~e elements in constant motion and shifts them about.

century, the question "What is life?" became one that even physi-

The relations and connections .1mong the clcmt>nts are not the <>amc

ci-;ts rlid not disrWflfrto ask: Erwin SchrOdingcr publishC'd a book

the n('xt; in other wonk tht' ~tate or compo-

bearing that title in !94 7. At least nne bioche-mist f<-1und tlw ques-

sition of the living body changes from moment to moment. The

tion meaningless, however - Ernest Kahane, La he n'cxiste pas,

from ont- moment

to

more active its life is, the more its exchanges and metamorpho:-.es

1962. In this historical resume of how the concept of life has been

arc never-ending. And the instant of absolute rest, which is called

used in various domains of science, I mve a great deal to the \vork

total death, is hut the precursor of further moments of putrPfac-

of Michel Foucault. 5 ["Vic," Encrclopacdia, pp. 764a-66a]

yo

7'

I

r EPI:"T[rJOLOGY

E:PISTEMOLOGY

Obstacles to Sc·ientific Knowledye of Life

Of-

HIO\ OCY

historical success was mechanics, based on the principle of inertia, a concept that comes into being when one considers the

[22] Contemporary french epistemology is indebted to the work of Gaston BaciH·lard fOr its interest in what may be described, in general terms, as obstacles to knowledge. In sketching out a psychoanalysis of objective knmvledge, Bachdard, if he himself

movement of matter itself abstracted fi·om the ability of living things to impart movement. Inertia is inactivity and indifference. It should come as no surprise, then, that efforts to extend the

least hinted at the idea that objects ofknmvl-

methods of matt'rialist science to life have repeatedly been met

ed~e are not intrinsically complex but rather art' enmeshed in

with resistance. right up to till' pre')ent da~. If such re~i~tance

did not propose,

dt

psychnlngical complexes. The question of epistemol()gical obstacles docs not ari<.;c fCJr either classical empirid"m or classical

l '

often reflects emotional ho')tility, it may also stem from a rt'asoncd judgment: namely, that it may bt' paradoxical to attempt

rationalism. for empiricists, the senses are simple receptors; the

to explain a pmver such

fact that qualities are associated \vith sensations is ignored. For

on the negation of that power. [ .. ·l

J'>

lifr in terms of concepts and laws ba<;ed

rationalists, knowledge permanently devalues the senses; the intel-

Persistent questions about the origins of life and theories of

lect, its purity n.·stored, must never again be sullied. But contem-

spontaneous generation may well point to anotht:"r latent over-

porary anthropology, informed by psychoanalysis and ethnography,

determination. Nmvadays it seems to he taken for grantt.·d that

takes a very different view: primitive psychic mechanisms impose

our fascination \vith reproduction is all the greater because soci-

.

ety shuns and indeed c('nsors our curiosity about the suhjecl. Chil-

thereby cn:ating certain g(,_·neralized a priori ob:<.tacks to under-

dren's belief<:. about sexuality rdlcct both the important.T and

standing. In the life o;;cicnces, then, what

certain obst.·-.sional constraints on the curious "vet docile mind

hope to discover

my')teriousness of birth. \Vhilc many historians of biology ascribe

is the obsessive presence of certain unscientific value<.; at the

belief in spontaneous generation to the lack of evidcmT or unper-

very inception of -.cientific inquiry. Even if object in:' knowledge,

suasiveness of arguments Lo Lhe contrary, the theory may well

being a human enterprise, is in the end the work of living human

point to a nostalgic desire k)r spontaneous generation- a myLh, in

beings, the postulate that such knmvledge exists- \vhich is the first condition of its possibility- lies in the systematic negation,

short. Freud's dissident di')ciplc Otto Rank argued in The Twuma of Birth (1929) that the child's sudden separation !rom the pla-

\H'"

in any object to which it may be applied, of the reality of the

cental environment is the source oL or model fOr, all subsequent

qualities \vhich humans, knm.ving what living mc,lfls to them,

anxiety.Y His .+~vth of the Birrh of the Hero, which deals \vith men

identif). \vith life. To livt' is to attach value to life'~ purpose-s and

who somehmv avoid tht.' k·tal stage, was 'iUpposed to lend support

experiences; it is Lo prckr certain method:<., circumstance<; and

to this view by demonstr--"'g the prevalence of birth-denying

directions to others. [ itC is the opposilt:' of indifference tn one's surroundings.! ... J

myths. iO \Vithout going so far as to claim that all proponents nf

Science, hO\H·vcr, denies tht: values that lilt- imputes to dif-

whether materialists or creationists, have doni..' nothing more than

what has been calh-d "equivocal generation" or "heterogony,"

l'erent objects. It df'fines objects in relation to one another- in

give shape to a fantasy originating in the traumatized unconscious,

othcr words, it measures \Vithout ascribing value. Its first major

one can still argue that the theory of spontaneous gener,Hion

72

7J

EF'IST EMOLOGY

EPISTE:MOLOGY

OF

BIOLOGY

<;tt>ms from an overestimation of the value of life. ThC' idea of

2:7). This i" not the plaet" to retrace the history of the school-; of

procreation and birth is in one sense an idea of sequence and pri-

Alexandria- the Je"vish school \vith Philo, the Platonic school

ority, and aversion to that idea must be seen as a comequence of

vvith Plotinus- \Vhosc teachings, coupled \vith the preaching of

the prestige Jttached to what is originnl or primordial. If every

Paul (I Cor. IS), inspired the fundamental themes of early Chris-

living thing must be born, nnd if it cnn be born only to another

tian doctrine concerning life, death, sahation and resurrection.

living thing, then life is a f<Jrm of servitude. But if the living can

Indeed, the cultural eclecticism of i\·1editerranc<m civilizations is

rise to perfection through an ascendantl(~ss ascension, life is a form

even n:sponsible for thC' polysemic connotations (another way of

of domination. ["Vie," Encvclopaedia, pp. 766a-66b]

saying "ambiguity") of the term "spirit," from spirare- an ambiguity that pennitted it to serve equally well in theology. to denote

Life as Animation [23] We completely forget that when we speak of animals, ani-

the third person of the Trinity, and in medicine, where. in th~,_·

mality or inanimate bodies, the terms we use are vestiges of the

tory trope fr,r the so-called nervou.;; influx.

phrases "vital spirit'' and "animal spirit," it became an anticipa-

ancient metaphysical identification of life with the soul and of

After 1600, the conception of life as an animation of matter

the soul with breath (anima= anemos). Thus when man, the only

lost ground to materialist or merely mechanistic conceptions of

living creaturt· capable of discourse on life, discussed his own life

the intrinsic life functions, and it w.1s no longer accepted as an

in terms of respiration (without which there is not only no life

objective answer to the question "What is life?" Yl't it survived

but no speech), he thought he was discussing life in general. If

well into the ninetcL"nth century in the 1\~rm of a medical-philo-

Greek philosophers prior to Aristotle, especially Plato, speculated

sophical ideology. r~nr evidence of this, one has only to glance

about the essence and destiny of the soul, it was Aristotle's De

at a little-known text, the preface to the thirteenth edition of

anima that first proposed the traditional distinction between the

the Dictionnoirc de medecine (1873), published bv Jean-Baptiste

vegetative or nutritive soul, the faculty of growth and reproduc-

KailliCrc under the editorship of two positivist physicians, Emile

tion; the animal or sensitive soul, the b.culty to fed, desire and

l.ittrf>, the author of a Ci..'ld)rated dictionary of tht.· French

move; and the reasonable or thinking soul, the faculty of human-

guage, and Charles Robi~ proff.~sor of histology at Paris's Faculte

ity. In this context, it matters little whether Aristotle thought of

de Mcdccine. [ ... J

these three souls as distinct entities or as merely hierarchical lev-

The Dictionnairc

IMl-

de mL;dccine in question was a r(Tasting of the

els, the lesser of which could exist without the greater, whereas

1855 revised edition of Pierre Hubert Ny:-.ten's Dictionnairc (181-t),

the greater could neither exist nor function \Vithout the lesser.

itself the revised and (~xpanded successor of Joseph Capuron's

The important thing is to remember that fOr the Greeks the word

Dictionnairc de mt!decinc ( 1806). The editors were keen to point

psrche meant cool breath. The Jews, moreover, had ideas of life

out the difference

and the soul quite similar to those of the Greeks: "And the Lord

cused of championing Mld the positivi')t doctrine they professed

bet\\"l"f'll

the materialist idea<; they were ac-

God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his

to teach. To that end, they commented on the various definition~

nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living soul" (Gen.

of the terms "soul," '\pirit," "man" and "death" that Capuron

74

7\

Er'IS

T

E'PISTEMOLOGY

EMOLOGY

oe

GIOLOGY

had proposed in 1806 and they (Littre and Robin) had themselves

Life as Mechanism

put fOrward in 1855.

[24] At the end of the Treatise on Man (completed in 1633 hut

In 1806, "soul" was defined as the "internal principle of all

not published until 1&62-64 ), Descartes wrote:

operations (Jf lh-ing bodies; more particularly, the principle of life in the vegetal and in the animal. The soul is <;imply Yegetative in

I ~hould like

plants and 'iensitive in beasts; but it is 'iimple and acti,·e. reason-

mere arrangement of the machim·'s organs nery bit a~ naturall~· .1s

ablc.· and immortal in m.1n."

the movements of

In 1855. om: fCJund a different definition: Term\\ hi<: h. in biology, expresses, considered dnatomically, the collection of functions of the brain and spinal cnrd and, considered phy~iologically,

the collection of function<; of the encephalic sensi-

bility, that is, the perception of both extnnal nbjects and internal object~;

the sum total (Jfthe needs and penchant~ that ~t·rw in the

prt.:'\t'rv.Hion of tlw individual and specie~ and in n·lations with other ht'ing'>: rlw aptitudt-'~ that constitute the imagination. language and t·xpression; the faculties that form the understanding: the will, and tin.1lly dw power to ~ct the muscul.:tr s~stem in motion .md tn act tht\)ugh it on tht· t•xternal world.

\'Oll

to cnnsider that these function'

.1

I!Jilf)\\

from the

c!nc" or other automaton lollnw frnm thL'

arrangemetH of its countt·r·\n'ights and whed~. In order to explain these fimcrion~. then. it is not necessary to conrcin• of thi~

mM

hinc

as having any vcgct<:~tive or sensitiw <;oul or other principle ol movement and life, apart from its blood <:~nd it~ spirits, \\ hich ,ue agitated by the heat of the fire burning continuously in its heart- a fire which has the ~arne nature ,1s all the fires th,lt occur in inanim.lte

bodie~.12

It is fairlv \'.:ell kno\\-n that Descartes's identification nf the animal (including physical or physiological man) \\·ith a nwchanit.cd or mechanic.1l automaton is the obverse of both his idcntitication of the soul with thought ("For there is within u., hut om· soul,

In 186 3, this definition was subjected to vc!H:mcnt criticism by

and this soul has within it no diversity ofparts" 1 l) and his sub~tan­

Anatole i\hric Emile ChaufTard, who attacked not only Littr£~ and

tial distinction between the indivisible soul and extendt..•d matter.

Robin but also Ludwig lliichner (Kraft und Stoff, 1855), the high

If the Treatise on JV!on surpas-even the '>ummary of it~ contents

priest of German materialism at thC' time. In De la Philosophic dite

given in the fifth part of the 1637 Discourse on At/ethod as a mani-

positive dans scs rapports m'ec Ia mCdecine, ChaufiJrd cekbrated "the

festo supporting an animal physiology purified of all references

indissoluble marriage of medicine and philosophy" and yearned

to a principle of aninlJtion of any kind, it was bccJu.;;e \Villiam

to f()und "the notion of the real and living being" on "human rea-

Harvey's discovery nfthc circulation of the blood and publication

son a\\'are of itself as cause and force." Two yearo,; later, Claude

of the Exercitatio anowmiw de motu cordis et mn,quini~ in animalihm

BenBrd wrote, "For the experimentJ.I physiologht, there can be

( 1628) had, in the mcantinw, presented

no such thing a:>. :>.pi ritualism or matcri.1lism .... The physiologist

nation of Ll life function -an explanation that nuny phy~iciam.

.:t

hydrodynamic expla-

and the physician should not think that their role is to discover

particularly in Italy and Cermany, had tried to imitJ.te, offering

the cause of Iife or the essence of diseases." 11 ["Vie," Encyclopae-

a variety of artifici.:tl models to explain such other functions as

dia, pp. 76 7a-6 7b J

muscular contraction or the t.'quilibrium of fish in \\·,1ter. In fact, 77

EPISTEMOLOGY

EPISTEMOI OGY

OF

BIQI_OGY

Galileo's students and disciples at the Accademia del Cimento, Giovanni Alfonso Borelli (De motu onimalium, 1680-81 ), Francesco Rcdi and Marcello Malpighi, had actually tried to apply Galilco's teaching in mechanics and hydraulics to physiology; Descartes, though, was satisfied to set forth a heuristic program that \vas more intentional than operational. One vvay of explaining how organs like the eye or organ systems like the heart and vessels work is to build what \Ve would now call <~mechanical models." This is precisely what the iatromechanics (or iatromathematicians) of the seventeenth and l'ighteenth centuries tried to do in order to explain muscular contraction, digestion and glandular secretion. Yet the laws of Galilean or Cartesian mechanics cannot by themselves explain the origin of coordinated organ systems, and such coordinated systems are precisely what one means by "life." In other words, mechanism is a theory that tells us hmv machines (living or not) \vork once they are built, but it tells us nothing about hovv to build them. In practice, mechanism contributed little to subjects such as embryology. The use of the microscope, which became common in the second half of the seventeenth century, made it possible to observe the "seeds" of living things, living things in the earliest stages of development. But Jan S\vammerdam's observations of insect metamorphoses and Anthonie van Leeuv.rcnhoek's discovery of the spermatazoid were initially understood to confirm a

There is reason to think that Malpighi's belief in mechanism unconsciously structured his percl'ption of phenomena. Intentionally or not, behind every machine loomed a mechanic or, to usc the language of the day, a builder. Living machines

ing things - past, prl'sent or future - vvere, from the moment of creation, contained one inside the other. Under these conclitions, the succession of living things only appears to be a history, because a birth is in reality only an unpacking. When less biased or more ingenious observations led to the revival, in a revised form, of the old view that the embryo grows through epigenesis (the successive appl'arance of anatomical formations not geometrically derivable from antecedent formations 1:; ), modern embryology \vas instituted as a science capable of encouraging physiology

speculative conception of plant or animal generation, according to \vhich the seed or egg or spermatic animalcule contains, preformed in a miniaturl' that optical magnification reveals, a being whose evolution will proceed until it attains its adult dimensions. The micro~copic observation that did most to validate this theory was undoubtedly Malpighi's examination of the yellow of a chicken's egg falsely assumed not to have been incubated. 14

depths in the empire of the living. Whereas seventeenth-century mechanics was a theory of movements and impulses, that is, a science based on data accessible to sight and touch, microscopic anatomy was concerned with objects beyond the manifest and tangible. Availing oneself of that structural microcosm, that "other '"·orld" \Vi thin, one could conceive of ever more minute microcosms embl'ddcd one vvithin the other. The microscope

implied a mechanic of their own, and that implication pointed toward a Summus opijex, God. It \Vas therefore logical to assume that all living machinl'S had been constructed in a single initial operation, and thenCl' that all the germs of all the preformed liv-

to free itself from its fascination \Vith mechanism. Meanwhik, growing numbers of observations by microscopists, naturalists, physicians~others curious about nature helped to discredit mechanism in a different but parallel way. The hidden innl'f structure of plant and animal parts gradually came to seem prodigiously complicated compared with the macroscopic structures visible through dissection. The discovery of animalcules, henceforth called Protista, opened up previously unsuspected

79

E~·I'~Tf-r!l(}l CJGY

EP'STEMOLOGf

Or

GIOLOGY

enabled the imagination to conceive of structural complexity on

distinguished tubules, veo;sels ,wd fibers, and comp.ucd roots,

,1 scale rwver befOre imagined, much as modern calculus extended

tvvigs, leaves and fruits in terms of the membranes or tissues

the power of Descartes's analytical geometry. As a result, Pascal and I .eibniz, unbeknownst to each other, bnth fOund mechanism

they contained. The Greek word or,qanon referred to both a musician's instru-

\\'Jnting. But Leihniz's critique, unlike Pascal's, provided the fOun-

ment and an artisan's tool. The human body wa<.; compared to a

dation f(-,r a new conception of living things- biology vmuld

musical organ in more than one seventeenth-century text. includ-

hcncd(lrth picture fifi..· in terms of organism and organization:

ing works by Descartt.·s, Pascal, Jacqucs-Bi·nigne Rossuet ( TroitC de la connaiswncc de Dieu et de mi-mCme) and Lcibni;. ''OrganiJ.a-

Thus t',Kh urganic body of a living creature is a kind of divine ma-

tion," "organic" and "organil_e" still carried both bi(llogical ,md

chine or natural automaton surpassing infinitt-ly every kind of artifi-

musical connot.Hions as recently as the nint'teenth century (sec

cial .llltnmaton. For a machine made by hum,1n art is not a machine in

Emile Littn~'s Dictionnaire de }a lan£/ue fram;aisc). l--or Descartes,

arc machines

the organic "organ" was an instrument that needed no organist,

even in their minutest parts and to infinity. This is what comtitutcs

but I.eibni1 believe~at \'
the diiTt:rt'nce between naturt' and art, het\\t'l'n the divine art and

structural or functional unity of the "organ" instrument. \Vith-

our human art_!(,

out an organizer, th,lt is, without a soul, nothing i-. organi1.ed or

every part of it. ... Rut Nature\ machines, living

bodie~,

organic: "IW]e would

["Vie," fnncfopocduJ, pp. 767b-68a]

m·nT

reach anything ahnut which

Wl'

could

say, here is truly a being. unlt'ss we found animatt·d m.1chint's whose soul or substantial k1rm produced a substanti,llunity imk-

L1je as Oraanization

pendent of tht.· external union arising from contJ.ct.'' 1-1 Less u·k-

[25] Once again, it was Aristotle who coined the term "organ-

brated but more of <1 tt.·achcr, the physician Daniel Duncan wrote:

ized body." A body is organir.ed if it provick·<:. the soul \-vith instru-

"The soul is a skilled organist, \vhich forms its org.1m before

ments or organs indispensable to the exercbe of its pmvers. Until

playing them .... It is a remarkable thing that in inanimate or-

the seventeenth century, then, the paradigm of the organized body

gan-;, the organist i<; different from the air that he cau')es to flow,

was the animal (because it possessed a soul). Of course, Aristotle

whereas in animatt> organs the organist and the air that causes

said that plants too have organs, although of an extremely simple

them to play are one and the same thing. by which I mean that

kind, and people did wonder ,1bout the organi1ation of the plant

the soul is extremeh· ~imilar to the air or to brearh."lx

kingdom. f..licroscopk examination of plant preparations led to

The concept of organism developed in the eighteenth century.

gen~.·r
as naturalists, phy'iil·iam and philo)ophers sought semantic sub-

Llntastic analogies between plant and animal structures and functions. Robert llooke (Microwaphia, 1667), Marcello Malpighi (,1natomc pfantarum, 1675) and Nehemiah Grew (The Anatom/ of Plants, 16~2) discovered the structure of bark, \Vood and cortex,

stitutes or ('quivalent.<; ~or the word "soul" in order to t'xplain ho"

Ro

systems composed of distinct components ncvcrtlwless work in a unified manner to perform a function. The parts of such a system mutually int1ut.·nce one another in direct or mc.·diated fash-

EPISTEMOLOGY

f

EPISfEMOLOGY

OF

BIOLOGY

l

ion. The word ''part" seemed ill-suited to denote the "organs"

I

that nature [can]. ... "JO In the same period, the physician Carl

of \vhich the organism could be seen as the "totality" but not

Friedrich von Kiclmeyer, whom Georges Cuvier had met as a fel-

the "sum." Reading Leibniz inspired Charles Bonnet, \vhose hostility' to

celebrated lecture on the main ideas of an influential approach

mechanism had been confirmed by Abraham Trembley's observations on the reproduction of polyps by propagation, and by his mvn observations on the parthenogenesis of plant lice.

low student at the Caroline Academy in Stuttgart, delivered a to zoology and botany, the Rapport des forces organiques dans Ia .w!rie des di_fjirentes organisations ( 179 3 ). The organism is defined

as a system of organs in a relation of circular reciprocity. These organs are determin~y their actions in such a way that the

I am not yet making the difficulty plain enough: it lies not only in

organism is a system of forces rather than a system of organs.

how to form mcchanicallv an organ that is itself composed of so many different pieces but primarily in explaining, by the laws of mechan-

Kielmeycr seems to be copying Kant \vhen he says, "Each of the organs, in the modifications that it undergoes at each moment,

ics alone, the host of various relations that so closely bind all the

is to such a degree a function of those that its neighbors undergo

organic parts, and in virtue of which they all conspire toward the

that it seems to be both a cause and an effect." It is easy to see

same general goal- by which I mean, they form that unity "'hich

why images of the circle and sphere enjoyed such prestige among Romantic naturalists: the circle represents the reciprocity of

one calls an animal, that organized whole v.:hich lives, grows, feels, moves, preserves and reproduces itself. IY

means and ends at the organ level, the sphere represents the totality, individual or universal, of organic forms and forces.

In Germany the text that did most to place "organism" at the

In France at the beginning of the nineteenth century it was Auguste Comte's biological philosophy, distinct from but not

top of the late eighteenth century's list of biological concepts

was Kant's Critique of judgment ( 1790). Kant analyzed the concept of an organized being without using the -..vords "life" or "liv~ ing thing." An organized being is in one sense a machine, but a machine that requin:s a fOrmative energy, something more than mere motor energy and capable of organizing othervvise inert matter. The organic body is not only organized, it is sclf~organizing: "In such a natural product as this every part is thought as mring its presence to the agency of all the remaining parts, and also as t~xisting for the sake of the others and of the whole, that is, as an imtrument or organ. But this is not enough .... On the contrary the part must be an organ producing the other parts - each, consequently, reciprocaily producing the others. No instrument of art can answer to this description, but only the instrument of

unrelated to Cuvier's biology, that set forth in systematic fashion the elements of a theory of living organization.2 1 Arguing that "the idea of life is really inseparable from that of organization," Comte defined the organism as a consensus of functions "in

regu~

lar and permanent association with a collection of other fUnctions." Consensus is a Latin translation of the Greek sympatheia. Sympathy, wherein the states and actions of the various parts determine one another through sensitive communication, is a notion that Comte borrowed, along \vith that of synergy, from

Paul-Joseph Barthez, who wrote: The preservation of life io.; as~ociated with the sympathies of the organs, as well a~ with the organism of their functions .... By thP

F f' ''3 T E 'Jl L' LOGY

CPISTCMOLOGY

word "synergy,'' I mean a <. oncoursc of' simultaneous or SlK('t"·,_~in:· ,KtioJJ\ t)t'

rlw t'orcl''> ol din·r'>e

organ~.

rhar concourse being .;,uch

that thcq· .Ktions constitute, lw their order of harmony or ~ucce~­

sir•n. tl1l' intrinsic form of a function of health or of a gt>nu.;, of 11

disea~t·.-

OF

81'JLClGY

tably turned attention toward the problem of integrating t'lementary indi\'idualitics and partial life forms into the totali;ring individuality of an organism in its general life l()rm. Such problems of general physiology would increasingly claim the attention of Claude Bernard over the course of his career as a researcher and professor. For proof one need only consult the-

Comte, of course, imported the concept of consensus into the

ninth of his Le(Ofl'l mr les phCnomCnes de Ia ric communs aw: animau'

theory of the social organism, and he later revised and gener,tliJf'd

et au.r vc!gitau\. The organism is a society

it in hi.'l work on social static.-,. "Consensus" then bccaml' synon-

organi::.ms, at once
~-mou"

tion of the component-; is a function of the complexity nf the

"·ith o:.;olidarity in organic systems, and Comte sketched out

o~

cells or ekmentary

a series of degrees of organic consensus, \vhose effech become

\vholc. The effect of this coordinated specialintion is the crea-

increasingly stringent as one rise.:.; from plants to animals and

tion, at the level of the elements, of a liCJuid interstitial milie-u

man.23 Once consensus is identified with solidarity, one no longer

\hat Bernard dubbed the "internal environment," \-vhich i-; the

knows which of the two, organism or society, is the model or, at

sum of the phy::.ical and chemical conditions of all cellular life.

any rat<.', rhc metaphor for the other.

"One might describe this condition of organic perfection by s
It would be a mistake to ascribe the ambiguity of the rC'Iation

ing that it con)ists in an C\'er-morc noticc,lblc differentiation of

b<.'t\HTn org.mism and socit:ty ~ok·ly to the laxity of philosuphical

the labor of preparing the constitution of the internal environ-

language. ln the background, one can see the persistence of tech-

ment." As is well known, Bernard was one of the first to discover

nological imagery, vi\'idly present from Aristotle's da)' onward.

the constancy of this internal environment, along with a mecha-

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, a concept imported

nism, which he called "internal secretion," for re-gulating and

from political economy, the division of labor, enriched the con-

controlling that constancy, vvhich has been knov·m ever since as

cept of organism. The first account of this metaphorical transcrip-

homeostasis. This \-vas the original, and capital. contribution of

tion is due to the comparati\'e physiologist llenri Milne-hh.,;ards,

Rernardian physiology to the modern conception ofliving organi-

who wrote rhe article on "Organization" fOr the Dictionna1rc das-

zation: the L'xbtcncc of ,ln internal environment, of a comtam.:y

siquc des scJcnccs nuturelln (1827). Since the nrganhm \va~ ccm-

obtained hy compcns.ning for dniatiom and perturbation:-., pro-

ceived as a <.,ort of workshop or factory, it was only logicJI tn

vides regulated organio;;ms with an assurance of relative inde-pcnd-

mea~ure

the perfection of living beings in terms of the increas-

enCl' fl·om variations stemming from tht• external conditions of

ing structural differentiation and functional specialization of their

their existence. Bernard \Yas f(md of using the tenn "elasticity" to

parts, and thus in terms of relative complexity. But that com-

convey his idea of organic life. Perhaps he had fOrgotten that the

plexity rt'quired, in turn, an assurJnce of unity and indi\'iduali-

paradigmatic machine of his era, the steam engine, was equipped

J.ation. The introduction of cell theory in the biology first of

with a regulator when he wrote:

plants (around 1825) and later of animals (around 1840) incvi-

EP.'STEMO~O(;·,

Ef-'JSTEMOLOGY

con)idcrs it as a fixtd, immutable, mechanical machine, confined

in order to maintain thl· level of some parameter or to perform some activity.

within the limit-. of mathematical precision, and this is .a serious mistake. The org.anism is an organic machine, that is, a machine

Claude Shannon's \-vork on communication and information theory and its relation to thermodynamics (194R) appeared to offer a partial answer to an age-old question .:I bout life. The second law of thermodynamics, which states that transformations of an isolated system are- irreversible, owing to the degradation of energy in the sy.-;tem or, put another way, to the increase of the

equipped with a llexiblc, clastic mechanism, owing to the special org<mic proce<>~cs it employs, yet without violating tht gt>neral l.tws of mechanic-., physics or chemistry.2~

["Vie," Encyclopaedia, p. 768a-69a J Life as Information

[26] Cybernetics is the general theory of servomechanisms, that

important, not its intrinsic force or magnitude. The fr·edback infOrma.tion em bod it•:, an order in two distinct senses: a cohe-rent structure as well as a command. An organism can thus be understood as ,1 biological system, an open dynamical systt:m that seeks to presl'f'.'C its equilibrium 86

8/0LC.G;

and counteract perturbations. Such a system is capable of altering its relation to the en\'ironment fl·om which it dra\vs its enngy

One treats the organism as a machine, and this is correct, but one

is, of machines constructed so ,1s to maintain certain outputs (products or efft-cts) within fixed or variable limits. Such machines form the heart of self-regulating systems, and it is hardly surprising that self-regulating organic systems, especially those mediated by the nervous system, became mode-ls hH the entire class. Of course, the analogy between servomechanisms ,1fld organisms runs both way~. In a regulated system, not only do the parts interact with one another but a feedback loop connects one or more monitored outputs to one or more regulatory inputs. Thus cybernetic machine~. \vhether natural or man-made, arc often described in terms of communications or information theory. A sensor monitors an output fOr dC'viations from a fixed or optimum level. \Vhen such a. deviation is detected, the feedback loop signals the control input so as to convey an instruction from sensor to effector. It is the information content of this signal that is

·)F

\

system's entropy, applies to objects indifferent to the quality of their state, that is, to objects that are either inert or dead. Yet an organism, which feeds, grO\vs, regt·neratcs mutilated parts, reacts to aggression, spontaneously heals certain diseases- is not such an organism engaged in a struggle against the fate of universal disorganization proclaimed by Carnot's principk? Is organization order amidst disorder? Is it the maintt'nance of a quantity of information proportional to the complexity of the structure? Doe:, not infOrmation theory have more to say, in its own algorithmic language, about living things than J lenri Bcrg'i.on did in the third \Oiume of his Evolution aiatricc (1907)? In fact, there is a great gulf, an irreducible difference, between current theories of organization through information and Bernard's ideas about individual development or Bergson's ideas about the evolurion of species and the ilan rita/. Bernard had no explanation for the evolution of species, and Bergson had no explanation fOr the stability or reliability of living structurl's. But the combination of molecular biology with genetics has led to a unified theory of biochemistry, physiological regulation and heritability of specific variations through natural selection, to which information theory has added a rigor comparable to that of the physical scil'nces.

cr

SlEoMOLOGY

EPISTEMOLOGY OF

BIOLOGY

One question remain-;, however, within the theory itself, to

August Weismann's theory of the continuity of the germina-

which no answer is yet in sight: Where does biological infOrma-

tive plasma as opposed to the mortality of its somatic support

tion originate? Andn_~ Lwofl maintains that biological order can

(1885), Alexis Carrel's techniques for culturing embryonic tissue

arise on h . out of biological order, a fOrmulation contemporary

(1912), and the development or purr bacterial cultures established

with the aphorisms omne vivum ex vivo, omnis cellula ex cellula.

the potential immortality of the 5inglc-cell organism, which was

Hovv did the first self~organization come about if communica-

~rtal only by accident, and they lent crede_nce to the idea that.

tion depends on a prior source of information? One philosopher,

the phenomena of aging and natural death after a certain span of

Raymond Ruyer, puts the problem this way: "Chance cannot

years are consequences of the complexity of highly integrated

account for anti chance. The mechanical communication of infor-

organisms. In such organisms, the potentialities of each compo-

mation by a machim.' cannot account for information itself, since

nent are limited by the tact that other components perfOrm inde~

the machine can only degrade or, at best, preserve infOrmation."

pendent functions. Dying is the privilege, or the ransom- in any

Biologists do not regard this question as meaningless: contem-

case, the destiny- of the most highly regulated, most homeostatic

porary theories of the origins of life on earth look to a prior

natural machines.

chemical evolution to establish the conditions necessary for bio-

From the standpoint of the evolution of species, death marks

logical evolution. \;Vi thin the strict confines of information the-

an end to the reprieve that the pressure of natural selection grants

ory, one young biophysicist, Henri Atlan, has recently proposed

to mutants temporarily more fit than their competitors to occupy

an ingenious and complicated response to the question in the

a certain ecological context. Death opens up avenues, frees up

fOrm of what he calls a "noise-based principle of order," accord-

spaces and clears the way for novel lift·. forms- but this opening is

ing to "vhich self-organizing systems evolve by taking advantage

illusory, for one day the bell will toll for today's survivors as well.

of "noise," or random perturbations in the environment. Might

rrom the standpoint of the individual, the genetic heritage is

the meaning of nrganintion lie in the ability to make use of dis-

like a loan, and death is the due date when that loan must be

organization? But why always two opposite terms? ["Vie," En~v­

repaid. It is as if, after a certain time, it were the duty of individ-

clopaedia, pp. 769a-69b]

uals to disappear, to revert to the status of inert matter. Why, then, did Freud's theory of the "death instinct," pre-

Life and Death

sented in Reyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), meet \\'ith so much

[ 27] Paradoxically, what characterizes life is not so much the

resistance? In Freud's mind this idea was associated with ener-

cxhtcncc of the life functions themselves as their gradual deteri-

geticist concepts of life and of the psychic processes. If a living

oration and ultimate cessation. Death is what distinguishes liv-

thing

jo;

an unstable system constantly f(Hced to borrmv energy

ing individuals in the world, and the inevitability of death points

from the external environment in order to survive, and if life is

up the apparent exception to the la,vs of thermodynamics \vhich

in tension \Vith its nonliving environment, what is so strange

living things constitute. Thus, the search for signs of death is fun-

about hypothesiYing the existence of an instinct to reduce that

damentally a search f()r an irrefutable sign oflife.

tension to zero, or, put difTen:ntly, a striving tmvard death? "If

HR

I

t!. EPI':;TLMOLOGY

we grant that the existence of a living thing depends on the prior existence of the inanimate objects from \vhich it arises. it fo\Jows that rhe death instinct is in accord \\'ith the formula stated earlier according to which every instinct tends to restore a prior state." Perhaps Freud's theory will now be reexamined in light of the conclusions of Atlan's work: "In fact, the only identifiabk project in living organisms is death. But owing to the initial complexity of those organisms, perturbations capable of disrupting their equilibrium give rise to still greater complexity in the n:--ry process of restoring equilibrium.'' 2 5 Finally, one might also wish to understand the reason for, and meaning of: the reactional desire for immortality, the dream of survival - which Bergson calls a "useful theme of mythification" - found in certain cultures. A dead tree, a dead bird, a carcass- individual lives abolished without consciousness of their destiny in death. Is not the value of life, along with the acknowledgment of life as a value, rooted in knowledge of its essential precariousnrss? Dt'ath (or the illusion of death) make'> men precious and pathetic. Their ghostly condition is moving. Every act may be their last. Not a face they make is not on the point of vanishing like a face in a dre,1m. Everything in mortals fus the value of what is irretrievable
["Vie," Encyclopaedia, pp. 769b-69c]

90

CHAPTl:R

Fl\'f-_

Epistemology of Physiology A Baroque Physiology

' Objectives and Methods [28] In 1554, when the celebrated Jean Ferne! (1497-1558) collected his previously published treatises under the- title Universa medici no, h{· provided a preface detailing his conception of medicine's constituent clements and its relation to other disciplines. The first of those elements he called Physirdogia, and under that head he placed his 1542 treatisr De naturali parte mediciniae. The object of phy()iology was described as "the nature of the healthy man, of all his fOrces and all his functions." It scarcely matters here that Fernel's idea of human nature is more metaphysical than positive. The point to be noted is that physiology was born in 1542 as a study distinct fl·om, and prior to, pathology. which its{·U· was prior to the .uts of prognosis, hygiene and therapeutics. Since then the tem1 "physiology" gradually acquired its current meaning: the science of the functions and functional constants of living organisms. The seventeenth century saw the appt:>arance oC among other works, Phvsiologia medica (Basel, 1610) by Theodor Zwinger (1553-1588), Medicino phvsiologica (Amsterdam, 165l) by J .A. Vander-Linden ( 1609-1664) and fxercitationcs phvsiolowcac (Leipzig, 1668) by Johannes llohn (16+0-1718). In the eighteenth century, ifFrederick lloffmann ( 1660-17+2) published his Fund(/·

t=_f-'ISTErv"OIOGY

EPISTErv"OL OGY

OF

PHYSIOLOGY

menta Physiologiac as early as 1718, it •vas undeniabl:' Albrecht

To find out what went on inside, several options were avail-

von Hailer (1708-1777) who made physiology an independent dis-

able: one could monitor comings and goings, introduce spic5 into

cipline of research and specialized teaching. His eight-volume

the household, or smash the •valls partly or totally in order to

Elemcnta phrsiolowae (1757-66) remained a classic fiJr haifa century. Hut it was even earlier, in 1747, that von llallcr, after hav-

catch a glimpse of the interior. Mf>ry's statc-ment notwithstanding,

ing used his teacher Herman Boerhaave's lnstitutiones medicinac in

going on inside the animal organism. Experimentation through

his courses for nearly twenty years, decided to publish his first

organ ablation \Vas a natural extension ofsurgical excision. Andreas

textbook, Primae lineae ph}_;siologiae, in the introduction to \vhich

Vesalius ( 1514-1564 ), the founder of modern anatomy, concluded

he defined physiology in a way that established the spirit and

his celcbrated Humani corporis jabrica ( 1543) with remarks on the

method of the discipline for a long time to come: "Someone may

usefUlness of vivisection and a discussion of its technique'5, in the

physicians had long used such procedures to find out what was

object that this work is purdy anatomical, but is not physiology

course of which he reported on experiments with ablation of the

anatomy in motion?" [Etudes, pp. 226-27]

spleen and kidney in dogs. In the scventeenth century, the mech-

[29] It is easy to understand why anatomy took priority over

anist conception of organic structures encouraged this practice,

the study of organ functions. In many cases people felt that the

at once premeditated and blind. If the body is a machine, one

best way to understand the functions of the organs vvas to inspect

should be- able to discover the functions of particular parts, of

their shapcs and structures. Structures were macroscopic, and

the mechanism's cogs and springs, by destroying parts and obse-rv-

functions, no matter hmv complex the underlying processes,

ing the disturbance or breakdown of the machine's operation.

could be understood by analogics •vith man-made instruments '5uggested by superficial structural similarities. From the struc-

["Phvsiologie," Encdopaedia, pp. 11175 b-e J [30] By 1780, phvsiology had finally outgrown iatromechani-

ture of the eye, for example, it was possible to deduce a fCw crude

cal theories thanks to the work of Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier and

notions about the physiology of vision bascd on knmvledge of the

Luigi Galvani. Chemistry and physics would supply the new mod-

comtruction and usc of optical instruments. But the structure of

els. l.aws, in the Newtonian sense, \vould replace mechanical the-

the brain as rf'vealed by dissection implied nothing about its func-

orems. The Newtonian '5pirit, which had breathed new life into

tion, because there v. . . as no man-made technology or instrument to

eighteenth-century science, transfOrmed physiology by supplying

which it could be compared. \Vhen von Haller described the pan-

it not so much \Vith new concepts as with new method'>. Tired

creas as "the largest salivary gland," its sccrctory fUnction could perhaps be compared to that of the parotid, but it was impossible

of rhetorical conflict, physiologists focused on specific properties of the vital fUnctions. But the very influence of Newtonian

to go further. In his Eloge of the surgeon Jean Mery (d. 1722),

science still fostered dogmatic attitudes in many minds of philo-

rontencllc remembered one of Mhy's frequently quoted statc-

~ophical

bent.

ments: "\A/e anatomists are like the deliverymen of Paris, who

Vitalism \vas one reaction to this dogmatism. Far too much

knmv even the smallest, most out-of-the-way streets but have no

ill has been spoken of vitalism. It did not hinder experimenta-

idea what goes on inside people's homes."

tion or the formulation of new concepts in neurophysiology; on 91

EPI<;TEMOL,OGY

the contrary, it encouraged progress. Vitalists, emulating the Newtonian style, fOcused on the details of biological functions \Vithout speculating as to their causes. The so-called Montpellicr School of vitalists was led by Theophile de Bordeu (1722-1776) and Paul-Joseph Barrhez (1734-1806). There was no more metaphysics in what they called ''vital movement" or the "vital principle" than there •.vas in what Haller called "irritability." Barthez's Nouveaux ilCments de Ia science de l'homme ( 1778) was in many \vays a system of empirical physiology: uThe vital principle in man," Barthet argued, "should be conceived in terms of ideas distinct from our ideas of the attributes of body and soul." Antoine Augustin Cournot seems to havt' grasped the originality of vitalist physiology: "Vitalism brings out the analogies that all manifestations of life exhibit in such astonishing variety, and takes them fOr its guidt:>, but docs not pretend that it can penetrate the essence of life.''27 To study this "astonishing variety," eightt'enth-century physiologists looked at the whole animal I...ingdorn, from polyp to man, from the frog to the orangut,w- that strange missing link that eighteenth-century writers referred to as "jungle man," and whose linguistic ability and intelligence they studied by comparison with the human. If classicism in biology means rigorou~ classification combined with mathematical gcneralittltion, then the term does not apply to eighteenth-century physiology, which took all living nltltter fOr its subject. It tolerated "in-bet\\'een" categories, as Lcibniz called them, and if it generalized at all, it was in imitation of life itself, working endless variations on a small number of themes. It was a

EP.'STE!t10L0GY

OF

PHYSIOLOGY

imcntalism of the nineteenth century. It was a fruitfUl period, a!l old ideas were exploded by new experience. Bold specu!J.tion was the order of the day, and traditional methods gave way to intuition. It would not be long before new techniques, many di.;;covcred by chance, revealed which innovative intuitions were sound and \Vhich 'vere not. The period's physiology was as vital as lite itself, as men like Lazzaro Spallanzani and Armand Seguin experimented on themselve<;, while Robert Whytt, Rene Antoine Ferchault de RCaumur and Stephen llales performed similar tests on frogs, buzzards and horses. It was, in every sense of the word, a baroque physiology. ["Physiologie animale," H1stoire gincialc, vol. 2, pp. 618-19] [ 31 J The eighteenth n·ntury was an age not only of enlightenment but also of progress, and of technological progress first and foremost.[ ... JInventiveness and applications \vcre the watchwords governing experimentation in physics and chemistry especially. Researchers investigated hrat. electricity, changes of physical <;tate. chemical affinities, the decomposition of matter, combustion and oxidation, and their results often spilled over into physiology, raising new problems for further investigation. Electricity joined light and heat in suggesting analogies that could be used to explain "vital fOrces." The analysis of different kinds of"airs," or gases,

pictures
gave positive content to the idea of exchang:l's between organisms and their environment. This "pneumatic" chemistry resolved the once purely speculative rivalry between iatromechanists and iatrochemists in favor of the latter. New instruments such as the them1ometer and calorimeter made it possible to measure important biological parameters. It was in 171S that Daniel Fahrenheit solved the technical problems that had delaj·ed the construction of sensitive, reliable thermometers, and Reaumur followed with further improvements in 1733. In 1780, Lavoisier and PierreSimon Laplace built a dt:>vice fOr measuring quantities of heat.

94

91

E:PISTEMQI_QG~

EPISTEMOLOGY

Thus, apart from resea1Th on the nen·ous system, most of the major discoveries in eight(:cnth~century physiology were the work, if not of amateurs, then of men whose primary specialty was not medicine. Among them were such names as Hales, John Boynton Pri e~tle~·. Lavoisier, Rli-aumur and Spallan1.ani. [ ... JContemporary texts therefore give a misleading, altogcthe.r too academic picture of the ~tate of the discipline. It is odd that \vhen

Circulation [32] The \vork of those referred to as "iatromechanics" (or, equally appropriately, "iatromathematicians") \va~ constantly moth·ated by an ambition to determine, through measurement and calculation, lhe laws of physiological phenomena. This was the least contestable of their postulates, moreover. The circulation of the blood and the contraction of the muscles had always been objects of predilection for the physicians of thio;; school. In De mow cordis WilliJ.m Harvey summarized his conclusions J.s an anatomist and his obst~n·ations as a vivisectionist. He calculated the weight of the blood displaced by the heart simply in

PHYSIOt OGY

order to show that so large a quantity of blood could not possibly be produced continuously by any organ or be dissipated by the organism. Giovanni Alfonso Borelli was the first to view the circulatory function, by then well established, as an ideal problem to which to apply the l.1ws of hydraulics. He attempted to calculate the force of the systolic contraction. Assuming that the contractive force of a muscle is proportional to its volume and that the volume of the human heart is equal to the combined volume of the masseter and temporal muscles, he determined that the contractive force of the heart is equal to three thousand Roman pounds (I Roman pound = II Y2 ounces). As for the pressure the heart communicates to the blood, an elaborate series of

Pierre Jean George Caban is published his survey of the new physiology in 1804, ht~ mentioned only works and experiments by physicians, even though he was well aware that one of the reasons ktr the superiority of the ne\v medicine was the contribution of "the collateral sciences, which are constantly providing us with new insights and instruments."[ ... ] The sevenrccnth and eighteenth cl'nturks are alike in that both were dominated by a single great discovery. But Willi<\m Harvey's work nearly inaugurated his century, whereas Lavoisier's nearly closed his. I lan-ey invented a mechanic:ll model in order to describe one pht.:~nomenon; Lavoisier introduced a chemical model to explain another. ["Physiologie animale," Hist01rc ginCrale, vol. 2, pp. 593-94]

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i ' •I

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deductions led him to the figure of 135,000 pounds! In 1718, james Keill (1673-1719) devoted three essays of his Tentamina medico-ph_vsica to the problems of determining the quantity of blood, its velocity and the force of the heart. lie estimated that the blood accounts for 100 pounds of the weight of a l60-pound man; the blood in the aorta travels at a rate of five feet, three inches per hour; and the force of the heart is t\velve ounces. (The modern figures are that the weight of the blood is one third of body weight; the velocity of the blood is twenty inches per second; and the work of tht' contraction wave of the left ventricle is three and a half ounces.) A skilled experimentalist and a religious zealot, Stephen llales made an important contribution to circulatory mechanics when he published his Statical Essavs, Containing Haemastatie< etc. ( 1733 ). He had already written important works on mathematical botany. His Vegetable Staticks (1727) contained illustrations of instruments he had built to measure variations in sap pressure in roots and branches. From there it was but a short step to measuring the pressure of blood in the vessels using a manometer consisting of .1 long glass tube attached by a cannula to the jugular vein or 97

II

E:PISTEMOLOGY

carotid or crural artery of a horse, dog or sheep. Hales \vas able to establish that the blood pressure is lower in the veins than it is in the arteries (in the horse, the blood rose to a height of nine feet when the cannula \vas inserted into the crural artery but to

E:PISTFMOL OGY

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(1690) of the capillary circulation in the mesentery of h·ogs and the tail of tadpoles assumed a very great importance, and so did Cmvpcr's investigations of the mesentery of a cat (1697). Albrecht von Haller (De motu sanauinis, 1752) shovve-d that the heart's pulse

only fifteen inches \vhcn inserted into the jugular vein); that it

could be observed simultane-ously in both arterie-s and capillaries,

fluctuates \vith the systole and the diastole; that it is character-

proving that the pmver of the heart extended to the capillaries. His theory of irritability then enabled him - as the theory of

istic of a given animal species; and that it is a test of the state of the heart.

tonicity enabled Georg Ernst Stahl - to argue that the sheath of

Apart from the tentative work of Borelli and Keill, the next

the capillary can contract independently, imparting an additional

\vork of equally great importance vvas Jean Poiscuille's Recherches

circulatory impetus to the blood. Spallanzani also contributed to

sur Ia force du coeur aortique (1828). Haller knew and spoke of

the solution of this problem in a series of papers, Sur Ia circula-

the work of Hales but treated it as a development of ideas of

tion obserwie dans l'universalitC du systCme msculaire, Les PhenomCne::o

Borelli's, failing to appreciate the novelty of the concept of arterial pressure.

de Ia circulation languissante, res Mouvements du sana indCpendants

The importance and originality of Hales's research should not, hmvcver, detract from the merits of those who, following him and building on his results, made progress tmvard solving some of the major problems of hemostatics and hemodynamics. Daniel Bernoulli, professor of anatomy at Basel from 1733 to 1751, was the first to explain correctly hO\v to calculate the work done by

the heart as the product of the weight of blood expelled times the systolic displacement. He also made comparative studies of the flow of liquids in rigid pipes and in living vessels U(vdrodynamica,

1738). His pupil, Daniel Passavant (De vi cordis, 1748), used Hales's figures to arrive at a more accurate evaluation of the work of the heart, one close to presently accepted values. "TOward the end of the seventeenth century, researchers began to investigate the causes of the movement of blood in the veins, which arc not directly connected to the arte1ics. Borelli, though admitting the force of the heart, denied that it was suflicicnt to drive the blood in the veins. Hence, the microscopic examinations hy Marcello Malpighi (1661) and Antonie van Leeuwenhoek

de /'action du coeur and La Pulsation des artcrcs ( 177 3 ). ["Physiologic

aoimale," Histoirc generalc, vol. 2, pp. 601-603]

Respiration [3 3] from Robert Boyles's Novo experimento physiomechanica de ~·i ai!ris elastica et ejusdem ejjectibus ( 1669), John MayO\v concluded, about 1674, that animal respiration involves the fixation of a "spirit" contained in the air. It is the eventual depletion of this spirit from the air in a confined space that renders it unfit to sustain life. In his Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air (1774-77), John Boynton Priestley reported that a sprig of mint will release enough dephlogisticated air (oxygen) to support combustion in an inverted bell jar. In 1775, he infOrmed the Royal Society that dephlogisticatcd air obtained by the same method could sustain the respiration of a mouse. Lavoisier's first investigations of the "principles" \vith which metals combine during calcination had much the same aims as Priestley's studies: the analysis, detection and identification of various kinds of gases. The influence of these gase-s on animal rco;;pi99

EPISTEMOLOGY

ration \Vas initially conceived as a kind of chemical test to study the experimental separation of the hypothetical elements of atmospheric air, which had been downgraded from its ancient status as an element. Lavoisier's more systematic studies of the respiration of birds (1775-76) and guinea pigs (1777) enabled him to present to the Academie des Sciences a definitive paper on changes in the blood Juring respiration (Mimoire sur les chanacmcnts que le sang iprom·c dans les poumons et sur le miwnisme de Ia respiration, 1777). Using comparative measurements of the volume of gas absorbed and the quantity of heat released by guinea pigs placed in a calorim('ter, Lavoisier and Pierre-Simon Laplace were able to generalize all these observations and to state, in 1780, that respiration is nothing other than a slow form of combustion identical to the combustion of carbon. They were wrong, however, in asserting that respiration is the combustion of carbon alone, as Lavoi,.ier was obliged to admit in his 1785 paper Sur Irs altirations qu'Cproul'e /'air rnpiri, in which it was shown that respiration produced not only carbon dioxide from the combustion of carbon but also water from the combustion of hydrogen. They were also wrong to de~cribe the lung as the locus and seat of combustion, the heat h·om which thev believed \vas distributed throughout the organism by the blood. Finally, after measuring, in collaboration \Vith SCguin, who volunteered to serve as an experimental subject, energy exchanges in human beings, Lavoisier summed up his views in two papers, Sur Ia respiration des animaux ( 1798) and Sur Ia transpiration des animaux (1790). His declaration of principle is often cited:

EPISTEMOl_OGY

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and, last but not least, digestion, which restores to the blood what it has lost by respiration and transpiration. ["Physiologie animale," Histoire gemirale, vol. 2, pp. 595-96] [34 J The end of the debate over the causes of animal heat coin-

Comparison of these result~ with earlier ones ~hows that the animalmachine i~ controlled by three principal governors: respiration,

cided with the beginnings of a debate over the seat or the phenomenon. Lavoisier had propo.
which consumes hydrogen and carbon and which supplies caloric; transpiration, which fluctuates with the requirements of caloric;

and carbon dioxide released by all tissues and organs, and that amphibians and reptiles may absorb more oxygen through the

100

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EPISTEMOI OGY

skin than through the lungs. In other words, in animals with lungs, the lungs arc the organ of expression but not the organ of An Experimental Science

exercise of a function coextensive \vith the entire organism. By performing experiments to dissociate the respiration function from the pulmonary organ, Spallanzani, e\'en more than Lavoisier, but using his methods of comparative phy"iology. laid the groundwork k1r a general physiology. ["Physiologic animale," Histoire

ileneralc, vol. 2, pp. 597-98]

New Styles in the Ane of Laboratories [35] Relations between the first systematically experimental physiology and the theoretically, that is, mathematically, more advanced phy"ical and chemical sciences fCJI!mved different patterns in hance and Gem1any. The first year of the nineteenth cen'

I

tury witnc~~cd the publication of Recherches p~rsiolo,qiqucs mr Ia

vie er Ia morl by .\a vier Hie hat, who strove to prc'icrvc tht.· distinctiveness of biology's subject matter and methods in the face of efforts by physicist~ and chemists to annex physiology to their own disciplines. Bichat, the brilliant founder of general anatomy, or the study of organic tissues, and a tenacious champion of the concept of the "vital properties" of such tissue, had a profound influence on the first French physiologists to embrace methodical experimentation. Although Franyois Magendie and Claude Bernard, unlike Hie hat, ne\'cr doubted the need to use physical and chemical methods to investigate physiological mech,mi'ims. they never ceased tu beliL'H' in the uniqueness of organic phenomena. Thi-, was the distinctiv<.· feature, one might even say the national tr.:tdemark, of French physiology, at a time when physiology in Germany was already being done, like physics and chemistry, in laboratories equipped with steadily improving, in-

102

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Justrially manufactured equipment, \\'hile French physiologists soldiered on with nothing more than the rudimentary facilities available to university professors and hospital physicians as per· quisites of their positions. This accounts for the undeniable dif· ference in orientation and style of research on either side of the Rhine. \Vhen Bernard compared himself to Hermann von Helmholtt. and remarked in his notebook that his German colleague found only what he was looking for, he was remarking not only on a difference in spirit but also on a disproportion of available means. For, by this time. new discoveries in physiology were not to he had on the cheap. This was one reason why doctors who came from the United State~ to study in Europe generally prefem·d to study with German physiologists, especially Karl Ludwig (1816-1895), rather than with their French counterparts. The first physiology laboratories were established in the United States in the 1870s, and they soon could boast of facilities and equipment superior to the finest European laboratories. As physiology lab()ratories grew larger and their equipment more complex, it became common for rc~earch to be conducted by teams rather than individuals. Researchers were more anonymous, but the discipline as a whole was less dependent on individual strokes of genius. ["Physiologic," Encyclopaedia, pp. 1076a-b J [36] If phy~ico;; and chemistry exerted gro'"·ing influence on research in physiology, it was mainly because physiologists found the techniques of thosl' ::.ciences indispensable as research tools, though not necessarily as the~retical models. While Claude Bernard's often-repeated claim that physiology became scientific when it became experimental need not be taken strictly literally, it is certainly true that the radical difference between the physiological experimentation of the nineteenth century and that of the l·ighteenth century lay in the systematic use of measuring and detection instruments and equipment borrowed or adapted from, 104

EPISTEMOLOGY OF

PHYSIOLOGY

or inspired by, the flourishing sciences of physics and chemi~try. To be sure, Ludwig and his school in Germany deserve credit t<)r their persistent interest in physical and chemical methods, as well as their ingenuity in th(· construction and use of new instruments. Bernard's research seems relatively artisanal by comparison. It \YJS also more narrowly biological, vivisection being its chief tl~ch­ nique. But it would be misleading to suggest that there was a fundamental difference of national intelligence or genius between the two countries. Indeed, the history of physiology (not trJ be confused vvi th the history of physiologists) shows that researchers in both countrie~ learned from each other and exchanged ideas about how to improve experimental methods by borrowing from other disciplines. Ludwig became famous, for example, not only for building the mercury pump fOr separating blood gases but even more for the construction of the celebrated kymograph ( 1846 ). In terms of technological phylogenesis, the ancestor of this instrument was surely. the "hemodvnamometcr" of Jean Poiscuille. Lud. wig's gl·nius was to couple Poiseuillc:'s artnial manometcr to a graphic recorder. When Etienne-julcs Marcy (1830-1904) set out to develop and perfect the graphic method in France, he "vas thl'TrfOre indebted indirectly to Poiseuille and directly to Ludwig.

[Etudes, pp. 231-32] techniques borrowed from ph,sLr 37] Even thouah eo analvtical ., , ics and chemistry proved fi-uitful in phy~iology, they could not discredit or supplant the method that Claude Bernard called "operative phy~iology," in which vivisection, resection and ablation are used to disturb the balance of otherwi~e intact organisms. This trMJitional method was used by Julien Jean Cesar Legallois and Fran~ois f..hgendie early in the nineteenth century and hj Pil'rrl' Flourens later on. Gustav Theodorl~ Fritsch and Julius Edward Hitzig used galvanic stimulation of the cortex to distinguish between motor and sensory functions in the cerebral 10\

EPISTEMOI OGY

EPISl EMOI OGY

OF

PHYSIOLOGY

lobes (1870). rricdrich Goltz refused to admit the validitv ofanv

was not altogether devoid of unity of inspiration or purpose. It

other method.

'

vvas the science of functional constants in organisms. One sign

Most of the early \vork on glands relied on ablation. Charles-

that it \vas an authentic science is that from J\·1agendie to Sher-

Edouard Bro,vn-Sequard used it to study the adrenal function

rington and Pavlov we find a great many overlapping studies and

_,

(1856), Moritz Schill to study the thyroid function (1859 and

discoveries and a large number of separate and simultaneous dis-

1883), and Emile Glcy to study the parathyroid function (1891).

coveries (sometimes with disputes over priority, sometimes not).

Before the active principles of the various endocrine secretions

The history of physiology enjoyed a relative independence from

could be identified (adrcnalin by Takamine in 1901, thvroxin by

tlw history of physiologists. It matters little \vhethcr it was Sir

Edward Calum Kendall in 1914), physiologLsts tried t~ demo;-

Charles Bell or .rv1agendie who "really" discovered the function of

strate the chemical actions of glands by means of organ trans-

the spinal nerve roots, whether Marshall Hall or johannes MUller

plants. In 1849, for example, Arnold Adolphe Berthold reversed

first discovered reflex actions, Emile Du Boi')-Reymond or Her-

the effects of castration in a rooster by transplanting testicles into

mann motor currents, or David Ferrier or llennann tv1unk the cor-

its peritoneal cavity. In 1884, Schiff transplanted a thyroid from

tical center of vision. As soon as methods and problems become

one dog to another, the first instance of an operatio-n that had become commonplace by the end of the century.

adjusted to each other, as soon as instruments become so highly specialized that their very use implies the acceptance of common

The techniques of opnative physiology were- used in conjunc-

working hypotheses, it is true to say that science shapes scien-

tion \vith the new methods of electrophysiology to map the func-

tists just as much as scientists shape science. ["Physiologic en

tiom of nerve bundles in the spinal cord and to produce an atlas

Allemagne," Histoire w'nerale, vol. 3, pp. 482-84]

of cerebral fUnctions. Charles Scott Sherrington's discoveries \vere based on very precise operative techniques involving differential "preparations" (decorticated, decerebrated and dccapi tatcd animals). In studying the functions of the sympathetic nervous svstem, physiologists relied on vivisection- long befOre turning _,to chemical methods with John Newport Langley. It was vivisection that enabled Claude Bernard in 1854 to demonstrate the role p_layed by the sympathetic system in calorification (regulating the

CJrculatory flow in the capillaries).[ ... J Despite the fact that some of its greatest representatives _

Physiotony Is Not an Empirical Science [38] To concentrate solely on the instrumental side of experimentation would be to give a misleading idea of the development of nineteenth-century physiology, though. Some historical sketches and methodological manifestoes give tlw impression that instruments and the techniques that used them 'vere somehow ideas. "10 be sure, using an instrument obliges the user to subscribe to a hypothesis about the function under study. For example, Emile Du Bois-Reymond's inductive ')!ide physically embodies a certain

Bernard, for instance- insisted that physiology was an indepen-

idea of the functions of nerve and muscle, but it is hardly a sub-

dent discipline w·ith methods ofits own, while others stressed its

stitute for that idea: an instrument is an aid to exploration but

subordination to physics and chemistry (Karl Ludwig) or mathe-

of no use in framing questions. Thus, I cannot agree with those

matics (Hermann von Helmholtz), nineteenth-century physiology

historians of physiology, profcs'jional as well as amateur, who

106

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E.DISTE:MOLOGY

would outdo even Claude Bernard's open hostility to theory by ascribing all progress in ninetet-nth~century physiology to ex per~ imenrn the anterior and postt_>rior roots of the spinal cord in 1822, it must be granted that Sir Charles Bell had not found it unhelpful eleven years earlier to rely on an "idea," namely, his Idea of a New Anatomv of the Brain {I RI I): if two nen:es innervate the same part of the body, their effects must be different. The spinal nerves have both motor and sensory functions, hence different anatomical structures. Given that the spinal cord has two roots, each must be a functionally different nerve.

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reflects an instinctive need to reconstitute that prototype of all

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diets, milk. If the work of Hermann von Hclmholtl dominated the physiology of the sensory organs in the nineteenth century, it was because he, justly renowned as an inventor of instruments (such as the ophthalmoscope in l 850). vvas an ingenious experimentalist with a broad mathematical background that he owed to his training as a physicist. When a mathematical mind turns to natu~ ral science, it cannot do without ideas. A student of Johannes MUller, whose la\V of the sp<'cific energy of the nnves <md sensory organs guided all the period's thinking about psychophysiology, Helmholtz was able to combine his own insistence on measurement and quantification with a philosophical understand~ ing of the unity of nature that he took from his teacher, whose influence is apparent in all of Helmholt7's work on muscubr work and heat. 1f the 1848 paper on the principal source of heat in the working muscle reports data gathered vvith tempt"ratun_.-measuring instmments specially designed by Helmholtz himself~ his 1847 work on the conservation of force, Ober die Erhaltung der Kraft, ,vas inspired by a certain idea of the unity of phenomena and the

Although the earliest result.;, in the physiology of nutrition came from Justus von Liebig's chemical analyses and Magendie's investigations of the effects of different diets on dog.;;, the work

intelligence thereof. In his final lectures at the 1\'\useum, published by Dastre as J.e\ons sur les phinomc?nes de la vic communs aux animau.\ et aux vegr!taux (1878-79), Claude Bernard discussed, along with other key ideas, the unity of the vital functions: "There is only one way of life, one physiology. for all living things." By then, this idea epitomized his life's work; earlier, however, it had surely guided his research. In the 1840s, it had encouraged him to challenge

of William Prout (1785-1850) on saccharides, fats and albumins in the human diet cannot be said to have suffered fl-om the fact that his work was guided by an "idea," namely, that what humans eat, whc·ther in traditional diets or carefully compoo;;ed menus,

the conclusions reached by Jean-Baptiste Dumas and Jean Baptiste Boussaingault in their Statique chimique (1841 ), much as von Liebig was doing at the same time in Gennany. Dumas and Bou'i"iaingault had argu~d that animals merely break down organic compounds,

108

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OG.>

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PHYS•OLOGY

which only plant') could synthe,.i:te. Bernard, hmvevcr. described

get that, it is easy to confuse l'xperimentation with empiricism.

J.ll his work on tlw glycogenic function of the tiver, ft·om the 184H

[Etudes, pp. 232-35]

paper read to the AcadCmie de" Sciences to the doct-oral thesis of 1853, as a comequcnce of the assumption that there is no dif-

Accidents, the Clinic and Socialization

ference between plants and animals \vith respect to tht-ir capacity

[39] It is impossible to write the history of random events, and

to synthesi;e "intermediate principles." Indeed, there is no hier-

if science were purely empirical it \vould be impossible to write

archy of plant and animal kingdoms; still more radically, Bernard claimed that fi-om the standpoint of physiology there are no kine:-

the history of science. One must have a rough sense of periodit.ation to benefit from anecdotal cvidenn·. Research on digestion

doms. He refused to believe that there \vas ~omething plan;s could do that animals could not. In ans,vering his critics bv re-

offers a good example of this. A great deal \vas learned Jbout digl'stive physiology in the second half of the nineteenth century.

jecting a certain conception of the division of labor among organ-

after rcseuchers di~covered how to use gastric fhtulas to perf(Jrm

isms, Bernard may have rC'\'ealed the (not very mysterious) secret

the experiments nn which today's understanding of digestion is

of his success. To be sun.-, Bernard's belief \\'J.s a "f(·ding," not

based. After 1840, in particular, Ivan Pavlov made good use of a

an "argument," as he stated in the Lc\ons de physiologic cxpCrimcntalc appliquee a lu midc(Jnc ( 18 55-56). l t was not t_'\'l'll J work-

technique that he himself had helped to perkct. But that tcch-

ing hypothesis concerning the functions of some organ. But even if it was not strictly necessary to hold this hrlicf in order to discnvn the liver's glycogenic funuion, the fact that Bernard did

niquL' had been pioneered. simultaneously but quite independently, by Vassili Hassov in 1842 and Nicolas Blondlot in 1raitC anah'tiquc de Ia digestion, considL;ric parliculiCrcmcnt dans l'hommc ct fcs animaux l'ertihris (1843).~'-! Nearly t\vo centuries earlier,

Regner de Graaf had successfully produced a pancreatic fistula in

hold it helped him to embrace an interpretation of his re,.ults that most of his contemporaries found disconcerting.

a dog (Disputati{l medica de nawra ct mu sued pancrcouci, 1h64 ),

These examples. drawn from variou" fields of research, show that expnimentJ.Ihts need not pretend to be pure ernpirici..,ts,

but no om· ever attempted thl' same operation with other organs. Rcn~ Antoine Ferchau!t de Reaumur's experimL·nts in 1752 and

\Yorking without ideas of any kind, in order tn make progress.

Lat.t.aro Spallanzani's in 1770, both of which h.1d bel'n perf(_)rrned

Bernard observed that the experimentalist who doesn't knmv what hl' is looking for won't understand what he finds. The acquisi-

in order to decidt.· between van !!elmont's chemical and Bon· IIi's

tion of scientific knowledge requires a certain kind of luciditv. Scientific discovery is more than individual good fOrtune or acc;-

colkction ofga')tric juices from the esophagus hy ingeniou" but roundabout means; neither man sl'cms to hav~..: thought of intro-

mechanical expl,mation of digestive phenomena, involved the

dental good luck: hence, the history of sciencC' should he a his-

ducing an artifici
tory of the formation, deformation and rectification of scientific concepts. Since science is a branch of culture, education is a pre-

artificial gastric fistula followed the American physician \Villiam Beaumont's publication of his observations of a Canadian hunter,

requisite of ~cientific discovery. What the individual scientist is

Ak-xis Saint-Martin, who, after being shot in the stomach, pre-

capable of clepend<; on what infCJrmation is available: if \VC f(n-

sented with a stomach fistula whose edges adhered to the ab-

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EPISTEMOLOGY

EPISTEMOLOGY

01'

PHYSIOLOGY

domina! walls. Beaumont, having taken the man into his employ,

Addison's disease or surgery on goiters, it is impossible to make

reported his observations of contractions and gastric st·cretions

sense of progress in understanding the physiology of the adrenal

in a paper entitled "E:<..perimcnts and ObserYations on the Gas-

and thyroid glands. The work of the physiologist Brown-Sequard

tric Juice and the Phvsiology of Digestion" ( IR33 ). The history

often began with some medical finding; and in this respect it

of surgery offers few other cases of spontaneous stomach fistulas,

differed sharply from the work of certain other physiologists, such

and none was observed in any way comparable to Beaumont's.

as Claude Bernard. [Etudes, pp. 2 36-38]

Thus, an accident suggl·sted a method of experiment - one that

[ 40] Dise.:tse was not tlw physiologist's only source of scien-

Bassov and Blondlot \vould later make systematic use of. It was

tific challenges. Healthy individual~ are neither idle nor inert and

no accident, however, that this original accident \vas first patiently

cannot be maintained artificially at the beck and call of ingen-

exploited and later intentionally reproduced. The chemists of

ious or rc">tless experimentalists. The healthy person too is. by

the period were intensely interested in the chemical composi-

definition, capable of carrying out tasks set by nature and culture.

tion of fOodstuffs, and this had led to interest in the chemistry

In the nineteenth century, the development of industrial socie-

of digestive secretions. The first chemical analyses of gastric juices

ties in Europe and North Americ.1 led to the socialization. and

\,·ere undertaken by Prout ( 1824 ). However, becau.~e physiologists

therefore politici7ation, of qucstiom of subsistence, diet, hygiene

needed to obtain these juices, uncontaminated by food particles,

.md worker productivity. It is no accident that problems ot energy

in considerable quantities, they had to figure out how to retrieve

utilization arose around this time, especially in Germany, in regard

thE' juice'> at the moment of secretion. They also had to find the

to both the steam engine and tht· human organism. The same

right animal to study. om~ with an appropriate anatomical ~truc­

doctor, Juliu'J Robert von Mayer, \vho proved that energy could

ture and digestive patterns.

not be destroyed but only converted from one fOrm to another

nt;>w techniques of observation and methods of researc_h. One

(1842)- h·om work to heat, or vice versa- also publi'ilwd the re~ults of his research on dietary energetics in 1845. Hi'i work

Thus, accidents and unfOreseen events sometimes givl· rise to thing leads to another. Similarly, scientific problems sometimes

confirmed that of von Liebig, who~e research on organic chem-

arise in one domain or field of science only to be resolved in

istry as applied to phvsiology (1842) related the calorific values

another. For example, tht:> history of physiology cannot be t:>ntirely

of various nutrients <.;uch as fat<.;, o;,ugars and proteins to various

divorced from the parallel historie~ of the clinic and of medical

organic phenomena involving expenditures of energy; riH:se re-

pathology. And it was not ahvays physiology that instructl'd path-

sults were further elaborated and refined by Marcell in Berthelot

ology: relations among the disciplines were complex. Consider

(1879) and M.lX Rubner and Wilbur Olin Atwater (1904 ).

fi::Jr a moment the history of nervous and endocrine physiology in

Similarly, technological progress and economic change had

the nineteenth century. Clinical obsenration revealed fUnctional

subjected human beings to extreme conditions. People had been

disorders and disturbances that physiologists

first found diffi-

forced, in war and peace, to endure extrcm(·s of temperature,

cult to explain, fOr they could not identif)· what regulatory mech-

to work ar high altitudes, to dive to great depths; others chose

.mbm had gone awry. Without the history of clinical work on

to subject themselves voluntarily to extreme conditions, as

I I2

IIJ

.1t

FF'ISTFMOLOGY

in sport. To cite ju~t one example, Paul Bert's research on anoxemia at high altitude (1878) paved the way for later studies of phenomena that had to be understood befOre intercontinental pas-

The Major Problems of

senger flight could become routine. ["Physiologie," Encyclopae-

dia, p. 107bc-77a J

Nineteenth-Century Physiology

Bioeneroetics [ 41] The resolution, through chemistry, of an age-old problem

of physiology forced physiologists to confront a problem that physics had yet to resolve: Hm\' can energy exist in a variety of t()rms? In Cartesian mcchanin, -,ratio d<:p<:nd on thl· c:onsl-rvatinn of work, and dynamics on the cnnserntion of mornf"ntum (mv, ma~s times velocity). Leibniz. in his critique of Cartesian mechanic'>, considered the quantir:y

m1· 2

(mass times the square of

velocity, which he called the "live fOrce") to he a o,;uhstance, that i'>, an invariant, but he failed to note that in any real nll'chanical

o,;ystem involving fl-iction, this quantity does not remain constant, due to the generation and loss of heat. The eighteenth century faikd to formulate the notion of conservation of cm·rgy ...\t the beginning of the nineteenth century, two f<)rms of energy were recognized: the energy of motion (kinetic or potential) and heat. But observations made by technicians and engineers concerning the operation of the steam engine, the boring of cannon barrels and so on led to study of the relations between \vork and he,lt. The first person to assert the indestructibility and. consequently, the conservation of energy through \'arious tran~forma­ tions was the German phy')ician von Mayer, who bast·d his cL1ims 114

II\

EPISTEMOLOGY

on medical observations made in Indonesia in 1840 having to do with the influence of heat on the oxidation of blood. In 1842, von Liebig published a theoretical paper by Mayer, entitled "Bemerkungen tiber die Krafte der unbelebten Natur," in the Annalen der Chemic und Pharmacie, but it attracted little attention initially. In 1843, James Prescott Joule undertook to determine experi· mentally the mechanical equivalent of the calorie, and in an 1849 paper read before the Royal Society he claimed responsibility for a discovery - and Mayer then felt compelled to dispute his claim of priority. In 1847, meanwhile, von Helmholtz also published a paper entitled "tiber die Erhaltung der Kraft." Mayer's work actually was more oriented toward biology than Joule's and was therefore more significant for the history of physiology. In 1845, Mayer published the results of his research on dietary energetics under the title "Die organische Bewegung in ihren Zusammenhang mit dem Stoff\vechsel." Earlier, in 1842, von Liebig had published his Organische Chemic und ihre Anwendung auf Physiologic und Pathologic, in which he demonstrated, through investigation of the caloric content of various nutrients, that all vital phenomena derive their energy from nutrition. The work of Mayer and von Liebig actually elaborated on studies described even earlier by ThE-odore de Saussure in his Recherches chimiques sur la vigitation (1804 ). Henri Dutrochet, after establishing the laws of osmosis (1826), showed that respiratory phenomena were identical in plants and animals (1837).

FPISTEMOLOGY

OF

PHYSIOLOGY

nutrition: Henri Victor Regnault and Jules Reiset published their Recherches chimiques sur Ia respiration des animaux de diverses classes in 1849, and their results were later corroborated by Eduard Pfliiger's research on the contribution of each nutrient to the total input of nutritional energy, that contribution being measured in each case by the so-called respiratory quotient. In 1879, Berthelot systematized these results in his Essai de mt!canique chimique, and he also formulated the laws of animal energetics for organisms doing external work and for those simply maintaining themselves. Finally, Rubner, through experiments with dogs carried out between 1883 and 1904, and Atwater, through experiments with human beings conducted between 1891 and 1904, \\'ere led to generalize the results of earlier work on the conservation of energy in living organisms. As for the second law of thermodynamics, concerning the degradation of energy, it \Vas of course first fOrmulated bv Nicolas Sadi Carnot in 1824 but little noticed at the time. Ben~it Pierre [mile Clapeyron took it up again in 1834, with just as little success; then at mid-century, fOllowing further research, it was rediscovered by both Rudolph julius Emmanuell Clausius and William Thomson (Lord Kelvin). Organisms, like other physicochemical systems, confirm the validity of the second law, which states that

When the Academic des Sciences sponsored a competition on the origins of animal heat in 1822, t\VO Frenchmen, cesar Mausuite Despretz, a physicist, and Pierre Louis Dulong, a physician, attempted to reproduce Lavoisier's experiments. Dulong found that the eflects of respiration were not enough to account fOr the full quantity of heat produced. This formed the starting point for further work to determine the amount of energy contributed by

transformations of energy- fOr our purposes, those taking place within living cells- are irreversible, due to an increase in entropy. Organisms, though, are mechanisms capable of reproducing themselves. Like all mechanisms, they are capable of doing \Vork, of accomplishing transfOrmations that are structured and, therefore, less probable than disorgani?ed molecular agitation, or heat, into which all other forms of energy degrade without possibility of reversal. While it is no longer possible to accept Bichat's fOrmulation that "life is the collection of functions that resist death," one can still say that living things are systems vvhose improbable

116

"7

t0PISTEM0LOG'1

organization sluws a universal process of evolution toward thermal equilibrium- that is, toward a more probable state, death. To sum up, then, the study of the organism's transformations

EPIC; I bMOI OGY

OF

PIIYSIOLOCY

investigation that had been applied to the- phenomena of nutrition, assimilation through synthesis of specific compounds, disintegration and elimination.[ ... ]

of the energy it borrows from the environment was the work of

At the beginning nf'the nineteenth century, nothing was known

chemist~ as much as of physiologists in thl· :-;trier sense. Our under-

about the functions of dw spleen, thymus, adrenal glands or thy-

~tanding of the laws of cellular metabolism progressed in paral-

roid. The first glimmer of light came ~t mid-century in connec-

kl with till' sy'\tenutic ~tudy of tht' compounds of c.ubon, which

tion with Bernard\ rc~carch into the digestion and absorption of

kd to the unification of organic chemistry with inorganic chem-

sugar in the intestine, \\·hich revealed the hitherto-inconceivable

istrY. friedrich \VOhlcr's synthesis of urea in 1828 lent ne\V prcs-

function of a gland who~c affinity with those just mentioned was

tig~ to the central ideas and methods of von Liebig and his school. But von Liebig's theory of fermentation, which was associated in

unsuspected. Moritz Schiff \vas also working on hepatic glycogenesis and fermentation in Berne in 1859 w·hen he discovered the

his mind with the study of the biochemical sources of animal heat

IJ.tal effects of destroying the thyroid, a result for \vhich he could

(1840), would later be challenged by Louis Pasteur, who was

provide no explanation. It \vas much later, in Geneva in 1883,

rightly loath to believe that fermentation phenomena were inor-

that Schiff, revisiting his earlier experiments in the Iight of Emil

ganic process~.·~. by nature akin to death, and therefore unrelated

Tht~odore

to the spt'cific .Ktivities of microorganisms. [Etude_\-, pp. 260-62]

sequel lac uf~urgical excision of goiters (myxedematous cachexi.1,

Kocher and Jacques Louis Reverdin\ work on the

postoperative my'\l·dcll\a), had the idea of

Endocrinoloyy [42] Tlw term "endocrinology,'' due to Nicholas Pende, was coined only in 1909, yet no one hesitates to use it to refer, retroacthely. to any di:-;covery or research related to internal secretions. \Vork on these secretions in the nineteenth century was not as far-reaching as work on the nervous system, yet the very original nature of that work can nevertheless be seen today as the

tran~planting

the thy-

roid in order to confirm or refute the hypothesis that the gland somehov,. acted chemically through the blood. Victor Alexander Haden Horscly successfully perfOrmed the same experiment on an ape in 1884; Odilon Marc Lannclongue repeated it f()r therapeutic purposes on a man in 1890. In 1896, Eugen Baumann identified an organic con1pound of iodine in the thyroid. In 1914, Edward Calum Kend<1ll isolated the active principle in tlw form

cause and eHect of a veritable mutation in physiological thought.

ofcrystallinble thyroxin. Thus, although research into the func-

That is why the succinct term "endocrinology" seems preferable

tion of the thyroid begJ.n in the physiologist's laboratory, the solu-

to anv circumlocution. P.nadoxical\y, thanks to the work of Claude Bernard, the phy~­

tion involved thl· clinician's ex,1mining room and thl' surgeon's operating room.

iological problem posed by the existence of gland" without excre-

In the caSl" of the adrenal gland, the point nf departure- f(">r

tory ducts- organs, originally known as "blnod-\·essd glands,"

research lay in clinical ob5crvations made between 184q and 1855

whose functiom could not be deduced from anatomical inspec-

by Thomas Addison .md reported in a paper entitled "On the

tion- wa-. -.olved by using the same strict methods of chemical

Constitutional and Local Effects of Disease of the Supra-renal 119

EPISTEMOLOGY

EPISTEMOLOGY

OF

PHYSIOLOGY

than an explanatory role in physiology: it distinguished the con-

Capsules." In 1856, Charles-Edouard Brown-Sequard read to the AcadE-mic des Sciences a series of three papers on "Recherches

cept of a gland from that of an excretory organ. But a hormone is

experiment ales sur Ia physiologic et Ia pathologic des glandes surrenales," in '.vhich he reported on the leth.1l effects of remov-

a more general concept than an internal secretion: a hormone is a chemical messenger, whereas an internal secretion is simply a

ing the capsules as well as ofinjecting nonnal animals with blood

distribution or diffusion. Furthermore, the hepatic function, the first-known example of an internal secretion, is <;pecial: it places

taken from animals whose "capsules" had been removed. As a

J

result, Rrmvn-SCquard hypothesin·d that the capsules somehow

processed nutriment,

,1

metabolite, into circulation. In this

produced a chemical antitoxic effect on the composition of the blood. That same year, Alfred Vulpian reported his observations

sense, there is a difference between the endocrine secretion of

a Ia substance

of the other, consumption. Insulin, like thvroxin, is the stimu-

des capsules surrenales." The cortical cells reacted differently to

lant and regulator of a global mechanism; it is not, strictly speaking, an intermediary, energy-laden compound. Thus, to credit

in a paper entitled "Sur quelques reactions propres

the liver and that of the pancreas: the function of one is supply,

various dyes than the medullary cells did, from \Vhich Vulpian concluded that the latter, which turned green when exposed to

Bernard as the author of the fundamental concept of modern endocrinology is not false, but it is misleading. The concept that

iron chloridr, secreted a chromogenic substance. This '"·as the first hint of the existence of what \vould one day be called adren-

proved fruitful was that of the internal environment, which, unlike the concept of internal secretion, was not closely associated

aline. In 1893, Jean-Emile Abelous and Paul Lmglois confirmed Brown-SE-quard\ experimental results. In 1894, Georges Oliver

\vith a o;pecific function; rather, from the first it was itkntified with another concept, that of a physiological constant. VVhen it

.md Edward Albert Sharpey-Schafer reported to the London Physiological Society on their observations of the hypertensive effects

turned out that living cells depend on a stable organic environment, \vhich \Valter Bradford Cannon named "homeostasis" in

of inj~..·cting aqueous adrenal extract. In 1897, John-Jacob Abel iso-

same year provided the formula. Adrenaline was thus the first hormone to br discovered. The history of the hormones of the adre-

!929, the logical possibility arose of transfOrming the concept of internal secretion into one of chemical regulation. Once the fundamental idea was clear, research on various glands quickly led to the identification and (at least) qualitative description of their functional effects.

nal cortex does not begin until after 1900. From this brief summary of early experimental work in endo-

Moritz Schiff and Bro''"·n-Sf>guard attracted many emulators and

crinology. it is dear that the concept of internal secretion, which

.~timulated research in endocrinology, usually in conjunction

lated a hypertensive substance from the adrenal medulla, which he called epinephrine. In 1901, Takamine obtained what he called adrenaline in crystallizable form, and Thomas-Bell Aldrich in that

It is not surprising, then, that from 1888 on, rhe work of

that one might be tempted to ascribe to it. This was because the

with a desire to correct unsubstantiated pathological etiologies. It was the study of diabt'tes, for example, which Bernard's work

concept. which was first applied to the glycogenic fUnction of

had already clarified, that led Joseph von Mering and Eugene

the liver, initially played a discriminatory role in anatomy rather

Minkowski to discover the role of the pancreas in the metabo-

Bern,lrd tiJnnulated in 1855, did not at first play the heuristic role

121

120

j

EPISTEMOLOGY

Ef'ISTEMOLOGY

lism ofglucids (1889), and subsequently to the ide-ntification by

OF

PHYSIOLOGY

cnt pathways, reflexes, localization and centralintion - were

Frederick Grant Banting and Charles Herbert Best ( 1922) of the

hast.•d in part on analogies with operations or objects that

substance that Sharpey-Schafer had named insulin in 1916. It was

familiar bv dint of the construction and/or usc of machines, prog-

\VlTC

the study of acromegal;r by Pierre Marie (1886) that led, eventu-

res~

ally, to experiments in hypophysectomy by Georges Marincscu

incorporated by psychology, earned it widespread recognition.

(1892) and Giulio Vassale and Ercole Sacchi (1892), and later to work that discriminated betwt>en the function<> of the anterior and posterior lobes of the pituitary (Sir llcnry Dale in 1909, llan·cy Cushing in 1910, and Herbert Mclean Evans and Cra\vford \Villiamson Long in !92l). Brown-Sequard's experiments also spurred \\·ork on sex hormones, despite the ironic skepticism of many in the field. The role of the parathyroids, whose anatomical distinctivcnc"s went unnoticed until lvar Victor Saml~trOm's work of !880, was elucidated in 1897 through the research of Emile Gley. Thus, the physiological concept of a chemical regulator, in its current sense, was elaborated in the late nineteenth century, but an expressive term for it had yet to be coined. In 1905, William Bayliss and Ernest Starling. after consulting a philologist colleague, proposed the term "hormone." [Etudes, pp. 262-65]

in this branch of physiology, whose discoveries vvere also

Although terms such as "hormone" and "complex" have entered common parlance, they surely remain more esoteric than a \Yord like "reflex," whose use in connection with sports has made it entirely routine. Jf the motor effects of the decapitation ofbatrachians and reptile;;; had led eighteL•nth-ccntury re<;;earchers to suspect the role of the spinal cord in the muscular function, and if the e\.periments

of Robert Whytt (1768) and Julien Jean Cesar Legallois (1812) already had a positive character, it was nevertheless impossible to explain what Thomas Willis in 1670 called "reflected movements" in terms of the reflex arc until the Bell-Magcndie law had been llmlmlated and serified ( 1811-22 ). Marshall Hall\ discovery of the "diastaltic" (reflex) function of the spinal cord, simultaneously glimpsed by Johannes MUller, was a necessary consequence of differentiating the various functions of the spinal nerve. That

Neurophysiolony

diffi.:rcntiation also led ine\'itably to identification of function-

[43] Of all the systems \\·hose function~ are determined by the

ally specialized bundles of conductor-; within the spinal cord - by

need to preserve the integrity of cellular life, the one who~c

study of plant growth or from viscous and visceral palpation of

Karl Friedrich Burd,>eh in 1826, Jacob Augustus Lockhart Clarke in 1850, Brown-Si,quard in 1850 and Friedrich Goll in 1860. Rased initially on experiments involving section and excitation of nerve fibers, this work prPceded Friedrich \1\ralter\ discovcry of spinal

the molluo;k hut from ohserntion of the di.;;tinctive, sequential

degPncration in 1850.

mechanical nature always aroused the fewest objections was the neuromuscular. Mechanistic theorie~ first arose not from the

lncomotion of v<.:rtebratt..·!., whost.· central ncr.·ous systems control

OncL' the dual si1Tnificance of conduction along the nervous

dett..'~incd,

c~nductivity of

and coordinate a series of S(~gmentary moH'mL·nts that one can

fiber had been

simulate by mechanical meJ.ns. "An amoeba," Alex von Uexkiil\

nervous tissue were studied systematically, along with the con-

maintained, "is less of a machine than a horse." Because some of

tractile properties of muscle. This work was the positiw or empir-

the earliest concepts of nervous physiology- afferent and cfff.r-

ical portion of a large volume of research. some of it magical in

122

12J

,I

·•

the excitability and

EPISTEMOLOG•

character, spurred by the discovery of "animal electricity." The field of electrophysiology began with Luigi Galvani's observations and experiments, his polemics with Alessandro Volta (1794 ), and Alexander von llumboldt's corroboration of Galvani's results. In 1827, Leopolda Nobili built an astatic galvanometer ~ensitive enough to detect n.·ry weak currents. Carlo Mateucci established, in 1841, a correlation between muscular contraction and the production of electricity. Du Bois-Reymond virtually invented the entire apparatus and technique of electrophysiology in order to subject Mateucci'~ work to stringent criticism. He demom.trated the existence of what he called "nl'gative variation," an action potential that generated a current in conjunction with the stimulation of a nerve: he also studied physiological tetanus. Using similar techniques, von Helmholtz in 1850 measured the speed of propagation along the nerve. Although this experiment failed to shed the expected light on the natun' of the message transmitted, it did at lea5t refute all theories holding that this message involved the transport of some ~ubstance. After Whytt and George Prochaska identified the spinal cord's sensorimotor coordination function but before Marshall Hall explained its mechanism, Legallois and Pierre Flourens located the center of reflex movement in the medulla oblongata. At around the same time, tht~ ancient concept of a seat of the soul or organ of common sense, whose possible location had been the subject of much speculation in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, collapsed. Albrecht von Haller had provided a negative answer to the question, "Do different functions stem from dif~ ferent souls (An dit'ersae diversarum ani mae function urn prorinciac)?"W In 1808, however, the father of phrenology, Franz Joseph Gall, argued that "the brain is composed of as many distinctive systems as it performs distinct functions," and that it is therefore not an organ but a composite of organs, each corresponding to a 124

EPISTEMOLOGY

OF

PHYSIOLOGY

faculty or appetite -ami, furthermore, that those organs are to be found in the convolutions of the brain's hemispheres, which were reflected in the configuration of the cranial shell. This is not the place to deal with the allegation that Gall was a charlatan. It is more important to undcr~tand why he enjoyed as much influence as he did, and fOr so long. He provided the physiologists and clinicians of the first two thirds of the nineteenth century with a fundamental idea that one of his critics, Louis Franc;ois Lelut, called Hthc polyscction of the encephalon." Recall, moreover, that Gall claimed to have come upon his theory through observation of the skulls of certain of his colleagues with a particularly keen memory for words: hl' located the organ of th,1t memory in the lower posterior portion of the anterior lobe. Now, it happens that the first identification of an anatomical lesion responsible for ,1 clinical diagnosis of aphasia, made by Jean B.lptiste Bouillaud in 1825, confirmed Gall's observation. In 1827, Bouillaud published the first experimn1tal findings on the ablation of regions of the cerebral cortex in mammals and birds. from then on, experiments on animals combined with clinic.1l and pathological observation of humans to produce a fUnctional mapping of the cerebral cortex. In 1861, Paul Broca identified the seat of articulate language in the third frontal convolution, which led him to make this declaration of faith: "I believe in the principle of localizations: I cannot believe that the complexity of the cerebral hemispheres is a mere caprice of nature." In 1870, Gustav Theodore Fritsch and julius Edward Hittig provided experimental proof of cerebral localization by employing a revolutionary ne\v technique, electrical stimulation of the cortex. Previously, due to the failure of attempts to stimulate the brain directly during trl'panation, din:ct stimulation had bel'n declared impossible. From experiments with dogs, Fritsch and Hitr.ig concluded that the anterior and postl'rior regions of the

EPISTEMOLOGY

EPISTFMOL0GY

OF

PHYSIOLOGY

brain were not equivalent; the anterior region vvas assocLltcJ \Vith

interpreting similar observations in terms of Spencerian evolu-

the motor function, the posterior \Vith the sensory function.

tionism, introduced the concept of a conservativl' integration of

Because Hitzig could not apply electrical stimuli to a human

neurological structures and functions, according to \vhich less

brain, in 1874 he instcad mapped the motor region in an ape; in

complex structures and functions are dominated and controlled

1876. David rerricr confirmed llitzig's results. Naming Flourrns

at a higher level by more complex and highly differentiated ones,

but .:timing his criticism .:tt Friedrich Goltt:, f-=errier wrote, "The

which appear later in the phylogenetic ordt·r. P.:tthological 'itates

soul is not, as Flourens and many \vho C<\me after him believed, some kind of synthetic hmction of the entire brain, \vhose manifl~stations

can be suppressed in toto but not in part; on the contrary,

it i<.; certain that some, and probable that all, psychic functions

'.

arc not decompositions or diminutions of physiological states; rather thev involve a dissolution or loss of control, the Iibera'

-

tion of a dominated function, the return to a more reflexive, although in itself positive, state.

derin" from ""·ell-defined centers in the cen·ical cortex." Similarly.

An important event in the history of the localization concept

rcrrier's discovery of the role of the occipital lobe in vision led

was the International Congres~ of fvkdicine held in London in

Ht_•rmann Munk in IR78 to give the first precise localization of a

18~H. at which Sherrington, then aged twenty-four, heard the

sen'\ory center. A growing number of experiments, confirmed by

I lome ric debate bctween Ferrier and Friedrich Goltz. Later, when

clinical observations, provided Carl Wernicke \vith the material

Charles Scott Sherrington visited Goltz in Strasbourg in 1884-85,

to entitle his 1897 treatise on the anatomy and physiology of the

he learned the technique for taking progressive sections of the

brain the Atlas des Gehirns. Hut it wa<.; not until the early twenti-

<.;pinal cord. His work nn the rigidity caused by decnebratinn

eth century that Alfred Campbell (1905) and Korbinian Brodmann

(IH97) and research on subjects ranging from reciprocal innerva-

( 1908 ), dra\ving on advances in histology from Camillo Golgi to

tion ro the concept ot' an inte-grative action of the nervous systt~m

Santiago Ramon y Cajal, were able to lay the foundations fOr a

( 1906) enabled him to corroborate and correct Jackson's fi.mda-

cytoarchitl'ctonics of the cortex.

rncntal ideas \vithout venturing outside the realm of physiology.

In Lc\ons sur lcs lncahsations ( 1876 ), Jean-J\1artin Charcot wrote,

Between Marshall Hall and Sherrington, the study of the laws

"The brain is not a homogeneous, unitar~· organ but an associa-

of reflex made little progress apart h·nm Eduard Pflligt~r's ear-

tion." The term "localization" was taken literally at the time: it

lier, rather crude stateml'nt in 1853 ofrhe ruks of irradiation, a

w.ts assumed that the unfolded surfac~..~ of the cortex could be

concept that implied the existence of an elt.~rnentary reflex arc.

divided into distinct zones, and that lesions or ablations could

Shcrrington showed, to the contrary, that even in the case of the

explain sensorimotor disturbances described as deficits (a-phasia,

simplest reflex, the spinal cord integrate<.; the limb's entire hun-

a-graphia, a-praxia and ~o on). Yet Jules Gabriel Franc;ois Baillarger

die of nerves. Brain functions merely expand upon this capacity of

had pointed out in IS6 5 that aph.:tsia is not a loss of th~ memory

the spinal cord to integrate various pJ.rts of tlw organism. Follow-

of words, because some aphasics retain their vocabulary but lnse

ing Jackson, Sherrington thus established that the animal organ-

the ability to usc words properly- and in an;'thing but an auto-

ism, seen in terms of its sensorimotor functions, is not a mosaic

matic manner. Over the next two decades, Hugh lings Jackson,

but a structure. The great physiologist's most original contrihu-

126

EPISTEMOLOGY

tion, however, was to explain, with the concept of the cortex, the difference between nervous mechanisms for integrating immediate and deferred movements. At around the same time, Ivan Pavlov studied another cortical integrating function, which he called "conditioning" (1897). Pavlov showed how the cortical functions could be analyzed by modifying techniques borrowed from reflexology. When an animal (in this case, a dog) was conditioned through the simultaneous application of different stimuli, ablation of more or less extensive regions of the cortex allowed one to measure the degree to vvhich the sensorimotor reflex depended on the integrity of the cortical intermediary. This technique, which Pavlov refined as results accumulated, was taught to large numbers of the great Russian physiologist's disciples.[ ... ] I will end with a few words about what John Newport langley. in 1898, called the "autonomic" nervous system, whose functions, because they involve what Bichat called "vegetative" as opposed to .. anim.1l'' life, Wt:>re less susceptible of mechanical interpretations than those of the central nervous system. It was Jacob VVinslow who in 1732 coined the expression "great sympathetic" nervous system to refer to the ganglionic chain. In 1851, Bernard discovered the effect of the sympathetic system on sensitivity and body temperature; in 1852-54, Brown-Sequard contributed new techniques for exploring the functions of the sympathetic nervous system by sectioning nerves and applying electrical stimuli. Langley was a pioneer in the use of chemical techniques, including the blockage of synapses by nicotine ( 1889) and the sympathicomimetic property of adrenaline ( 1901 ). [Etudes, pp. 266-71 J

CH:\PTFR

Srx

Epistemology of Medicine The limits of Healing

[44 J Awareness of the limits of medicine's power accompanies any conception of the living body which attributes to it a spontant:ous capacity, in whatt.•vc.r form, to preserve its structure and regulate its fUnctions. If the organism has its own powers of defense, then to trust in those powers, at least temporarily, is a hypothetical imperative, at once prudent and shrewd. A dynamic body deserves an expectant medicine. Medical genius may be a form of patience. Of course, the patient must agree to suffer. Theophile de Bordeu, well aware of this. wrote in his Recherches sur l'histoire de midecine: "The method of expect,nion has something cold or austere about it, which is difficult for the keen sensibilities of patients and onlookers to bear. Thus, very few physicians have practiced it, particularly in nations whose people arc naturally ardent, impatient, and fearful." Not all patients respond to treatment; some recover without it. I iippocrate~. who recorded these observations in his treatise On the Art, was also, according to legend, responsible for - or, if you will, credited with -introducing the concept of nature into medical thinking: "Natures are the healers of diseases," he \\Tote in Book Six of Epidemics. Here, "healer" rck·rs to an intrinsic activity of the organism that compensates hH deficiencies,

E:PISTEMOLOGY OF

EI-'ISTEOMO! OGY

MEDICINE

restores a disrupted equilibrium or quickly corrt:>cts a detected

nature\ presumed powu to correct disorders on its own. Nature

deviation. Thh activity, however, b not the product of inrMte

the physician \Vas respected by a therapeutics of watchfulness

knmvledge: "Nature finds its own ways and means, but not bv

and support. By contrast, modern medic in~.: was activist in its ori-

tongu~

entation. Bacon expressed the hope that it would learn from

are another, and so are other actions of this sort. Nature does what

chemistry. and Descartes that it would learn from mechanic'j. Yet

is appropriate without instruction and without knowledge."

bet ween the Greeks and the Moderns, for all that they were sepa-

intelligence: blinking is one such, the various offices of the

ThC' an,1logy betweC'n nature as healer and the rnedic.1! art

rated by the Copernican re\'olution and it"i critic.1l comt:'']Ul'JlCes,

throvrs the light of nature on the art, but not vice versa. The

the difference remained philosophical, without perceptible im-

medical art must observe, must listen to nature; to observe and

pact on the health of mankind. The shan.'d project of Bacon and

to listen in this context is to obey. Galen, who attributed to

Descartes, to preserve health and to avoid or at least delay the

Hippocrates conc('pts that one can only call Hippocratic, adopted

decline of old age- in o;;hort. to prolong life- resulted in no not-

them in hio; own right and taught that nature is the primary con-

able achien·mento;;. Although Nicolas de i\-Lllebranche and latrr

sen·ator of health because it is tht:' principal siMper of the organ-

Ed me Mariotte spoke of "experimental ml·dicine," the phra~c

ism. llowever, no Hippocratic text goes so far as to portray nature

remained a signifier in search of a signified. Eighteenth-century

as infallible or omnipotent. The medical art originated, developed

medicine remained a symptomatology and nosology, that is, a sys-

and \Vas perfected as a gauge of the power of nature. Depending

tem of classification explicitly based on that of the naturalists.

nn \<.'hether nature as healer is stronger or weah·r. the physician

!vkdical t:'tiology squandered its energies in the erection of sys-

must either allmv nature to take its course, intervene to support

tems, reviving the ancient doctrines of solicli~m and humorism

it or help it out. or refuse to intt:'rvene on the grounds that there

by introducing ne\v physical concepts such as magnetism ,1nd gal-

are diseases for which nature is no match. Where nature gives in,

vanism or by raising metaphysical objections to the procedures

medicine mu<;t give up. Thus, Hippocrates wrote, "To ask art fOr

of tho-;e who would assimilate medicine to mechanics. Therapeu-

what art cannot provide and to ask nature fOr what nature can-

tics, guided by pure empiricism, alternated between .,keptical

not provide is to ~uffer from an ignorance that is more akin to

cdcctici:-,m and obstinate dogmatism. Tragically, medicine could

madness than to lack of education." ["Idee de nature," Midecine,

not accomplish its goals. It remained an empty discourse about

PP· 6-7] [45] To simplify (probably to excess) the difference between

practices oft:e-11 not very different from magic. Freud said of ancient medicine that psychic therapy was the

ancient (primarily Greek) medicine and the modern medicine

only trc,nment it had to offer, and much tht:' same thing could

inaugurated by Andreas Vcsalius and William Harvcv and cele·

ha\'e been said about medicine in the eighteenth and most of th<..'

brat~d by

mi~ht

say that

nineteenth centuries. Hy this I mean that the presence and per-

the former wa~ contemplative, the latter operational. Ancient

sonality ofthe physician were the primary remedies in many aH1ic-

medicine was ff)l]nded upon a supposed isomorphism bet\veen the

tions of which anxiety was a major component. [Ideolonr and

cosmic order and the e'luilibrium nf the organio;;m, reflected in

Rationalirr. pp. 52-51]

Roger Bacon and Rene Descartes, one

IJO

I Jl

The Ne,v Situation of Medicine

A Shift [ 46] The gradual elimination from medical understanding of any reference to the patient's living conditions \vas. in part, an effect of the colonization of medicine by bJ.sic and applied science in the early nineteenth century; but it was also a consequence of industrial society's interest (in every sense of the word} in tht' health of its working populations (or, as some vvould put it, in the human component of the productive forces). The political authorities, at the behest of, and with advice fi-om, hygienists, took St(.'ps to monitor and improve living conditions. Medicine and politics joined forces in a new approach to illness, exemplified by changes in hospital stmctures and practices. In eighteenthcentury France, particularly at the time of the Revolution, steps were taken to replace hospices, which had provided shelter and care to sick patients, many of whom had nowhere else to turn, with hospitals designed to facilitate patient Sl!rvt'illance and classification. By design, the new hospitals operated as, to borrow jacques Rene Tenon's phrase, "healing machines." Treating diseases in hospitals, in a regimented social t'nvironment, helped strip them of their individuality. Meanwhile, the conditions under \vhich diseases de\'eloped were subjectt·d to incre.1singly abstract IJl

Eof'ISTCMOLOGY !Of'

analysis and, as a result, the gap widened between the realitv of patients' lives and the

OF

MCD:C

Ni=

S1EMOLOGY

~linical

representation of that reality.(... J

The statistical study of the frequency, social context and spread of disease coincided exactly vvith the anatomical-clinical revolution in the hospitals of Austria, England and France in the earlv

effective therapies, whose use could be guided by critical awareness of their limitations. In France, elaboration of the new medical model was pursued first by Franyois-Joseph Victor Broussais, then by Franc;:ois Magendie, and finally by Claude Bernard. Despite the traditional

-

claims of medical historians, however, it can be shovvn that the

[ 4 7] Three phenomena altered the situation of European

physiological model remained an ideology. If the goal of the pro-

nineteenth century. ["Maladies," Univers, p. 1235a]

medicine. The first \vas the institutional and cultural change that

gram was eventually achieved, it was reached by routes quite dif-

Michel Foucault has baptized "the birth of the clinic," which

ferent from those envisioned by the program's authors. [ ldeolo&y

combined hospital reforms in Vienna and Paris with increasingly

and Rationalitv, pp. 54-55]

widespread me of such exploratory practices as percussion (Joseph Leopold Auenbriigger, Jean-Nicholas Corvisart) and mediate aus-

The Physiological Point of View

cultation (RenC-ThCophile Hyacinthe Laennec), and with svstematic effOrts to relate observed symptoms to anatomical

a~d

pathological data. Second, a rational attitude of therapeutic skepticism was fOstered and developed in both Austria and France, as

Edwin Heinz Ackerknecht has shown. ll Third, physiology grad-

Fran~·ois-joseph Victor Broussais

[48] By demolishing the period's most majestic and imposing system, that of Philippe Pinel, Broussais cleared the way for the advent of a new spirit in medicine. "It wao; Rroussais's opinion

ually liberated itself from its subservience to classical anatomy

that pathology was nothing but physiology. since he called it

and became an independent medical discipline, which at firs..t

'physiological medicine.' Therein lay the whole progress in his way oflooking at things."}2 To be sure, Broussais's "syste_m of irri-

f(Kused on disease at the tissue level, as yet unaware that eventually it would come to focus even more sharply on the cell. And physiologists looked to physics and chemistry for examples as well as tools. lienee, a new model of medicine was elaborated. New diseases

tation" hindered his understanding unnecessarily, and he discredited himself by overreliance on leeches and bleeding. Yet it should not be f()rgotten that the publication of his F.xamen de Ia doctrine mCdicale HCniralement adoptCe \vas, in the words of Louis Peisse,

\vere identified and distinguished, most notably in pulmonary and

"a medical [equivalent o!J1789."ll In order to refute Pinel's "phil-

cardiac pathology (pulmonary edema, bronchial dilation, endo-

osophical nosography" and doctrine of"essential fevers," Broussais

carditis). Old medications, vvhose numbers had proliferated with

borrowed from Bichat's general anatomy the notion that each type

no discernible effect, were discounted. And rival medical theo-

of tissue, mving to its specific texture, exhibits certain charac-

ries cast discredit on one another. The new model \Vas one of

teristic alterations. lie identified fever vvith inflammation, dis-

knowledge \vithout system, based on the collection of facts and,

tinguished different original sites and paths of propagation for

if possible, the elaboration of laws con finned by experiment. This

each type of tissue, and thus explained the symptomatic diversity

knowledge, it \vas hoped, \vould be capable of conversion into

of different fevers. lie explained inflammation as the result of an

IJ4

EPISTEoMOlOGY EPISTEM0l(){';Y

OF

MF.LJICINE

excessive irritation, which interfered with the movement of a tis-

svstems. Physiological medicine, even if it mimicked the form of

sue and could in the long run disturb its organization. He stood

a. svstcm, marked a decisive shift fi-om the era of systems to the

on its head the basic principle of pathological anatomy by teach-

ag~ of research, from the age of revolution to the epoch of prog-

ing that the dysfunction precedes the lesion. He based medicine on physiology rather than anatomy. All of this is summed up in a

r;ss. because Broussais's idl'a looked to techniques within n:ach

of contemporary possibilities. [Etudes, pp. 136- 38]

\veil-known passage of the preface to the Examen of 1816: "The characteristic traits of diseases must be sought in physiology.... Enlight('n me with a scientific analysis of the often confused cries

oft he suffering organs .... Teach me about their reciprocal influ-

Fram;ois Magendie [..J.9l What Broussais promised. someone else had already begun to deliver. Thi:.:. man, too, had declared that "medicine b noth-

ences." Discussing the new age of medicine in his Euai de philoso-

ing but the physiology of the sick man." 3K Just one year after

phic midicale, Jean Baptiste Bouillaud wrote, "Is not the fall of

Broussais's Histoire de phlciJmasies (1808), this man had published his [xamen de l'action de quelques vigitaux sur la moiille CpiniCrc.

the system of Nosographic philosophique one of the culminating events of our medical era, and is not the overthrow of a sy<~tem that had governed the medical world a revolution whose memory will not fade?"3 4 In a more lapidary fashion, Michel Foucault

put it this way in The Birth of the Clinic: "Since 1816, the doctor's eye has been able to confront a sick organism." 15 Emile Littn:·, a man familiar with the concept of "distinguishing" different types of explanation (he refers to "Bichat's great distinction" bet\veen occult and irreducible qualities), was thus able to observe in 1865 that "while theory in medicine once was suspect and served only as a target, so to speak, f(Jr the facts that de mol~ ished it, today, mving to its subordination to physiological laws, it has become an effective instrument of research and a faithful rule of conduct."36 No doubt Claude Bernard was right to say that Broussais's physiological medicine "was in reality based only on physiological ideas and not on the essential princi pie of physiol~ ogy."n Yet Broussais's idea was well suited to become a program and to justify a medical technique quite different from the one originally associated with it. Franc;:ois Magendie t()ok Broussais's doctrine and transfonned it into a method. That is why Broussa.is's system brought about a different kind of revolution fi-om other lj6

Ht· fOunded tht' Journal de ph,vsiolvgie expirimcntul a year before Broussais founded the Annales de la midedne physiologiquc and in

it in 1822 confirmed Charles Bell's discovery (1811) through his "Experience<; sur les fonctions des racines des nerfs rachidiens." From the titles of these work!'> alone Wl' gather the difference between the orientation of Rrnussais's \vnrk and that of this other

physician: Fran<;ois Magendic (1783-1855). Whereas Broussais had worked first in militarv and later in civilian hospitals, Magendie was

l\

man of the laboratorv as well as a hospital physician. For

him, experimental

physiolo~y

was the study of the physics of vital

phenomena such as absorption. He conducted systematic experiments \vith animals to test the pharmacodynamic properties of nt•wlv isolated classes of chemical compounds such as the alka-

loid~~

As early as I821, J\1agendie\ FormHhny carried the subtitle

"For the Usc and Preparation of Various Medications Such a~ Nux Vomica, Morphine, Prussic Acid, Strychnine, Veratrine, iodine,

and the Alkalis of Quinguinas" (that is, the quinine of Pelletier and C aventou ). In short, Magcndie's experimental medicine differed from Broussais's physiological medicine in three "'.:ays: it \vas centered

EPISTEMOLOc._;\

E PIS T F- r.'l
0 F

ME 01 CIN F

in the L1boratory rathn than the hospital; it experimented on

in Bern~·d's methodological \vritings that were for him insepa-

animals rather than on men; and instead of Galenic principles it

rable: d-ory and progress. Experimental medicine is progressive,

ust'd rxtracts isolated by pharmaceutical chemistry, fOr example,

he argt~t·:, because it elaborates theories and because those the-

repl.King opium with morphine and quinquina "vith quinine.

ories art -hem selves progressive, that is, open. Bernard\ \'it:"w is

01 thesc thrl'l' differences, the second wa~ initiall~· greeted with

summcc LIP in twn obiter dhta: "An experimc,ntalist never out-

thl' greatest incomprehension and critici~m. J\lagcndie's vivisec-

lives hi• vork. lie is always at the level of progrcs<,;," and "\Vith

tilHl~
theoric· here are no more scientific rcmlutions. Science grows

rosnns more profound than compassion fOr animal suffering.

gradual! and steadily."-1-1 Add to this the

ror co reason from animals to man W
minism '11d action - knowledge of the one being essential f<>r ~uc­

t\VO

concepts of d('ter-

between the two. The practice was held to stem from a materi-

cess of c··t~ other- and you have the fOur components of a medical

alist philosophy, and success \vould result in the temptation to

ideo log that clearly mirrored the progressive ideology of mid-

excend the experiments to man. When accused of experimenting

nineten h-century European industrial society. In light of more

on humans. Magcndie denied the chargr. But if administering

recent c .ncepts, such as Bachelard's epistemological break and

unpro\'cn dn1gs is experimentation (as Claude Bernard himself was

Kuhn's ructure of scientific revolutions, Bernard's concept of

onl' of the first to admit

39

),

then Magendie did experiment on

theory :thout revolution has drawn understandable .md legiti-

ht11nans, patients in hospitals, which he cnnsidnrd a vast labo-

mate cr .cism. In Bernard's day. physicists still lotmd in Newton

racor~· where patients could he grouped and studied compara-

and Pit'" ~-Simon Laplace reasons to helieve in principle5 of con-

ti,dl. [ldcalofir and Rationali~v. pp. 5~-sg

servati(

Rudolph Juliu~ Lmmanucll Clausius had yet to attract

the attn ion of a large part oft he scientific community to Carnot's (}dl.llfe Rcrnard

princip , of which philosophers were a fortiori even less aware.

[Sl)l A )Tar before his death, Claude Bern,lrd, writing the intro-

rv1ichae :araday's experiments, Andre-Marie Ampere's laws and

duction fOr a planned TmitC de l'expirience daM les sciences midicales,

James (,·rk Maxvvell's calculations had vet to reveal electrical

ttwk literally a well-known quip of Magcndie's. Bernard repeated

current,., a possible substitute for coal as the motor of the indus-

hi" predecessor's self-characterization: "I !e was the ragpicker of

trial m~~1ine. In 1872, the German physiologist Emile DuBois-

ph\·sio!ogy. He was merely the initiator of t\perimentation. Today

Reymo: (of whom Hernard had on several occasion5 expressed

it i~ ,l di-;cipline that has to be created, a mrthod."--lll For Bernard, a

a rathe· ontcmptuous opinion) displayed <,;tdTicil'nt confidence

sclHry!ed ragpid.. cr was no doubt superior to a dogmatic system-

in LapL ian determinism to predict when England would burn

budder who did not t~ven reJ.Ii:te that he ll",ls building a system,

"l

likl' Rrnussai~. But what are \Ve to make of Bernard's repeated

!. '

in that ·me year, tht._• AcadCmie des Sciences in PMis, consulted

in,i~cence that only he appreciates the trul· n.·quiremcnts of the

.~

fUr the -·com! time about the invention of an electrical \vorkcr

experimental method? [nmfficient attention has been paid, I think, to two concepts 1]8

3

·,.

her last ··ieee of coal ( Ohcr die (;rcnzen de.;; :V(Jll/rcrk('ntJcm ). But

named .:no be Gramme. finally acknowlt'dged that practice had raced a ,·ad of theon. and authenticated a revolution in techno!-

EPISTEMOLOGY

fPISTEMOLOGY

OF

ME1'1rC NE

ogy. In short, the concept of a theory \vithout revolution, which

tain contemporaries whom he..· held in contempt because they

Bernard took to be the solid basis of his methodology. was per-

were not physiologists. Convinced

of the identity of the normal

haps no more than a sign of internal limitations in his own medi-

and the pathological, Bernard was never able to take a sinccrt:'

cal theory: e;>.perimental medicine, active and triumphant, which

interest in cellular pathology or germ pathology. [ldeoloflr and

Bernard proposed as

Rationality, pp. 60-63]

.1

definitive model of what medicine in an

industrial society ought to be. He contrasted his model with that

of contemplative, watchful medici1w. a modt·l appropriate to agri-

The Statistical Point of View

cultural societies in which time was governed by quasi-biological rather than industrial norms. The son of a vine grmver who main-

Reni-Thiophile Hyacinthe LaCnnec

tained a deep attachment to his native soil, Bemard was never able

work. In science, it was the same as in agriculture, where eco-

[51] Consider Laennec. Franc;ois Magendie mocked him as a mere annotator of signs. The invention of the stethoscope and its use in auscultation as codified in the De l'auscultation mCdiate of 1819 led to the eclipse of the symptom by the sign. A symptom is something presented or offered by the patient; a sign, on the oth<:r

nomic progress had uprooted many from the ~oil.

hand, is something sought and obtained with the aid of medical

to appreciate fully that science requires not only that the scientist abandon ideas invalidated by facts but also that he give up a personalized style of research, 'vhich \vas the hallmark of his own

Paradoxically, the internal limitations of Bernard's theory of

instruments. The patient, as the bearer and often commentator on

disease (etiology and pathogeny) were due to the initial successe"> of his rese.uch as Magendie's successor. For he had discovered

symptoms, was "placed in parentheses." A sign could sometimes reveal ,ln illness before a symptom led to its being ~uspected. In

the influence of the sympathetic nervous sy">tem on animal heat

Section 86, Laennec gives the example of a pectoriloquy as the

( 185 2 ); had generated, in the course of research on glycogenesis, a ca~c of diabt>tes by a lesion of the pneumogastric nerve at the level of the fourth ventricle ( 1849-51 ); and had demonstrated the selective action of curarC' on the motor nerves. As a result, Bemard conceived an idea that he never n·pudiated, namely, that all mor-

sign of a symptomless pulmonary phthisis. 44 This was the beginaccidents and anomalies, a practice that would gradually expand

bid disorders arc controlled by the nervous system;-1-2 that diseases

oscopt· to the most modern magnetic re~onance imaging equip-

are poisonings, and that infectious viruses are agents of fermen-

ment, from the X-ray to the computerized tomographic scanner

tation that alter the internal environment in which cells live.43

and ultrasound instrument, the scientific side of nwdical prac-

Although thc..~sc propositions vvere later adapted to quite different

tice is mo~t strikingly symbolized by the shift from the medical

experimental situations, none can be said to have been directly

office to the testing laboratory. At the same time, the scale on

responsible for a positiYe therapeutic application. What is more,

which pathological phenomena are repre,ented ha"> been reduct·d

Bernard's stubborn views on the subject of pathogeny prevented

ffom the organ to the cell and from the cell to the molecule.

him from seeing the practical implications of the work of ccr-

ning of the use of man-m.1de instrument~ to detect alteration~. with the addition of new testing and measuring equipment and the elaboration of subtle test protocols. From the ancient steth-

The task of the physician, however, is to interpret information

EPISTEMOLOGY

EPISTEMOLOGY

Ot

MFD•C•NE

derived from a multiplicity of source:-,. Though medicine may set

tJbk father of the numerical method." It may be of ... onw inter-

aside the individuality of the patient, its go,\[ r(_•mains the con-

est to recall a litrlc-knO\nl judgment concerning him. llenry

quest of disease. VVithout diagnosis, prognosis and treatment,

l)ucrotay de Rlainvillc said this in his Histoire des sncnces de

there is no medicine. Here we find an object suitable for study

l'org.:wisation of 1845:

in terms of logical and epistemological analysis of the construcappl~·ing

tion and testing of hypotheses. \Ve also find ourselves at the dawn

A m.Hhematician, Pinel began by

of medical matht•matics. Doctor.~ were jusr beginning to become

mcch.111ics: a philmopher, he carried on with an in-depth 5tucly of

mathem,ltics to animal

a\vare of an epistemological limitation already recogni7l~d in cos-

nwntal illne'>s; a naturalist and obst"rver. ht.· made

mology and physics: no serious prediction i~ possible without

ing the natural method to medicine; ,md tmvard the end he l.1psed

progn·<,~

in apply-

quantification of data. But what kind ofmeasuremt·nt could there

back into his early predilection.. by embracing the chimerical idea

be in medicine? One possibility was to measure variations in tht·

of applying the calculm of probabilitit"~ to medicine, or medical "itadisea~c~

physiological fUnctions. This was the purpose of instruments such

ti"itics. as if the number of

as Jean Poist'uille's hcmodynamometer ( 1828) and Karl Ludwig's

tions of temperament, diet, loc,ll<=' and so on, which intlut·ncc their

kymograph. Another possibility was to tabulate the occurrence

incidence and make them so diverse t'rom individual to individual.

could affe·ct the infinite varia-

of contagious diseases and chart their propagation; in the absence of confirmed etiologies, these data could be correlated \vith othn natural and social phenomen.-L It \Va5 in this second fi:Hm th,lt

Thi<; judgment is worth remembering li)r the light it sheds on the <;tormy relations betwl·en Blainville and Auguste Comte and on

quantification first established a foothold in mnlicinc. ["Statut

th<..' hostility of the po~itivist philosopher~ to the calculus of prob-

epistemologique," Histoirc, pp. 19-20]

abilities. The Fortit.'th Lesson of the Cours de Philosophic positive states that medical statistics are "absolute empiricism in frivolous mathematical guise" and that there is no mon~ irrational proce-

Philippe Pinel

[52] The statistical method of e\'aluating etiological diagnoses

dun.' in therapy than to rely on "the illusory theory of chance."

anrl tlwraJJt.:uti<: choices heuan \Yith Pierre Louis's J1c!moirc on

One find~ the s
phthisis ( 182 5), \vhich appeared fOur years befOre the publication

ticism about Comte's philosophy. l"Statut (·pistemologique,"

in London of Francis Bisset Hawkins's Elements of Medical Statisttcs

Hi.ltoirc, pp. 20-21]

~

(whose outlook vvas as social as it \Vas medical). Those \vho celebrate the first usc of statistics in medicine tend to fOrget Pinel,

Picrrc-Charles-Alewndrc Louis

however. In 1802, in his .11Cdecine c/inique, he.· ll'>cd ~tatistical meth-

[53] l oui'i used stati-.tics in a different spirit h-om Pinel. lli'i" main

ods to study the relation between certain dbcascs and changes

goals w~.:re to substitute a quantitative indt·x for the clinician's per-

in the weather. I Jt. also introduced statistical considerations in

son.:d judgment, to count the number of \veil-defined signs pres-

the revised edition of his TraitC midico-philosophique sur l'aliination

ent or absent in the examination of a patient and to compare the

menta/c. Edwin Heinr Ackcrknecht says that Pim:l was "the veri-

results of om~ period with those obtain~·d by other phy<;icians in

'41

T !;;PISTEMOLO(;Y

other periods using the r,;amt> methods. Experience in medicine is instructive, ht.~ insisted, only if numerical record':. are main~ rained. But, others argued, tables and charts destroy memory,

A Medical Revolution

judgment and intuition. That is '-'\·hy Emile Littrt> and Charles Robin, both positivists, declared their hostility to "numerics)\ in the article they published under that rubric in the thirteenth edi~ tion of their Dictionnaire de midecine, chirurgie et pharmacie ( 1873 ). In their view, calculations could never replace "anatomical and ph:vsiological knowledge, which alone makes it possible to weigh the value of symptoms." Furthermore, the effect of using the numerical method is that "patients are observed in a sense pas~ r,;ively." As with the case of Laennec, this \vas a method that set

Bacteriolooy

aside the distinctive features of the patient seeking individual

[54 J The discoveries of Louis Pasteur, Hcnnann Robert Koch and

attention for his or her p
their students quickly led to a profound epistemological revolu~

It would be more than a century before "the illusory theory

tion in medicine, so that, strangely enough, these researchers had

of chance," as Comte called it, would be fully incorporated into

a greater impact on clinical medicine than did contemporary clin-

diagnosis and therapy through methods elaborated to minimi7.c

ical practitioners. Pasteur, a chemist without medical training,

errors of judgment and risks of treatment, including the com-

inaugurated a new era in medicine. lie freed medical practice

putcri7.ed processing of biomedical and clinical data. One recent

from its traditional anthropocentrism: his approach had as much

consequence of this technological and epistemological evolution

to do \Vith silk worms, sheep and chicken as \vith human patients.

has been the construction of "expert systems" capable of apply~

P,1stcur discovt:red an etiology unrelated to organ functions. By

ing various rules of inference to data gleaned from examination

rt·vealing the rolt: of bacteria and viruses in disease, ht.~ changed

and then recommending possible courses of treatment. ["Statut

not only the focus of medicine but the location of its practice.

epistemologique," Histoirc, pp. 21-22]

Traditionally, patients had been cared fOr at home or in hospitals, but vaccinations could now bt> administered in dispensaries, bar~ racks and schoolhouses. The object of medicine was no longer so much disease as health. This gave new impetus to a medical discipline that had enjoyed prominence in England and France -,;ince the end of the eighteenth century - public health or hy~ giene. Through public health, which M'quired institutional status in Europe in the final third of the nineteenth century, epidcmi~ ology took medicine into the realm of tht:> social sciences and

144

145

eco~

F f' IS T E f-1Ll LClGY

FPISTEMOL(](~·;

OF-

MEOICLNF

nomics. It became impossible to look upon medicine solely as

The German School

a science of organic anomalies or changes. The effects of the

[55] Yet it was an extension of microscopic techniques for the

patient's social and economic situation on the conditions of his

study of cell preparations and the use of synthetic aniline stain~

or her life now numbned among the f~1ctors that the physician

(manufactured in Germany after 1870) that led, fi)r the first time

had to tJke into account. The political pr<."·;sures stemming from public health conn·-rns gradually resulted in changes in medicine's

''

in the history of medicine, to a therapeutic technique that \\·a~ both efft·ctive and unrcbted to any medical theory: chemother-

objectives and practices. The accent was shifted from health to

apy. invented by Paul Ehrlich (1854-1915). From Wilhelm von

prevention to protection. The semantic shift points to a change

\Naldeycr in Strasbourg, Ehrlich had learned how to usc stains to

in the medical act itself. Where medicine had once responded

examine normal and pathological tissue, and at Rreslau he had

to an appeal, it was nmv obedient to a demand. Health is the

attenfkd lectures on pathological anatomy given by Julius Cohn-

l·apacity to resist disease; yet rhos<.' who enjoy good health arc nevertheless con.':lcious of the possibility of illness. Protection is

heim (1839-1884), a student (lfRudoJph LwJ\\·ig Karl Virchow, 1

\Vho would later sho\V that inflammation was caused by the pas-

the negation of disease, an insistenet.' on ncvn having to think

sage of lcucocytes through the capillary \vall. Virchow\ ideas

about it. In response to political pressures, medicine has had to

reached Ehrlich through Julius Cohnhcim. Nevertheless, if cellu-

take on the appearance of a biological technology. J len·. for a

lar pathology played an indirect part in the invention of chemo-

third time, the individual patient, who seeks the attention nf a

therapy. the role of bacteriology and the discovery of immunity

clinician, has been set .1sidc. But perhaps individuality is still n:c-

\\·as more direct. The problem that Ehrlich stt1tcd and solved can

ognizcd in the notion of resistance, in the: fact thJt some organ-

be formulated as follows: Through \vhat chemical compounds

isms are more su:-.u:ptible than others to, say, the cholera bacillus.

v. :ith specific affinity for certain infectious agents or cells could

Is the concept of resistance artifici
one act directly on the cam<.· rather than on the symptoms of dis-

the germ theory's determinism? Or is it a hint of some more illu-

case, in imitation of the antitoxins present in various serums?

minating concept yet to come, f()f which microbiology has paved the vvay? If medicirw

This is not the place to delve into the circumstances surrounding the discovery of immunity or to revive a di'ipute over prior-

ha~

attained the status of a science, it did so in

ity, an exercis<.· useful /()f' reminding us that the constitution of

the era of bacteriology. A practice is ~cientific if it provides a

scientific knowledge docs not necessarily rt"quire th<.· simultane-

model for the solution of problems and if that model gives rise

ous existence of all ""'ho claim to be its authors. 41 It is of little

to effective therapies. Such was the case vvith the development

importane<.~

of serums and \'.Kcines. A second criterion of scientificity is the

several months, or that I krmann Robert Koch's pupil Emil Adolf

ability of one theory to give rise to another capable of explain-

von Behring concluded be/;)re Pasteur's pupil Pierre Paul Emile

that the Berlin School preceded the Paris School by

ing vvhy its predecc~snr pos~essed on!) limited validity. ["Statut

Roux that diphtheria cannot be treated with a vJcTine but can

f-pistemologiquc," Histoirc, pp. 22-2 3]

only he prevented by injection of serum taken trom a convalescent patient- provided orw has a convalescent patient, that i~. a 147

EP'STEMOLOGY

EPISTEMOLOGY

OF

MEDICINE

survivor of the disease. Roux \\'as able to prepare the toxin in vitro.

them, and that organisms sometimes defend themselve'>, paradox-

Von Behring managed to attenu..1te it~ virulence with trichloride

ically enough, against their chemical guardians. Hence it was

of iodine. Roux was more successful than von Behring in increas-

necessary to develop combined treatment regimens. 47 Hut such

ing the activity of the serum. Nevertheless, Ehrlich, whom Koch put in contact with von

flexibility, typical of modern therapies, \vas made possible only

Behring, dreamed that chemi-;try could one day endmv man with

since cells choose between stains, let us invent stain.:; that will

powers f.u beyond those of nature . .Jt> He hit upon the idea of

infallibly choose particular cells.

by the rationalist simplification inherent in Ehrlich's program:

looking for sub~tances \Vith specific affinities for certain parasites

But what does it mean to invent a stain? It means to change

and their toxins on the model of stains with elective histological

the positions of the atoms in a molecule, to alter its chemical

affinities. For what is a ~tain but a vector aimed at a particular

structure in such a \\·ay that its color can be read out, as it were,

formation in a healthy or infected organism? \\-'hen a chemical

from its formula. Ehrlich's project was not simply impo..,sible; it

corn pound din·cted at a particular cell penetrates that cell, what

wa., inconceivable in th~,· time of.Magendie. lt \vas not until IR56

happens is analogous to the way in which a key fits into a lock.

that \Villiam Perkin, Sr., obtained a mauve dye from aniline as

Ehrlich's first success came in 1904, when in collaboration with

the outcome of research directed toward an entirely different

Kiyoshi Shiga he discovered that Trypan red destroys the trypan-

goal. It was not until 1865 that EA. Kekule published his paper

osome that causes sleeping sid.ness. Later came the discovery

"The Composition of Aromatic Compounds." After confirming

in 1910 ofSal\'arsan. or "606." and Neo-Salvarsan, which proved

that the carbon atom is tetravalent, Kekule determined the struc-

less effective in combatting syphilis than was believed at first.

ture of benzene and gave the name "aromatic" to its derivatives

But Ehrlich's real success lay not so much in the products that

to distinguish them from compounds involving the fatty acids,

he identified himself as in those that would ultimately be dis-

which, along with the alcohols, \vere the primary focus of chemi-

covered in pursuit of his fundamental hypothe.:;is: that the affini-

cal interest in the day.., of Magendie and Bernard.

ties of chemical st,1ins could be used as a systematic technique

Tht· theoretical creation of new chemical substance<.; was con-

for developing artificial antigens. Using the same method, in 1935

fim1<'d on a vast scale by the chemical industry·. Alizarin. tlw prin-

Gerhardt Do mag discovered prontosil red, the first of a glorious

cipal component of m<1dder, which Perkin in England and Karl

series of sulfamides. Its declining efficacy led to the greatest

James Peter Graebe and Edme Caro in Germany separately and

of triumphs to this day, the chemical synthcsio;; of penicillin by

simultaneously synthl'sin:·d in 1868, wa5 within ten years' time

Howard Walter Florey and Ernst Chain. This is not to say that

being produced at the rate of9,500 tons annually. Finally in 1904,

therapeutics since the discovery of chemotherapy has been re-

aniline, the most daborate of the dye compounds, bestowed it~

duced to the automatic and inflexible application of chemical

prestigious name on the German firms Hadische Ani lin und Soda

antitoxins or antibiotics, as if it were enough to administer a

Fabrik (BASF) and Anilin Konzern.

remedy and let it do its \vork. Gradually, physicians learned that

Thus. t\vO of the preconditions neceo;;o;;ary for the development

infectious agents develop resistance to the drugs used againo;;t

of chemotherapy as a replacement for the thcrapieo; a.:;sociated 149

EPIS i Eo MOl OGY

t'PIS!E=MOLOCY

Of-

MFDICINE

with the old medical thcoric~ were a ne\v symbolic representa-

analyzing reality. For him, the laboratory was a place fOr reworking

tion t(Jr chemical substances and a ne\v technology fo_ producing

substances given by nature or art and a place fOr freeing dormant

organic compounds, which supplanted the old extractive proces-

or blocked causal mechanisms- in short, a place fOr revealing real-

ses. These were event5 \vith fixed, ascertainable dates; their place

ity. Hence, laboratory \vork vvas directly affected by what \vas

in history could not have been deduced in advance. Hence, che-

going on in the world of technology.

motherapy could not have existed vvithout a certain level of sci-

The revolution in medical thinking began with the develop-

entifk and industrial society. Between Edward Jenner and Ehrlich

ment of two methods fOr studying the properties of crystals: ster-

came the indispensable discovery of aniline, which no one could

eometry and polarimetry. Dissatisfied with Eibhard Mitscherlich's

have fOreseen at the beginning of the century. In his study of the

explanations of the eflect of polarized light on tartrates and para-

"rationalism of color," Gaston Bache lard \\Tote, "the chemist

tartrates, Pasteur discovered the dille rent orientation of the fac-

thinks of color in terms of the very blueprint that guides his cre-

ets of paratartrale crystals. After isolating the two different kinds

ation. Therein lies a communicable, objective reality and a mar-

of crystals, he observed that a solution made \Vith one kind of

ketable social reality. Anyone who manufactures aniline knows

crystal rotated polarized light to the right, whereas a solution

[Ideology and Rational-

mack with the other rotated it to the left. When the two crys-

the reality and the rationality

ofcolor." 4 R

itc, pp. 65-68]

t,lls \vere combined in solution in equal part'l, the optical effect

The French School [56 J In considering the precursors of the immunization tech-

mented by the effect of a mold, Pasteur noted that only the right-

niques perfected at the end of the nineteenth century, I shall look

connection between the properties of microorganisms and molec-

at the work of Pasteur rather than at that of Koch, partly because

ular asymmetries. Dagognct has shmvn how microbiology began

was nullified. When a solution of calcium paratartrate \\'as ferpolarizing fOrm of the crystal was altered. lie therdiJre inferred a

it came first chronologically and partly because Pasteur's work was

with this ingenious reversal of a result in biochemistry. A micro-

nf more general import, fOr "it not only modified the relationship

scopic organism, a mold or a yeast, was shown to be capable of

between biology and chemistry but changed the representation

distinguishing between optical isomers. Pasteurism converted

of the world of living things generally, the relations between

chemical separation by bacteria into bacteriological isolation by

beings, and the functions ascribed to chemical reactions." 4 Y

chemical isomers. 5° Thus confirmed in his belief that there is a

Fran<;"-Ois Dagognet argues, contrary to a widely held view, that

'ltructural contrast between the asymmetrical living organism and

it ,.,..as not because of technical problems raiscd by industrialists,

the mineral, and hence justified in rejecting any explanation

artisans and animal breeders ("maladies" of beer, wine, silkworms

receptive to the notion of spontaneous generation, Pasteur linked

and sheep) that Pasteur took so long to develop "Pasteurism."

germ, fermentation and disease in a unified theoretical frame-

Rather, Pasteur encountered technical problems because, from

work. Since my purpose here is simply to reflect on matters of

his first encounter with theoretical chemistry, he savv the exper-

history and epistemology, there is no need to recall the subse-

imental modification of natural products as a theoretical tool for

quent progress, doubts, retreats or even temporary errors that

'I'

EPISTEMOLOGY

P.1steur made in elaborating this theory. [Jdrolo,qr and Rationalit!'.

I.,

EPISTEMOLOGY OF

MEDICINE

llowever tempting, it would be a mistake to view this phenomenon as betokening a rediscovery of the concrete individual

pp. 68-70]

patient set aside by the very mt>dical science whose progress even-

An Applied Science

tu.llly revealed the cxi.;;tence of the idiotype. Although immune

[57] Racteriology provided proof of its militant scientificity by

identity is sometimes portrayed, through abw;e of terminology,

giving rise to the science of immunology, \..-hich not only ex-

as involving an opposition of''self" and "nonself," it is a strictlv

tl'nd<.·d and refined Pasteurian medical practices but developed

objective phenomenon. J\1cdicine may sometimes appear to

b~

into an autonomous biological science. Immunology replaced the

the application of biological knowlt~dge to concrete individuals,

Pasteurian relation of virus to vaccinated organism \vith the more

but that appearance is deceiving. The time has no"v come to con-

general relation of antigen to antibody. The antigen is a generali-

sider the epistemological status of medicine as such, leaving his-

7.ation of the aggressor microbe. The history of immunology has

torical matters aside. Given what we know about immunology,

been a search fOr the true meaning of the prefix anti-. Semanti-

genetics and molecular biology, or, looking back vvard in time,

c all~·· it means "against," but doesn't it also mean "befon·H?

about X-rays and cellular staining techniques, in what sense can

Perhapo; there is a relation, as of key and Joel.., between these two meanings.

we say that medicine is an applied science or an evolving synthesis of applied sciences? [ . .,]

As immunology became aware ofit-. scit·ntific vocation, it con-

It is appropriate to describe medicine ,1.<; an "evolving synthesis

firmed its ~c.:i<.·ntifk status through its ability to n1:ake unantic-

of applied sciences.' insofar as the realization of its goals requires

1

ipated discoveries and to incorporate new concepts, one very

the use of scientific discoveries having nothing to do with its

striking example being Karl Landsteiner's discovt•ry in 1907 of the

intrimic purposes.[ ... J In using the term "applied science," the

human blood types. Consistency of research findings is another

accent, I think 1 should fall on "science." In saying this, I disa-

criterion of scientific status. Immunological findings \Vere so con-

gree with those who see the applic1tion of knowledge as involv~

~istcnt, in fact, that immunology's object of research came to be

ing a loss of theoretical dignity, as well as those who think they

known as the "immune system," where the word "system" con-

are defending the uniqueness of medicine by calling it a "heal-

notes a coherent structure of positive and negative responses at

ing art." The medical application of scientific knowledge, con-

the cellular and molecular level. The immune system concept was

vertt d into remedies (that is, into Ill: cans of restoring a disturbed

more eflective at "preserving appearances" than the earlier conR

organic equilibrium), is in no sense inferior in epistemological

Ct'pt of "terrain." In a systemic structure, cyclical effects can

dignity to the disciplines from which that knowledge is borrowed.

appt·ar to impede a causality construed to be linear. The immune

The application of knowledge is also an authentic form of exper-

system, moreover, has the remarkable property known as idiotypy:

imentation, a critical search for effective thnapies based on im-

an antibody is specific not only to a particular antigen but also

ported understandings. Medicine is the science of the limits of

to a particular individual. The idiotype is the capacity of the

the power~ that the other science.'. claim to confer upon it. [ ... ]

immune system to encode an organic individuality. I \2

It the progress of a science can be measured by the degree to

EP

STEMOI_OGY

which its bcginnings are forgotten, then it is \vorth noting that

EP

STE'MOLOC.~

OF

MF[JICINE

assist individual human beings whose lives are in danger, even if

when doctor'\ today need to do a blood transfusion, they verifY the

that means violating the requirements of the rational, critical pur-

blood-type compatibility of donor .md recipient \vithout knowing that the tests they arc ordering are the product of a history

suit of know lege. can it claim to he called a science? A clever and lt'arncd historian of medicine, Karl Rothschuh,

that can be traced back through immunology and bacteriology

has examin<-·d this issue in terms borrowed from Thoma~ Kuhn's

to Lady Montagu and Edward Jenner, indeed to a type of medi-

historical epistemology. In 1977. he asked whether Kuhn's con-

cal practice that doctrinaire physicians once considered hereti-

cepts of "normal science," "paradigm" and "scientific group"

cal. That practice started medicine down a road that brought it

could be applied to conceptual advances in clinical medicine; he

into contact \vith a particular branch of mathematics, the math-

concluded that Kuhn's framework, while useful for understand-

ematics of uncertainty. Calculated uncertainty, it turned out, is

ing medicine's incorporation of advances in the bao;ic sciences

not incompatible with etiological hypothe~es and rational diag-

since the early nineteenth century, i.<:. inadequate to account for

nosis based on data gathered \vith the aid of suitable instrumt:nts.

the ditliculties encountered by clinical medicine, due to the com-

What expert is qualified to decide the epistemological status

plexity and variability of its object. He concluded his papcr with

of medicine? Philosophers cannot bestow upon themselves the

a quotation from Leibniz: "I wish that medical knowledge were

power to judge nonphilosophical disciplines. The term "episte-

as certain as medical problems arc difficult." In the course of his

mology" refers to the legacy, not to say the relics, of the branch of

analvsis, Roth'\l.~huh reports that Kuhn once characterized medi-

philosophy traditionally known .1s "theory of knowledge." Because

cine. as a "protoscience," \vherea5 he, Rothschuh, prefers tn call

the relation

nt

knowledge to its objects has been progressively

it an operational ~cicnce (opamionalc Wilscnschd/t). These two

revealed by -;cientific methods, <-'pistcmology has broken with

appellations are \vorth pausing

philosophical assumptions to give itself a new definition. Rather

because it is ambiguous. Proto- b polysemic: it sugge-;r.., "prior"

than dcduce criteria of scientificity from a priori categories of

as well as ''rudimentary," but it may also refer to hierarchical

OV(:r.

"Protoscicncc" is ingenious

understanding. as was done in the past. it has chosen to take those

priority. "Protoscience" is a term that might well he applied to

criteria from the history of triumphant rationality. Why shouldn't

an earlier period in the- history of mt:dicine, but it seems some-

medicine tht·rdi_)fl' be both judge and party in the ca.w? \Vhy

how ironic to use it when some physicians believe that the time

should it feel the nt'ed for a consecration of its status within the

has come to allow computers to guide treatment while others

sckntific community? Might it be that medicine has preserved

argue that patients ought to be allowed to consult the machines

from its origim a sense of the uniqueness of its purpose, so that

directly. Y(:t "operational science" seems no more appropriate

it is a matter of some interest to determine vvhether that 'iense is

a tnm than "applied science," which o;ome nineteenth-century

a tenuous surYival or an essential vocation? To put it in somewhat

physician-. themselves applied to their discipline as they began to

different terms. arc \vhat used to he act1 of diagnosis, decision

treat patients on thf' basis of thf'ir understanding of physic.1l and

and treatment about to become rolCJ Jncil!Jr)' to .<.orne comput-

chemical m<..Thanism~, explored by physiologists. For exampk·, tlw

erized medical program? If medic in<-· cannot shirk the duty to

work of Carlo Mateucci, Emile Du Bois-Reymond and Ht'rmann

'51

EPISTEMOLOGY

EPISTEMOLOGY

OF

MEDICINE

von Helmholtz on animal electricity led Guillaume-Benjamin

ical choice, nevertheless remains present. That object has a human

Duchcnnc de Boulogne to discover new ways of treating muscu-

form, that of a living individual who is neither the author nor the

lar diseases. His major works, published between 1855 and 1867,

master of his own life and who must, in order to live, sometimes

bear titles incorporating the word "application."

rely on a mediator. llowever complex or artificial contemporary

An instructive example is electrotherapy. It suggests that medi-

medicine's mediation may be- whether technical, scientific, eco-

cine was impelled to become an applied science by the need to

nomic or social - and however long the dialogue between doc-

discover more effective treatments, as if in obedience to its orig-

tor and patient is suspended, the resolve to provide effective

inal imperative. Later, of course, the "science of electricity" led

treatment, which legitimates medical practice, is based on a par-

to the development not of therapeutic but of diagnostic devices

ticular modality of life, namely, human individuality. In the phy-

such as the electrocardiograph (invented by Willcm Einthoven

sician's epistemological subconscious, medicine is truly a synthesis

in 1903 ), the electroencephalograph (johannes Berger, 1924) and

because, to an ever-increasing degree, it applies science to the

endoscopy. By treating the patient as an abstract object of ther-

task of preserving the fragile unity of the living human individ-

apy. it \vas possible to transform medicine into an applied science,

ual. When the epistemological status of medicine becomes a mat-

with the accent now on science. Like any science, medicine had

ter of conscious questioning, the search for an answer clearly

to evolve through a stage of provisionally eliminating its concrete

raises questions that fall outside the purview of medical episte-

initial object.

mology. ["Statut epistemologique," Histoire, pp. 23-29]

Earlier, I called medicine an "evolving synthesis of applied sciences." Nmv that I have discussed the sense in which medicine is an applied science, I have only to justify the choice of the words "evolving" and "synthesis." Surely the reader will grant that any science, whether pure or applied, validates its epistemological status by developing nC\v methods and achieving new results. A science evolves because of its interest in new methods for dealing with its problems. For example, the existence of chemical neurotransmitters was acknowledged (not without reservations, particularly in France) when the work of Sir Henry Dale and Otto Loewi filled in blanks in the results obtained by electrical methods a century earlier. So much for "evolving" -but what about "synthesis?" A synthesis is not a mere addition; it is an operational unity. Physics and chemistry are not syntheses, but medicine is, insofar as its object, whose interrogative presence is suspended by methodolog-

'I '57

i

t PART THRFE

History

.~

I

CH:\Pli:H. SF:VFN

Cell Theory

Theories Never Proceed from Facts [Sf'] Is biology a theoretical or an experimental science! Cell theory is an ideal test case. \;\/e can see light 'vavcs only \\·ith reason's eyes, but we appear to view the cells in a plant section with the same eyes we use to look at everyday objects. Is c<:ll rheory an~·thing more than a set nf ob~ervationJ.! protocols: With the a.id

of a microscope.

\\-'C

can see that macroscopic organisms consist

ofceiJ.., just as we can see with the naked eye that the same organisms are elements of the biosphere. Yet the microscope extends the powers of intellig<:ncc more than it does the powers of sight. Furthermore, the first premise of ct.'~ I theory is not that living things an· compo:-:.cd of cells but that all living things con..;i•a of

nothing but cells; every cell, moreover, is assumed to come from a preexisting cell. Such an assertion cannot be proven \vith a microscope. At best, the microscope

(-<m

serve as a tool in the

task of vnification. Rut where did the idea of the cell come from in the fir•a place? I Robert Hooke is generally given too much credit for the formulation of cell theory. True, he was the first to discover the cell, soml'what by accidenl. as he pur-:ued a curiosity awakened by microscopy's carlk.'>t rew·lations. Aft:N making a thin slice tn a

HISTORY

CELL

THEOR~

piece of cork, Jlooke observed its compartmentalized structure)

A few years after Hooke, in 1671, Marcello Malpighi and

He also coined the word "cell" while under the spell of an image:

Nehemiah Grew simultaneously but indt:>pendcntly publi~hcd

the section of cork reminded him of a honeycomb, the \vork of

their work on the microscopic anatomy of plants. Although they

an <1nimal. which then further reminded him of a work of man,

did not mention Hooke, what they discovered was the same thing

the honeycomb being like a building made up of many cells, or

he had discovered, even ifthe vmrd was different. Both men k1und

;;mall rooms. But Hooke's discovery led nowhere: it failed to open

that li\'ing things contain \vhat \\'e now call cells. but neither

up a nt·w avenue of research. The word disappeared, only to be

claimed that living things are nothing but cells. According to

rediscovered a century later.

Marc Klein, moreover, Grew subscribed to the theory that cells

The discovl'ry of the cell concept and the coining of the word are worth dwelling on fOr a moment. As a biological concept, the

arc preceded by and grmv out of a so-called vital tluid. The his-

cell io; o;;urely overdetermined to a considerable degree. The psy-

for what it can teach us about scientific reasoning in general. As long as people have been interested in biological morphol-

choanalysi'i of knowledge has been sufficiently successful in the

tory of this biological theory is worth exploring in greater detail

by two contradictor~ i1;1:1ges - continuity vl'rsus discontinuity. Some thinker'> imagine

past that it now constitutes a distinct genre, to which additional contributions may be added as they arise, even without system-

ogy, their thinking has bt:>en dominated

atic intention. Biology classt;>s have familiarized all of us with what

li\'ing things growing out of a primary -;ubstance that io;; continuous and plastic; others think of organisms as compoo;itt·s of dis-

is now a fairly standard image nf the cell: schematically, epithelial tissue resembles J honeycomb. -1 The \vord "cell" calls to mind

crete parts, of"nrganic atoms" or "seeds oflifC.." Continuity versus

not the prisonn or the monk but the bee. Ernst Heinrich Haeckel

discontinuity, continuum vasus particle: the mind imposes its

pointed out that cl'lls of wax filled with honey are in C\'ery way analngou~ to cdb of plants filled with sap.4 I do not think that

torm., in biology just as it does in optic'i. The term "protoplasm" now refers to
this analogy explaim the appeal of the notion of the cell. Yet who can say whetht'r or not the human mind, in consciously borrow-

nmsidert'd as an atomic element of a composite organism. ()rig-

ing from the beehive this term for a part of an organism, did nor

all life presumably arose. The botanist llugn von Mohl, one of the first to obser\'C the birth of new cells by division of t'Xi~ting

uncomciou.,ly borrow as well the notion of the cooperative labor that produces the honeycomb? Just as the alveola is part of a

inally, however, the \vonJ referred to the vital tluid out of which

ones, proposed the term in 1843: in his mind, it n...·~t-rred to a fluid

structure, bees are, in Maeterlinck's phrase, individuals wholly

present prior to the emergence of any solid cells. In l~35, 1-elix

absorbed by the republic. In fact, the cell is both an anatomical and a functional notion, referring both to a fundamental building block and to an individual labor subsumed by, and contributing to, a larger process. \\..'hat is certain is that affective and social values of coopt:>ration and association lurk more or less discreetly in the background of the developing cell theory.

Dujardin had suggested the term "sarcode" fOr the -;amt.: thing, Theodor Schwann, the man regarded as the founder of cell theory, \vas influenced by both images: he believed that a structure-

!62

i6J

namely, a living jelly capable of subst:>qucnt organization. Even

less substancl' (the cytoblasteme) gives rise to thC' nuclei around which cells form. In tissues, cells form wherever the nutrient

CELL

HISTORY

liquid penctrilte,. This theoretical ambivalence on the part of the

Tf-'EOPY

"anillll\ls and plant<; thtlt can multiply and reproduce in all their

authors who did most to establi~h cell theory led Marc Klein to

part'i are organin·J bodies composed of other, similar organic bod-

make a rt..·mark that has considerable bearing on what I whh to

ies, whost' accumulated quantity we can discern with tlw eye but

argue here: "What \Ve find, then, i~ that a ~mall number of basic

whose primitive parr.'>

ideas recur insistently in the work of authors concerned with a

hom this, BuHOn deduced that there arc infinitely many organic

\YC

can perceivt' only with the aid of reason."

wide varit~ty of objects from a number of different points of view.

pan-., each composed of the same <;ubstance as "organiled beings."

They cert,linly did not t,lke tht.·se ideas h·orn one another. These

These organic parts, common to animals and plants, are primi-

fundamental hypothc~cs appear to represent persistent modes

ti\'(_· and incorruptible What is called "generation" in biology is

implicit in the nature of scientific explanation." Translating this

merely the conjunction of some number of primitive organic

epistemological observation into philosophical terms, it follows

parts; similarly, death is merely the di-,persion of those parts.

that theories nc~·cr proceed Jr(lm facts, a finding that conflict<; with

The hypothesis rh,1t organized beings consist of primitive or-

the empiricist point nf \'iew that scientists often adopt tmcriti-

~anic

cally when they try to philosophize about their experimental find-

difficulties encountered bv two earlier theories that claimed to

ings. Theories arise only out of earlier theories, in some cases very

explain the phenomena of reproduction, namely, ovi-.m and ani-

old ones. The facts are merely the path- and it is rarely a straight

malc:ulism. Both of these tht>ories a~sumcd that heredity i-, uni-

parts is the nnl:· one, BuHt">n argues. capable of avoiding thP

path - h~· which one theory leads to another. Auguste Comte

lateral: ovists, following Regner de Craaf, claimed that it was

shrewdly called attention to thi-, relation oft henry to theory wht>n

maternal, whcreJ'\ animalculists, f(->llowing Anthonie \Jn Leeuwen-

he remarked that since an t..·mpirical ob':lcrvation prcsuppos<·s a

hoeck, argued that it wa.'> paternal. Butfon, alert to phenomena of

theory to fOcus the attention, it is logically inevitable that false

hyhridi;.ation, believed that heredity must be bilateral, as is clear

theories precede true one<;. [ ... J

from Chapter five nfhis work. The facts reinfOrced this belief: a

Thm, if we wish to find the true origins of cell theory, we mu~t

not lool- to the disco\'l·ry of certain microscopic structures

in living things. [Conmmsonce, pp. 47-SOJ

child could rc~embk either his father or his mother. Thus, he writes in Chapter Ten, "The fOrmation ofthe fetu~ occurs through combination of organic molecules in the mixture compu~ed of tht..' seminal fluids of two individuals."[ ... J

Comte Buffon, or the DiScontinuous lmanination [59] In tlw \vork of BuHOn, \vho, as Marc Klein point~ out, made

In Buffon's view, Nevvtonian mechanics explicitly had jurisdiction over the organization of living things:

littlt' U~f' of the micro,cope. '"'e find a theory of the composition of living thing'l- ind(T
It i-. ohviou~ th.u nt·idH:r tfw circuLuinn of the blood nor tht:' move-

-;cnsc of the term. Buthm proposed a serie.'> of axioms to explain

ment of the muscln nor the anim,ll tunctiom can be (•xplaincd in

certain L1ets having to do chiefly with reproduction and ht:Ted-

terms of impulse or any of the laws ot ordinary mechanic~. It is just

ity. In Chapter Two of the f-!istoire naturcllc dc.r; animaux ( 1748 ),

as obvious that nutrition, development and reproduction obey other

ht> set ff>rth his "theory of organic molecule~." In HulTon's wordo,,

laws. VVhy not Jcknmdedge, then, that there arc Jb~

lf)lTl'<.;

pcnetrat-

HISTORY

CFI L

THEORY

ing and acting upon the mas~es of bodies, since we have examples

Light, heat and fire are different modes of existence of the same

of forces in the substance of bodies in magnetic attractions and

common material. To do science \Vas to try to find out how, '\vith

chemical affinities? 5

this single source of energy and single subject, nature can vary its works ad infinitum.".S If, moreover, one assumes that living

Organic molecules attract one another in obedience to a Ia\\' of

matter is nothing but ordinary matter plus heat, a corpuscular

morphological constancy, constituting an aggregate that BuHOn

conception of matter and light inevitably leads to a corpuscular

called the "internal mold." Without the hypotheses of internal

conception of living things:

mold and organic molecule, nutrition, development and repro-

duction would be unintelligible.[ ... ] There can be no doubt that Buffon hoped to be the Newton

All the effects of crude matter can be related to attraction alone, all of th(' phenomena of living matter can be related

to

that same

of the organic world, much as David Humc at around the same

1<-Jrce of attraction coupled with the ffHce of heat. By living matter

time hoped to become the Ne,vton of psychology. Newton had

I mean not only all things that live or vegetate but all living organic

demonstrated that the forces that move the stars are the same as

molecules dispersed and spread about in the detritu<; or residue of

those that move objects on the surfJce of the earth. Gravitational

organized bodies. Under the head of living matter I also include

attraction explained hmv simple masses could fOrm more com-

light, fire and heat, in a word, all matter that appears to m to be

plex systems of matter. Without such a force of attraction, reality would be not a universe but just so much dust.

active by itself. ':1

For Buffon, the hypothesis that "matter lost its force of attrac-

Thi~. I belie\'e, is the logic behind the theory of organic mol-

tion" was equivalent to the hypothesis that "objects lost their

ecules, a biological theory that mved its existence to the pres-

coherence." 6 A good Ne\vtonian, Buffon believed that light was

tige of a physical theory. The theory of organic molecuks is an

a corpuscular substance:

example of the analytic method in conjunction with the discontinuous imagination, that is, a penchant t(Jr imagining objects by

The smallest molecules of matter, the smallest atoms we know, are

analogy with discrete rather than continuous models. The discon-

those of light. ... Light, though ~eemingly blessed with a quality the

tinuous imagination reduces the diversity of nature to uniti)rm-

exact opposite of weightine<;s, \Vith a volatility that might be thought

ity, to "a single source of energy and a single subject." That one

es<;ential to its nature, is nevertheless as heavy as any other matter,

element, the basis of all things, then forms compounds \vith itself

since it ben(h when it passes near other bodies and finds itself within

that produce the appearance of diversity: nature varies its works

reach of their sphere of attraction .... And just as any form of mat-

ad infinitum. The life of an individual, whether an animal or a

ter can convert itself into light through extreme subdivision and

plant, is therefore an effect rather than a cause, a product rather

dispersion through impact of its infinitesimal parts, so, too, can light

than an essence. An organism is a mechanism whose global eHtxt

be converted into any other fl)rm of matter if, through the attrac-

is the necessary consequence of the arrangement of its parts. True,

tion of other bodies, its component parts are made to coalesce. 7

living individuality is molecular, monadic.

166

HISTOR'T

Ct-1

The life of an animal or plant, it seems,

i<; merely

the result of all

THEORY

I Jere, the idea !hat organisms are- composites of e!emcntZtry

the action-;, of all the little, individual live_., (iff may put it that way)

life /()rm'i is mt:'rdy a logical consequence of a

of each of it~ uctin· molecules, whose

ITl(lre

ba~ic notion,

primitive and ,1pparent!y

which is that the e-lem~nts of life are rckased when the larger

cannot be destroyt.·d. Vv'~ have fOund these living molccuks in all

forms to \\'hich th('y belong disintegrate. The whole take-; pre-

living or vegetating things: we arc certain that all these organic mol-

cedcncf' over the parts. Klein states this explicitly:

ecule~ Jn· equally essential to

Iii~ i~

the nutrition and therefore to the

rt"production of animals and plant~. It is nor difficult to imagine,

Th(· a.-.~nciation ofprimitin_• animals in the guise

ot ]j,-ing Jle~h -;hould

therefore, that when a certain number of these molecule'> are joined

not be thought of as a mechanical coupling of one .mimal to annther,

together, they form a living thing: since there i" life in each of its

a-; in a pile of -;and where the onl~ relation among the grains of which

parts. life can aho be found in the \vlwlc. that i'>, in any assemblage

it is compmt>d is one of pmximity. Just a.~ ox~gen Jnd hydrogen di\-

of thPSt' pMtS.

,lppcar in \\"JlL'r, ju~r .1s nH·rcur) and \ulfur di~appt·.u in cinnabar,

what tahs place here i'> a true interpenetration, an inlertwining and

[Connaissancc, pp. 52-56]

unification oL1ll the animJicu[c'i. hom that m!lment on, they haw

Lorenz Oken, or the Continuous lmaoination

i'lrll

no life of tht·ir on n. ;\II arc p!Jced .Jt the ~ervicc of a higher organ.md \nll-1.. toward a unique and cnrnmon function, m perform that

[AO) Charles Singer and Marc Klein, as well as Emile Guyl~not,

lllflction in pur~uing thc.__·ir

though to a lesser dcgn,~c, did not fail to note the credit dut· to

all .1re

Oken f<>r the formulation of cell theorv. Oken belonged to the Romantic school of nature philosopher'> founded by Schelling.ln

~aniticcd.

O\\·n

ends. lien--, no indiYidua[ i\ -;pan•d;

But the language is mi\leading., for the combina-

tion of indi\·idu.llitic" timns anntht·r indidduJiit_\. The former arc the lattt·r appt'.lrs (lnly a~ a result (lth.u dc ... trucrion. 11

dc.\tro~cd. and

The speculations of this school had as much intlucncc on earlyninct<..·enth-century German phy.~icians J.nd biologist:-. as on men

\Vc JlT a long way from HufiOn. The organism is not a -,um of ele-

of letters. Tiler~ is no rupture of continuity bet\veen Okcn and

mentary biological entities; it is. r
the first biolo~hts that \vould offer deliberate empirical support

elements are sub·wmed. \Vith exemplary precision, Oken antici-

for cell theory. Matthias Jacob Schleiden, who first formulated

pated the theor) ofd~__~;Jr<:cs of individuality. This

cell theory for plants in his Beitrdgc

just a presentiment, though it did anticipJt<· ''hat techniguc.s nt

\\JS

more than

ph,vtogcncsis ( 1838), taught at the University of Jena, where memories of Okcn's teaching

cell and tis·mc cultures would teach contl'mporary hiologio;;ts

were still fresh. Thcodor Schwann, vvho between 1839 and 1842

about differences between wh.1t HJns Pctf'rscn called the "indi-

cdl theory to all living things, had seen a good deal

Yiduallif{·" and the "pro/(:ssionalldl.·" nfcells. Oken dwug,ht of

generalized

/Ur

a kind of socict~·· but that society was nut an

of SchiPiden and his teacher, Johannes Mi:dler, who had been a

the organism

naturt philosopher in his youth.ll Singer is thus fully justified in

a~sociation of indiYiduals a-; conceived by the politicJI philoso-

remarking that Okl'n "in a sense sowed the ideas of the authors

phy of thl' Enlightenment but, rather, a community .1s conn·in·d

regarded in his stead as the founden of cell theorY."[ ... J

by the political philosophy of Romantici.~m. I... J

J':i

IIISTORY

Comparison is inevitable between Okl'n's biological theorie'i and the political philosophy of the German Romantics whom Nova lis influenced so deeply. Novalis's Glaube und Iiebe: der Koni9 und die Konig in appeared in 1798; his Europa oder die Christenheit was published in 1800; Okcn's Die Zeugung came out in 1805. The first two works arc vl'hemently critical of revolutionary thinking. Nova! is alleged that unive"al suffrage pulverized the popular will and failed to give due weight to social, or, more precisely, communal, continuity. Anticipating Hegel, Nova! is (like Adam Heinrich MUller a few years later) considered the state to be a reality \\'i1led by God, a fad surpassing individual reason to which the individual must sJ.cri ficc himself. If there is an analogy between these sociological views and biological theory. it is, as has often been remarked, because the Romantics interpreted political experience in terms of a "vitalist" conception of life. Even as French political thinkers w<:re offering the ideas of the social contract and universal suffrage to the European mind, the vitalist school of French medicine \Vas proposing an image of life as transcending analytical understanding. Vitalists denied that organisms could be undentood as mechanisms; life, they argued, is a form that cannot be reduced to its mat<'rial components. Vitalist biology provided a totalitarian political philosophy with the means to propose certain theories of biological individuality, though philosophy was under no compulsion to do so. I low true it is that the problem of individuality is indivisible." [ Connaissance, pp. 58-63]

Enduring Themes [61] Did the concepts of" individuality that inspired these speculations ,1bout tht' composition of organisms disappear altogether Jmong biologish truly ·worthy of being cdled scientist'\? Appar-

t'ntly not. Claude Bernard, in his Lcr;ons sur lcs plu!nomCncs de Ia vie com1]0

CCI_L_

THEORY

muns au.\ animau_,. et aux 1'~9Ctau.\, published after his death by [)a-;tre in t878-79. described the organism as "an aggregate of ele-

mentary cells or organisms," thereby affirming the principle of autono.my for anatomical constituents. This is tantamount to

as~erting that cells behave in association just as thE')' '\\'Ould bchavt' in isolation if the milieu were tht' same as that created For them within the organism by thl' action of neJ.rby cells. In other words. cells ll·ould live in libertv exdct~r as they do in socic~~: Note, though, in passing, that if the regulative substance~ that control the lik of the cell through stimulation and inhibition are the same in '' u 1\turL' of ffee eel\-; as in the internal environment of the organi~m. one cannot say that the cells live in liberty. Neverthcles~, Rernard, hoping to clarifY his meaning by meam of a comparison. asb us to consider a complex living thing "as a city with its own o.,pccial sta.mp," in \vhich imlividuals all enjoy the ~arne identical food '> such as tht· "assembly of independent citi1ens" constituting a ''state" were more than just met,1phors. Political philosophy seems to dominate biological theory. \Vhat man could say that he \\'as republican because he believed in cell theorv or a believer in cdl theorv' because he was a republic;m? To bt.· •mre, Bernard ar~d 1--beckel were not altogether immune to philosophical temptation or ex-empt from philosophical sin. The second chapter of Marcel Prcnant, Paul Andre Bouin and Louis-Camille Maillard's 1904 1milt-: d'histologic, which Marc Klein credits, along with Felix Henneguy\ J_e\ons sur Ia td/u/e (\8Y6), with being the first classic,1l work to introduce cell theory in the tl·aching of hi~tology in Francc. 1 ~ was written h_v Prenant. The author's sympathies for crll theory did not blind him to fact'l ~

I] I

CFLL

HISTORY

that might limit the scope of its validity. With admirable clarity

Tf-"EUh'Y

within the limits of the cell. \Vhen Prenant rccogni1ed in 1904

he wrote, ·• What is dominlln£ in the notion of cell i~ the chomctcr of

dut the parts of the cell possess a certain ckgree of individualit;'

indi~·iduali~r; this might even suffice as a definition." But, then,

subsumed within the individuality of the cell, was ht' not looking

,my Pxperimcnt showing that seemingly hermetic cells arc in real-

hH·ward to later discoveries concerning the submicroscopic struc_>

ity, in Wilhelm His's words, "open cells" in communication with

turc and physiology of the protoplasm? "Are protein vi ruse-. liv-

one another. tends to devalue cdl theory, which leads Prenant to this conclusion:

to asking whether crystals of nuclear protein arc or !'lre not "incli-

ing nr nonliving?" biologists a-.k thernselves. This i'i tant.1mount viduab." "If they

,lf'f'

living," Jean Rostand argue ..,, "they repre-

The individual units m,1y \·ary as to their degree of individuality.

sent life in the simplest conceivable torm. If they art~ not, they

A living thing i~ born as an individual cell. L
represent a state of chemical complexity that prefigures lifc."lh

of the cell di~appears in thL• individuality of the individual or pt:>r-

Rut ,,-hat is the point of saying that protein viruses are simple liv-

~nn cnmpnscd nfmany ct'lk Tht· indi\·idua!it~ of the pn~un

in turn he cHaced in a society of individu.1ls h~

<1

may

social indh idu,ll-

ing things if one concedes that it i.;, their complexity rhat i-. a prefiguration of life? Individuality, in otht'r words, is

not

an endpoint

ity. \\/hat happen~ wht·n one examines the individual and ~oci(·ty,

but a term in a relation. It is misleading to interpret the result'>

tho-;c a\rending ~nics of Jnu!tiplcs of the cell. can also be found in

of research intended to shed light on that relation as n_·vealing

cellul.:n ~;uhmultiplcs: the parts of tht.· cell in turn possess a certain

some ultimate truth. l Connoissancc, pp. 69-71 J

dcgrcL· of indi\·iduality p.1rtially ~uh,umcd by the higher and more powerful individu.1lity of the cell. Individualit~ cxi<;t<; from top to

Toward a Fusion of Representations and Principles

hottom. Life is not possible without individuation oft he living.

[61] Consider now \\Orks of three authors published between the two \vorld wars. Thnc three men exhibit not onh- different

I low tJr is thi.., from Lorc·nt Oken's view? Once again, it seems.

casts of mind but different scientific specialties. In 19~9. Rl~my

the problem of individualit;-· is indivisible. Perhaps imufficient

Collin published an article entitled "Thl·orie cellulairc et Ia vie."

attention ha.., been paid tu the fact that, etymologically speaking,

In IY)S, 11ans Pctn~en published lliHolo,qic und 1/d·ro\/.:opischc Anatomic, whose first few chapters I ~hall f(Kus on here. And in

individuality is a negative concept: the individual is that ·which cannot be divided without losing its characteristic properties,

1939, Dr. Jules Dubo-.cq lectured on the place of cell theory in

hence a being at the limit nf nonbeing. Thi<; is a minimum cri-

protistology (the study of unicellular organisms). Using different

terion for P:-..istence; but no being in itsL·If

a minimum. The

arguments and emphases, all thre(' "·orks converge tov••ud a sim-

existL'ncc of an individual irnplies a relation to a larger being; it

ilar ~olurion, which Dubnscq ~..·xpn· . . ...-cd thus: "It is a mistake to

calls f<Jr, it requires (in the sense that Octa\"t._' Jlamclin gives the..,e

tah· the cell to be a necessary cumtituent of living things." In

terms in his theory of the opposition of concepts) a background

thl' first place, it i-. difficult to regard mctazoa (pluricellular

of continuity against which its discontinuity stands out. In this

organisms) as republics of cells or composite'> of individualized

regard, there is no reason to confine the pown of individualitv

cellular building blocks. given the rulv of -.uch essential systems

1]2

l7J

j.,

H

CELL

STORY

in a general way that ,1!! the proce<;<;es in which

as the mu.;;cular <;ystcm or of such formations as plasmodia or

Perhaps one can

syncitiJ. consisting of continuous masses of cytoplasm with sc.n~

the body participates as

!l'J)'

THEORY

J.

whole (and in pathology tht·re are few

tered nuclei. In the human body, only the epithelia are clearly

proce~scs where this is not the case) an.~ difficult to understand in

cellularized. Between a ft-cc cell such as a leucocyte and a syncy-

terms of the cellular state or the theo~r

tium '.uch as the cardiac muscle or the surface of the chorial

imu. [ ... J ChTn the way in which the cellular organi~m behave-.,

villosities of the fetal placenta, there arc intermediate forms,

lives, work.~. maintains it~e\fagainst the attacks of irs t:'nvironment

such as thC' giant multinuclear cells (polycaryocytcs), and it is

and regains its equilibrium, the cells are organ~ of a uniform bod~··

of cells (JS

independent or,qan-

difficult to ~ay whether syncitia develop through fusion of onceindependent cells or vice Yersa. Roth mechani'ims can. in fact,

Here the probk·m of individuality comes up again: a totality, ini-

be observed. Even in the development of an egg. it is not certain

tiallv resistant to division of any kind, takes priority over the

that every cell comes from the division of a preexisting cell. Emile

ato~istic view derived from an attempt to subdivide the whole.

Rhode was able to show in 1923 that individual cells, in plants

Petersen quite pertinently quotes a rem,uk made by Julius Sachs

as \Veil as animals, frequently result from the subdiYision of a

in 18R7 concnning multicellular plant~: "\Vhether cells seem to

primitive plao,modium (multinucleate mass).

bt' elementary independent organisms or simply part..; of a whole

But the anatomical and ontogenetic aspects of the problem are not the "vhole story. Even authors who, like Hans Petersen,

depends entirely on how 1rc look at thing.L" In recent vears, increasing doubts and criticisms have been

~~ell theory in its classical f()rJll, that is, in the fixed,

acknowledge that the real basis of cell theory i-. th(· development

voiced about

of mcrazoJ., and who see the production of chimeras- living

dogmatic form in which it i~ presented in textbook'~, even those

things created by artificially combining egg cells from different

intended f()r
species- as supporting the "additive" composition ofliving things

to noncellular components of organisms and to mechanisms by

arc obliged to admit that the explanation of the Juncthms of these

which cells can be formed out of continuous ma-.sPs uf proto-

organisms wnlradicts the explanatwn of their gene:.;is. [ f the body is really a collection of independent cell..,, hovv does nne explain the

plasm than there was when Rudolph \'irchow, in Germany, criti-

harmonious functioning of the larger unit? [f the cells arc closed

Robin, in France, was looked upon as a cantankerous, old-fash-

cited Theodor Schwann\ idea of a C) toblastemc and Charles

systems, how can thr org<mism livl' and act as a whole? One way

ioned iconoclast. In 1941, Tividar Huzella showed in his Zwischen

to resolve the difficulty is to look for a coordinating mechanism: the nervous system, say. or hormonal secretions. But the

Lcllen Orgamwtion that intercellular relations and extr.:Lccllul,n ~ub~tances (such as the interstitial lymph and noncellular ele-

connection of most cells to the nervous system is unilateral and

ments of connective tissue) are just as important biologically as

nonreciprocal: and many Yital phenomena, especially those asso-

tlw cells themselves. The intercellular ,-oid that one can see in

ciated with rcgt·neratinn, an.: rather dif(icult to explain in terms

tho~e preparations made to be viewed through a micrnscopt.' is

of hormonal regulation, no matter how complex. Petersen there-

by no means devoid of histological function. In l<J-1-6, P. Bmse

fore remarked:

Grawitz concluded on the basis of his research that cells can

HISTORY

C:El I

·-HEORY

appear in basically acellular substances.!~ According to cell thc-

arise, of the frothy wave that bore Venus on its foam? Charles

orv, fundamental substances (such as the collagen of the tendons)

:"Jaudin, a French biologist who came close to discovering the

must bl' secreted by the cells, even if it is not possible to say pre-

mathematical laws of heredity befOre Gregor Mendel, thought

cisely how the secretion takes place. llcre, however, the order is

that the primordial hlastemc was the "clay" mentioned in the

reversed. Of course, the experimental argument in such a theory

Bihlc. 19 This is why I have argued that theories do not arise fl·om

is negative in nature: the researcher trusts that sufficient precau-

the facts they order- or, to put it more precisely, facts do act

tions have been taken to prevent the migration of cells into the

as a stimulus to theory, but they neither engender the concepts

,1Cellular substance in which cells arc seen to emergl'. In France,

that provide theories \vith their internal coherence nor initiate

Jean Nageottc had observed, in the development of a rabbit em-

the intellectual ambitions that theories pursue. Such ambitions

bryo, that the cornl'a of the eye first appears to be a homogene-

come to us from long ago, and the numbn of unif)·ing concepts

ous substance containing no cells during the first three days of

is small. That is \Yhy theoretical themes survive l'Vl'll after critic-.

growth - yet, in light of Virchow's la"v, he believed that those

are pleased to think that the theories associated with them have

cells that appeared subsequently must have arrived there through

been reftJted. [ Connaissancc, p. 791

migration. Yet no such migration was ever observed. [Connais-

sancc, pp. 73-76]

[63] It is not absurd to conclude that biology is proceeding toward a synthetic \·iew of organic structure not unlike the synthesis that wave mechanics brought about between concepts as seemingly contradictory as wave and particle. Cell and plasmo(lium are among the last incarnations of the contradictory demand~ of discontinuity and continuity which theorists have faced

ever since human beings began to think. Perhaps it is true that ~cientific theoric~

attach their fundamental concepts to ancient

images- I \Vould even be tempted to say myths, if the vmrd had not been so elf-valued by its recent usc in philosophies obviously created for purposes of propaganda and mystification. For \Vhat, in the end, is this continuous initial plasma, this plasma that biologists have used in one form or another l'ver since the problem of identif),ing a structure common to all living things \vas first posed in order to deal with the perceived inadequacies of the corpuscular explanation? \Vas it anything other than a logical avatar of the mythological fluid from which all life is supposed to 177

CIIAPTER

EIGHT

The Concept of Reflex

Epistemological Prejudices [ 64 J Broadly speaking, the various historic<;. of re~earch into reflex movt~ment

have failed to discriminatt..' ~ufficient!.Y among descrip-

tion of automatic neuromuscular re.;;ponscs, cxperimt"ntal study of anatomical structure'> and tht:ir function<1l interactions, and fOrmulation of the reflex concept and its generali1ation in the fOrm of a theory. This failure accounts for the surprising discrepancies, '""hen it comes to d\\'arding credit for an original discovery or anticipation to a particular individual, among historians as well as biologists engaged in backing the claims o~ cerL1in of their colleagues. Here I propose to distingui~h points of view that arc all too often confounded. l\.·1y purpose i.~ not to right wrongs, like some scholarly avenger, but to dra\V conclusions of potential value to epistemology and the history of science. Indeed, the ultimate rcason for the existence of divergent histories has to do with two rather \videspread prejudices. One of thest" involves all the sciences: people are di<.;po'\cd to helieve that a concept can originate only within the framework of a theory- or, at any rate, a heuris~ tic- homogeneous ,..-ith the theory nr heuri~tic in terms of which the observed LKts will later be intrrprt>tt-'d. The other involve\ 179

HI5T()RV

IHE

biology in particular: it is widely bt~lieved that, in this .-,cience,

CO\iCEFT

<~F

REPlEA

if one substitutes for logic some currently more prestigious term,

tlw only theories that have led to fruitful applications and posi-

the essence of the case remains unchanged. Indeed, ev<.·n if theo-

tin: advances in knmvledge have been mechanistic in style. [ ... J

ries engender one another dialectically, the norms of scientific

In the nineteenth century, the mechanist theory, based on the

theorv arc not those of myth. dream or fairy tale. Even if virtu-

gencr.:dization of a conn·pt \vho~e basic outline was clear by 1850,

allv n~)ne of the principles of a theory remain intact, the theory

produced a retroacti\·e eHect on the way in V\'hich its origins were

ca~ be called false only in terms of a judgment based on those

conceived. It "ieemcd only logical that a phenomenon which,

principlt;•S and their cons<.·qucnce~. Thus, the elements of a doc-

along with many others, provided justification for a mechanical

trim· arc supposed to fit together in a way that is not haphat.ard;

explanation of animal life could have been discovere-d and stud-

its concepts are supposed to combine in some way that is not

i~..·d

pointed toward a mechani_q, the hi•Hnry of physiology provided

mere juxtaposition or addition. \Ve must, accordingly, look in some new direction h)r concep-

a name- Descartes. This coincidence seemed to foreclose further

tual filiations. R.uher than ask who the author of a theory of'invol-

only by a mcchani'>t biologist. If the logic of history thus

discussion, though no one knew or cared to knm\· whether the

untzary movement that prefigured the nineteenth-century theory

logic confirmed the history or the history inspired the logic. From

of the reflex was,

the inconte.~table fact that Descartes had proposed a m~chani­

,1nd

cal theory of involuntary movement and even provided an excel~

mon:mcnt, involving as it does a comparison bet\'veen a biologi-

lent dt•scription of certain instances of what ·would later, in the

cal phenomenon and an optical one {reflection), to make s~..·ns~..·

ninetet.:nth century, be called "reflexes,'' it was deduced, in sur-

(where "making <;cnsc" m<.·ans that the notion of retlt'x movt"mcnt

reptitious Jnticipation of what was to come. that Descartes had

must be logically consistent \Vith some set of concepts). If a con-

\\T

ask what a tht·on' of mu'>cular movement

ncrvt:'. action must incorporate in order for a notion like reflex

de~;cribed, named and formulated the concept of the rellex be-

cept outlined or f;.xmulated in such a context is subsequently cap-

cause the general theory of the reflex was elaborated in order

tured by a theory that

U'>l'S

it in a different cqntext or with

J

to ex plain the class of phenomena that he had explained in his

rliflncnt meaning. it don not follow that the l"'mcept as tJ_'>ed in

own fdshion. Mv ovrn vie"· is that, in the historv of !-.cience, logic per se

the original theory is nothing but a nw .minglcss word. Some concept':!, such as the ret1ection and refraction of light, are theoreti-

ough; to take precedence over the

cally polyvalent, rhat is, cJpable of being incorporated into both

lo~k

of history. Before we

relate theories in terms of logical content and origin, \Ve must

particle theory and H'J\'e theory. furthermore, the fact that

ask how contcmpor.uit~~ interpreted the concepts of which those

cept plays a o;trong role in a certain theoretical domain is by no

theories were composed- f{x if we do not in.,ist on internal con-

means sufficient grounds for limiting research into the origins of

sistency. we ri\k falling into the paradox that logic is ubiquitous

that concept to similarly con-.rituted domains.

J

con-

except in scientific thought. There may he a logic, moreover, in

By adhering to thc'ic methodological prcccpt'i, I carne not

the succession of doctrines in themselves illogical. Even if one

discover Thomas \Villi~- for -.rlmt· nin('tl'enth-cenrury physiolo-

holds that the principk of noncontradiction h obsolete, and even

gists aware of the history of the reflex concept hod mentioned

,j!J

to

filS TORY

THE

CONCEPT

OF

REFl [;.,

his name- but to confirm his legitimate right to a title that had

they are inserted." Morphologically, this tells us little, but that

pre,·iously been open to doubt or challenge. [Formation du nijlexe,

little suffices for Descartes's physiology of movement. Every nerve is a bundle of fibers contained vvithin a tube, a marrow cnmi'\ting

PP· 3-6]

of fine threads extending from the cerebral marrow and rather

Rene Descartes Did Not Formulate the Reflex Concept

loosely sheathed in an arterylike tubular skin.22 One might say,

[ 65 J When Descartes proposed his general theory of involun-

borrmving an image from modern technology, that Descartes

tary movement, he, like many others before him, associated such

envisioned the nerve as a sort of electrical cable run through a conduit. As a bundle of wires, the nerve served as a sensory

movements with phenomena that we today refer to as reflexes. Does it follmv, then, that he belongs among the naturalists and

organ,n while as a conduit it served as a motor organ. 1 -1 Thus Descartes, unlike Galen and his followers, did not distinguish sen-

physicians who helped to delineate and define the concept of reflex? The answer to this historical and epistemological ques-

sory nerves from motor nerves. Every nerve was both sensory and

tion mu~t. I think, be deferred until detailed, critical study of

motor, but by virtue of different aspects of its structure and by

the Cartesian anatomy and physiology of the nerve and muscle ena-

way of different mechanisms. IS The centripetal St'nsnry excitation \vas not something that propagated along the nerve but,

bles us to decide whether or not Descartes could have anticipated, ho\vevl'r confusedly, the essential elements of the concept.

rather, an immediate and integral traction of the nervous fiber.

Descartes, of course, believed that all physiological functions could be expla.ined in purely mechanical terms. Hence, he saw

\Vhen the animal sees, feels. touches, hl·ars or taste~. the surLKt' nf its body shakes the hrain hy \VJ)"" of the nent:" fiber. The cen-

only a limited number of possible interactions among an organism's parts: contact, impulse, pressure and traction. The impor-

trifuga.l motor reaction, on the other hand, is a propagation, a

tance of this fact cannot be overemphasized. Descartes's vvhole

transport. The spirits flow out through the pores of the brain, opened up in response to th(' pulling on th(' fihers, and into thl' empty space between the fibers and the conduit through which they run. If pressed, they press; if pushed, they push. Ht>nce the

conception of animal movement derives from this principle together with what he considered a sutTicicnt set of anatomical observations. [Formation du ref/etc, p. 30]

muscle s\vells, that is, contracts.~ 6 Involuntary movement is thus

[66 J In Article 10 of The Passions of the Soul, Descartes claims that the animal spirits, born in the heart20 and initially carried

different from action in all of its elements and phases. [Formation du n!flcxc, pp. 34-35]

by the blood, build up in the brain as pressure builds in an air chamber. When released by the brain, these spirits are transmit-

[6 7] Basically, the conc('pt of reflex consists of morl' than just a rudimentary mechanical explanation of muscular movement. It

ted through the nerves to the muscles (other than the heart),

also contains the idea that some kind of stimulus stemming from the periphery of the organism is transmitted to the center and

where they determine the animal's movements. Descartes says that muscles .ue balloons filled with spirits, 'vhich, as a result of their transversal expansion, contract longitudinally, thus moving the articulated bone structures or organs such as the eye in which 182

then reflected back to the periphery. What distinguishes retlex motion is the fact that it does not proceed directly from .1 center or central repository of immaterial pmver of any kind. Therein

HISTORl

~ ,,

THE

CONCE~T

CF

RE~IIo'-

lies, within the genu~, "mtwement," the specific difference be-

the heart retained its heat, and traces of blood remaining in it

tween involuntary and voluntar;'. Now, according to C,1rtesian

could vaporit.e and cause it to e.xpand.~r.: Hut fnr those \\.·hn held

theory, movement that mJ.nifests itself at the periphery, in the

that the heart was a muscle. it became diHicult to argue that the

muscles or visc~._·ra, originJ.tes in a center, the center of all organic

brain was the essential centr,'tl controller of all organ movements.

centers, namely, the cJ.rdiJ.c vessel. This is a material center of

Thus, it became necessary to look to place<:. other than the brain,

action, to be sure, not a spiritual one. The Cartesian theory is thus

if not for the cause then at least t()r fJ.ctors governing certain

certainly mechanical, bur it i'l not the theory of the reflex. The

movements. [Formation du reflcxc, p. 52]

very image that suggested the word "reflex," that of a light ray's reflection by a mirror, requires homogeneity bet\veen the inci-

Thomas Willis Deserves Credit for the Reflex Concept

dent movement and the reflected movement. In Descartes's the-

[69] What distinguished Willis from Descartes were his con-

ory, though, the opposite is true: the excitation of the senses and

ceptions of the motion of the heart and the circulation of the

the contraction of the muscles are not at all similar movements

blood, which he took wholesale from \Villiam llarvey; namely,

with respect to either the nature of the thing moved or the mode

hi'i conceptions of the nature of animal spirits and their move-

of motion. \Vhat doe'i pulling on a hell cord have in common with •

ment through the nerves; of the structun' of nerves; and of mus-

blowing air into the pipe of an organ? Both arc mechanical phe-

cular contraction.

nomena. [Formation du rCjlc.\c. p. 41 J [ 68] To -;um up, while it is true that Descartes's work con-

According to Willi-; (and Harvey), the heart is

,1

muscle and

nothing more. Ifit is the primum mol'cns of the other musclt:s, it

tains the tlworctical equivalent of certain nineteenth-century

i~

attempts to t()fmuLue J. general reflexology, rigorous examination

identical. "It is not a noble organ, fir~t in the hierarchy, but a

:-.n onlY by virtue of the rhythm of its function; its structure i:>.

turns up neither tlw term nnr the concept of reflex. The dmvn-

mere

fall of Cartesian physiology, on<: cannot overemphasize, lay in the

ment of the blood was the action of th(' spirits on the heart, as

explanation of the mm·emcnt~ of the heart. Descartes failed to see

on any other muscle: that action made the h<'art into a hydraulic

Vv'illiam Harvey's theory a-, an indivisible whole. To be sure, he

machine.lO Vv'illis distinguished between the circulation of the

muscle."~Y

The only possible cause of the circulatory move-

was well aware that the explanation of the heart's movements was,

blood, a mechanical phenomenon, and it:-, fermentation, a chemi-

tfJr the seventeenth century, the key to the problem of movement

cal one. Fermentation heated the blood, which then imparted its

generally.27 This would continue to be the case in the eighteenth

heat to the heart- not vice versa.31 In \Viii is's mind, this distinc-

century. One fact turned out to be crucial in the Baconian sense

tion \Vas sharp: circulation exists in all animals, whereas fermen-

fOr any theory purporting to e:xplain the neuromuscular causes and

tation, he believed, is fOund only in the higher animals.l~ \\'ill is

regulations of movement -namely, the movement of excised

deserves credit first of all for not feeling obliged, as Descartes

organs, especially the heart. If the brain did not cause spirits to

did, to correct llarvey on a fundamental point nr cardiac anatomy

f1mv into these organ<;, wh,ll caused them to contract? Descartes

and physiology, as well a., li)r not gra.nting tht> heart a privileged

did not han~ tn confront this question. Removed from the body,

role and preeminent nature in comparison tn nther mmclcs. J.'or

HISTORY

Willis as for Han'ey, the heart was simply a hollow muscle. As for the animal spirits, Willis looked upon them as distilled, purified, sublimated, spiritualized blood. All four terms, listed in order of increasing dignity, are fOund in his writing. The brain and cerebellum functioned as stills to separate the animal spirits from the blood, a separation that occurred nowhere else in the body. n Functionally, the spirits flmved along nerves and fibers from the brain to the periphery - membranes, muscles, parenchyma- and from the periphery back to the brain. On the whole, hmvever, if the flow of blood \vas a circulation, the flow of animal spirits was more in the nature of an irrigation: emanating frorn the brain, they were dispersed at the periphery. In this respect, there \\'as no difference between WilHs and Descartes. Willis, however, distinguished between the cause of the blood's circulation and that of the flow of animal spirits, and he acknowledged that the spirits flmved through the nerve in both directions. Above all, he saw the animal spirits quite differently from Descartes.[ ... ] According to Willis, the animal spirit \vas a potentiality in need of actualization. It was full of surprises. Though it seemed to be merely a ray of light, it could be explosive, and when it exploded its eHects were magnified in accordance with rules that \vere not those of either arithmetic or geometry. 34 Descartes held that the spirits were expelled from the heart and sped toward the muscles in the manner of a current of air or stream of water, \vhereas Willis argued that they were propagated from the brain to the muscle in much the same way as heat or light. Slowed and transported by a liquid juice filling the interstices of the nervous structure, the spirits, upon reaching the peripheral organs, drew energy and heightened motor potential from the arterial blood bathing them. This energy came from the addition of nitrosulfurous particles to their own salt spirits, igniting the mixture and setting off an explosion, as of gunpowder in a cannon. This intra!86

THE

CONCEf-'T

OF

REtLEX

muscular explosion caused the muscle to contract and thus produced movement. 35 [Formation du rejlexe, pp. 60-63] [70] What distinguishes Willis fi·om Descartes, however, is not simply his greater fidelity to Harvey's physiology or his notion, more chemical than mechanical. of the animal spirits. Unlike Descartes, Willis does not assume that the structure of the nerves allows them to play different roles in the sensory and motor functions. The nerves, he argues, have a single structure, fibrous and porous. They are neither conduits enclosing thin strands nor solid rods. They contain gaps, empty spaces into which animal spirits may enter. They are prolonged by fibers, \vhich are not their only capillary extensions; some of these originate outside, and independent of, the nerves, through epigenesis. Just as animal spirits now through, or reside in, the nerves, so too do they flO\\' through, or reside in, the fibers. They mav flow in either direction, and in wavelike motions. They flow first one way, then the other, in paths radiating from a center, thf' brain. 36 These anatomical and physiological concepts \Yere necessary conditions for Willis to do what Descartes was precluded from doing as regards the problem we are addressing. Though nccessarv.;' however ' thev' \vere not vet sufficient. Willis's originalitv' is more apparent in the pm\'ers of imagination that caused him to pursue the ultimate consequences of the explanatory comparisons he employed. Because he conceived of the anatomical structure of the nervous system as radiant rather than ramified, with tht· brain emitting nen'cs as the sun emits rays, Willis thought of the propag<1tion of spirits in terms of radiation. n Now, the essence of the animal spirit itself could not be t"xplained entirely in terms of

.

any known chemical substance. Since it originated in the ''flame" of the blood, it \vas comparable to a ray of light. H! This analogy is pursued to the end: the nervous discharge was instantaneous, jw.t like the transmission of light. Even the final stage of trans-

HISTORY

THE:

CO'<'-EPr

(IF

REFLEX

mission, the excitation of tht:' musclt:' by the nervt:', supported the

of an identification or classification and subsequently in the form

comparison. Just as light corpuscles produced light only if they

of a principlt:> of empiric.1l interpretation. [Formation du rifle.\e,

encountered ethereal particles disseminated in the air, the ani·

pp. 68-69]

mal spirits released the pmver in them only if they met sulfurous or nitrous particle-; disst:'minated in the interstitial blood. The

The Looical and Experimental Consequences

resulting spa<.;modic intramuscular explosion caused the muscle

[72] Thomas Vv'illis assumed that all muscular motion-; arf' caused

w contracl. Thus, the animal spirit was light only until it became

In· a centrifugal flux of animal

fire. Its tran-:;port was analogous to illumination, wherea:':o its dlect

ti.nguished bcrwccn voluntary motions governed by the cert'brum,

was analogous to an explosive detonation. In this physiology the nerves arc not strings or conduits but fuses (junil' ignariw).l 9 [For-

such as locomotion, and natural or involuntary motions governed

~pirits from the brain, but he di-.-

hv the cerebellum and nwdulla oblongata, such as respiration .md

h~·artbeat.

Oi~tinguished

mation du rr'Jlexc, pp. 65-66 J [71 J \Ve know that wt:' have encountered a concept because

sensitive and reasonable, knmd in man alone, the other sensitive

we have hit upon it-; definition - a definition at once nominal

and vital, found in both man and animals. 41

and real. The term motus rejlexus is applied to a certain class of

Hence, he also

In man both souls

\Vf'n•

between nvo soul:-;- one

situated within thP striated bodies,

movements, of which a familiar example is provided: the auto-

the seat of the sensorium wmmune of the rea<;onable souL This was

matic reaction of scratching. In addition to the object being

the stage at which a discrimination wa-; made between thosc -.en-

defined. we have a defining proposition, which fixes its mean-

.;;ory impressions rhat wen· reflected into motion-; without ref~

ing. Vv'e }lJ.ve

cn•nce to consciou . . ncss and those explicitly pcrCt_'ived

.1

word that estahlishes the adequacy of the defin-

ing proposition to t!H· object defined (scilicet). The definition

Lls

such b~

the soul. [ ... ]

itself requires te\\' woHI.<:.: it is not a fUll-blown theory but a precis.

It <;hould comt' as no surprise, therefore, that Jean A'ltruc

It is a definition th.n ,.,·orks by division, for it is as-:.ociated \vith

(1684-1766) ofMontpellier located the seat of common sL·nsc in

the prior definition of direct movement, the two together cov-

the white matter of the br,1in. This localization enabled Astruc

ering the entire range of possible causes of movement. Given the

to propose an expLmation of sympathetic phenomPna th.1t con-

clearly stated principle (quoad motus originem seu principium), the division is exhau-.tin~: every movement originate-. either at the

tained, for the first time -.ince \Vii\ is, the notion of reflex motion

(An .~vmpathia partium a ccrlt1 ncrvorum positura in intcrno wmorio?,

center or at the periphery. This biological definition rclit:>s on a

1736). Hcnv wa-. it that a stimulus or injury tn one part of an

physicJI Jnd, indeed, a geometric nne. In sum, we find in \Villis

or"anism na\·e rise to a reaction in another pan:' Asrruc reJ't>ctl'rl

the thing, the word and the notion. The thing, in the form nf an

the explanation, common at th<.: time, that certain fiber-. of com-

"'

~

original observation, a cutaneous renex of tlw cercbro~pinal sys-

munication connected the nerves. He argued that .:dl nen·<.· fih('rs

tem, the scratch reflex; the . .vord, rdlcx, which

are separate and independent from the brain to the periphery of

h
improperly

entered the language both as an adjective and a nnun; 4 0 and the

the organism. Astruc explained <;ympathetic reaction in terms

notion, that is, the possibility of a judgment, initially in the fonn

of a physical reflection of impressions that he beliew'd took

HISTORY

THE

place in the medulla. When animal spirits, stirred by some stimulus, were carried to the brain by the nerve, they encountered fibers in the texture of the medulla, so that, "being reflected \vith an angle of reflection equal to the angle of incidence," they might enter the orifice of a motor nerve situated at that precise location. [ ... J

CONCEPT

OF

REFLEX

soul - fOr there is only one - insofar as it eschews calculation and reasoning and confines itself to immediate, hence unconscious, sensibility. Physiologically, this means that muscles contract only if innervated and sensorially stimulated, which means that they must be connected to the seat of the soul. Of course VVhytt was not unmindful of the arguments that Haller, \vith the aid of his theories, drew from the observation of muscular motions in decapitated animals and separated organs. This led him to suspect the role of the spinal column as a sensory cause of motion, "because the spinal column does not appear to be exclusively an extension of the brain and cerebellum. It is probable that it prepares a nervous fluid of its ovvn, and this is the reason why

Like Astruc, Robert Whytt of Edinburgh rejected the explanation of sympathies in terms of extracerebral communication between nerves, yet he could not accept Astruc's mechanistic ideas, nor could he envision, as Haller did, a muscular irritability distinct from sensibility. He was therefore fOrced to propose a truly novel conception of the functions of the spinal cord. In his Essay on the Vital and Other lnvoluntar.y Motions of Animals ( 1751 ), Whytt attempted to prove by observation and experiment that all motions are caused by the soul, in response sometimes to an explicit perception, sometimes to a confused sensation of a stimulus applied to the organism. The central idea of his theory of involuntary motion is that every involuntary motion has a manifest purpose, namely, to eliminate the causes of disagreeable impressions. For example, vvhen the pupil of the eye contracts in response to light, it is not the effect of a direct action of the light on the iris but rather of an importunate bedazzlement transmitted to the retina and the optic nerve. "The general and wise intention of all involuntary motions is the removal of everything that irritates, disturbs or hurts the body." It is this vital sense of

vital and other movements persist fOr several months in a tortoise whose head has been severed."[ ... J Johann August Unzer (1727-1799) was critical ofWhytt on the grounds that nervous sensation is distinct from sensibility per sc and that movement in living things is not necessarily caused by the soul, even if it cannot be explained in terms of a mechanical phenomenon. The animal organism is indeed a system of machines, but those machines are natural or organic, that is, they are machines even in their very tiniest parts, as Leibnit, had explained. An animalmachine need not have a brain and a soul. It does not follow from this that the nervous force in a brainless organism is merely a mechanical action. The nervous force is a force of coordination and subordination of organic machines. f-or this function to operate, it is enough for ganglia, plexi or junctions of other sorts to make it possible for a nervous impression from an external source to be reflected in the form of an internally originated excitation

all motions (which Whytt does not hesitate to compare to an immediate, prclogical moral sense) that precludes understanding them in terms of purely mechanical causes. Whytt nevertheless denies that he is a "Stahlian," one of those '\vho hold that one cannot explain these motions in terms of the soul without accepting the whole of the Stahl ian view." The "sensitive principle" is not the "rational and calculating" soul. Or, rather, it is the same

destined kH one organ or another. The movements of the brainle:,s polyp. for instance, can be explained in this \vay. The explanation also explains movement in a decapitated vertebrate. "Such a nervous action, due to an internal sense impression, not accom-

190

191

.il

1>-<E

H'STORY

panied hy a representation, stemming from the rdlcction of an

CONCEPf

r_)~

RE~LEX

Whytt, rather, he argued that medullary rdlectinn of nervous

external sense impression, is \vhat takes place, fOr example, when

imp..re~sions was governed by a biologicalla'v of the conse-rvation

a decapitated frog jumps in response to a pinch of its digit."42

of living things. The examples cited by Prochaska were the s~me­

Unzer's originality should now be apparent: he refu'>cd to iden·

ones that Descartes and Astruc had described: occlusion of the

rif~,

eve! ids and snec1ing. ProchasL1 defined the relation of reflex

anti mechanism wirh animism, ,wei he decentrali:t.ed the phe·

nome non of reflection of stimuli, which \Viii is and Astruc had

~otion

been able to conceive only in terms of a cerebral seat.

cxolicitlv distinguished the aspect of obligatory automatism from

George Prochaska, professor of anatomy and ophthalmology

th:·

to

consciou~ness

better than any of his predecessors: he

aspe~t of optional. intermittent unconsciousm~ss, and he sup-

at Prague and Vienna, would succeed in combining \Vhytt's obser·

ported this distinction vvith .1rgunwnts f[om comparative anat-

vat ions on the functions of the spinal cord with Unzcr's hypoth·

omy. As one ascends from lower to higher animals, a brain is adJed

eses about extending the reflex function outside the brain. In De

to ;he sensorium commune. In man, soul and body have been joined

functionibu~

svstematis nenosi commentatio (1784), Prochaska argued

by God. Nevertheless. the soul "produce!'. absolutely no action

that the physiology of the nt.·ryous system had confined itself too

that depends wholly and uniquely on it. All ir~ actions are pro-

narrowly ro the brain, ignored comparative anatomy, and there·

duced, rather, through the instrumt.~nt of the m·rvous system."

fOre, until Unz-~r, failed to recognize that the vis nenosa, or

m'T·

Thus Prochaska end~ ,vhcre Descartes began: in the case of invul~

vnus force (no more talk of animal spirits), requin·d only one

untarY motions, thl' soul uses an apparatus that can also function

thing: an int.Kt connection of the nerve fiber to the sensorium com·

''"ithf~ut its cooperation and permission. But the anatomo~phy<;io­

mune, distinct from the brain. Even without a connection to the

logic
brain, a sensory nerve can link up, through the sensonum commune,

conceives of the nervous system not "in general," like l)escarrc~.

to a motor nerve inserted into muscle, and thus transform an

but a" an increasingly complicated hierarchical series, of which

impression into a movement. Even if Prochaska did not defini·

the human brain is the highest development though not the char·

tivefy reject tlw opinion that the spinal cord is a bundk· of nerves,

acteri:-.tic type. ["Physiologic J.nimak." HJStoirc Hc.nc'ralc, vol. 2,

he made the radical assertion that it, together with the medulla

pp.61l-16l

oblongata, is the seat of the sensorium commune, the necessary

[73] In the eighteenth century, Astruc u~ed the notion of a

and sufficient condition qf the nerve function. In dividing, more~

reflection of the ncrvou') influx, based on the physical i
m·er, one divided the ncrYnus fOrct' without abolishing it, thereby

reOection of light, in

explaining the persistence of excitability and movement in the

assumnJ the br;in ro be the unique center of rd1cction. \Vhytt

frog whose medulla had been sectioned. It was at the level of the

described the reflex phenomenon without using the word or

medulla, Prochaska argued, that impression was reflected into

not inn. hut the law:. governing that phenomenon \vcre assuml·d

tw

,1

mechanistic theory of sympathies that

purely physical, due tn tlw connection bet \vcen the

movement. Unlike A\truc. Prochaska did not believe that this

not to

rdlcction was a purely physical phcnomt.·non governed by a law ')imilar to the law of optical reflection; in the same spirit as

rdle\ reaction and the instinct of self-preservation. \\lhytc argut>d that the relation bet\veen the svnsory and motor functions was

HISTORY

not centralized but Uiffuse and not mechanical but psychic, and

THF

<:O~jCEPT

OF

REFLEX

he- therefore saw no reason to ascribe it to any specific anatomi-

Corrections [74 J Taking this definition as our starting point, we can see pre-

cal structure. Unzer also believed that the law governing the phe-

cisely \\'hat elements stood in need of correction. One of the best

nomenon \vas not strictly mechanical, but he systematically used

rcferenn· texts is johannes MUller's Handhuch der Ph.rsiologie des

the term and the notion of reflection in a decentralized theorv

.Henschen, where the illustrious German physiologist compares his

of the <;ensorimotor relationship, which he ascribed to a num· ber of anatomical structures (the nervous ganglia and plexus as

ideas on reflex movement with those of Marshall llall. 44 MUller

well as the brain). Prochaska, finally, retained both the word and the notion of reflection but treated its physical mechanism as subordinate to the organic entity's semc of self-preservation, dccentrali7ed the reflex function by locating its explicit anatomical support in the medulla oblongata ,md spinal cord (and also, probably, in the sympathetic ganglia), and was apparently the first to note that not all automatic reactions were unconscious. Legallois then went on to prove something that Prochaska never did, namely, that the ~pin<1l column does not have the structure of a ne-rve. \Vithout using the term reflex or the notion, he located the reflex function in the medulla, \\-hose metameric division he established experimentally.

makes it clear that in 1833, when both Hall's paper and the first edition of the Handbuch were published, the reflex concept was

a principle of explanation, a theoretical instrument for interpreting phenomena defined as "movements following sensations." The theoretical content of this conct•pt consisted of two elements. one positive, the- other negativt': negatively, the concept rejected the theorv of anastomoses bet\\'een sensorv and motor fibers; posi'

'

tively, the concept required a central intermediary between the sensory impression and the determination of the motor re-action. It was for the express purpose of denoting the true function of

the medulla spirwlis, or spinal medulla (rather than spinal cord). that [\-'larshall Hall coined the term "diastaltic'' to indicate that the medulla could provide a functional connection betwe-en sen-

Thus, by 1800 the definition of the reflex concept was in

sory and motor nerves only if situated between them as an authen-

place, a definition ideal when considered as a whole but histori-

tic anatomical structure distinct from the brain. The diastaltic (reflex) function of the spinal medulla deterinined its relation to

cal in each of its parts. It can be summarized as follows (with the names of the authors who first formulated or incorporated certain basic notions indicated in parentheses): a reflex movement

the esodic. or anastaltic, function of the sensory nerve and the exodic, nr catastaltic, function of the motor nerve.

(\Villis) is one whose immediate cause is an antecedent sensation

On this fundamental point Muller and Hall agreed. In Muller's

(Willis), the effect of which is determined by physical laws (Willis, Astruc, Unzer, Prochaska)- in conjunction with the instincts

words, "the phenomena I have described thus far on the basis

(Whytt. Prochaska)- bv reflection (Willis, Astruc, Unzer, Pro· chaska) in rhe spinal cord (Whvtt, Prochaska, Legallois), with or without concomitant consciousness (Procha')ka) ..n [Formation du rijlm, pp. 130-31]

'94

first of my own observations and then those of Marshall Hall's have one thing in common, namely, that the spinal medulla is

or

the intermediary between the sensory and the motor .Ktion the nervous principle." Bear in mind that the two physiologists'

agreement about the specific central function of the spinal cord was the result of twenty years of research and controversy con195

H

THlo

STORY

CONCEPT

OF-

Ri=.FLCX

cerning the \·alidit y and interpretation of the Bell-Magendie law

onl' ought to consider the centripetal (anastaltic) impression

(1811-22).[ ... ]

without reference to the brain or to consciousness, and that the

The Heli-Magendie law \\.las a necessary ingredient fOr the for-

concepts of sensation and even se-nsitivity ought not to enter into

mulation of the refll'x concept. insofar as that concept includes

the concept of a reflex. The reflex function did not C\'l'n depend

the specific function of the spinal cord. What llall called the

on sl'nsory or motor nerves but, rather, on specific nervous fibers

diastaltic (or diacentric) function was conceivable only in con-

that Hall called "excito-motor" and "reflecto-motor" fibers. Hall's

junction •..vith two mutually independent properties of the nerve.

183 3 Royal Society paper on "The Reflex Function ofthe Medulla Oblongata and the Medulla Spinalis" explicitly distinguishes reflex

Only if those nvo propnties existed \Vas a nervous center required to divert thl' nervous impulse to a new destination.[ ... J The

movement not only from voluntary movement directly controlled

course that Muller followed from 1824 to 1833 shows that it took

by the brain but also from the respiratory movement controlled

Bell's idea and Magendie's experiments to relate the reflex con-

by the medulla oblongata, as \\Til as from involuntary movement

cept to the physiological function of the spinal cord.

initiated by direct stimulus of nerve or muscle fiber. A reflex

The second respect in which the nineteenth century rectified the eighteenth-century concept had to do with the relation of

;I

mon~ment

is not a spontaneous, direct response emanating fl-om

a central source; it presumes a stimulus applied at some distance

reflex movement to consciousness, that is, with psychological

from the reacting muscle being transmitted to the spinal cord

matters. It was expressly on this point that Mtiller disagreed with

and from there reflected back to the periphery. llall oriented the

Hall. In describing a reflex as a movement that fOIIO\vs a sensa-

reflex concept tov\'ard a segmental and explicitly mechanistic con-

tion, MUller, like \Vii lis, Whytt, Unzer and Prochaska before him,

ception of the functions of the nervous system.

was in a sense obliging himself to unravel a mystery: how could a

This was difficult for MLHier to accept. To be sure, he was

movement depend on a sensation when thl' nervous circuit had

open about his disagreement \vith Prochaska, and he- ascribed all

hl'en broken by decapitation, thus removing the interconnecting

reflex movements to a teleological principle of instinctive organic

sensory organ, the brain? Although Miiller disagreed with Whytt,

self-preser\'ation . But as Fearing has pointed out, !vhiller's interest

\vho believed that reflex movements involved both conscious

in the phenomena of associated movements and radiant sensations

sensations and spontaneous reactions, and although he praised

and his elaborate attempts to explain the latter in te1ms of a rellex

Prochaska fOr having pointed out that a reflex might or might not

fUnction of the brain and spinal cord show that he was a long \\'ay

be accompanied by a conscious sensation, he regarded the reflex

from conceiving of reflexes as segmental and local mechanisms. In

as the effect of a centripetal action propagated toward the spinal

fJ.ct, MUller's ob5>ervations of associated movements in narcotized

cord by the sensory nerve, which then might or might not con-

animals and general reflex convulsions led him to two simulta-

tinue on to the common sensorium and, thus, might or might not

neous conclusion:~: reflex movements can involve the entire body

become conscious. Reflex movement \Vas therefore one species

in response to the most insignificant local sensation, and the more

within a genus comprising all movements conditioned on the

extensive a reflex movement is, the less it is synchronized.

action of the sensory nerves. I fall, on the other hand, felt that

Mi.iller's concept of reflex, which maintained a connection 197

HISTORY

with sensation- that is, with the brain- as well as the possibility that a local sensation might produce reflected effects throughout the organism, sidestepped most of the objections that had been raised against llall's ideas. Hall had scandalized many physiologists by attributing to the spinal cord a power to regulate movement still \Videly believed to be an exclusive province of the brain.[ ... J It was in 1853, four years before Hall's death, that Eduard Pflilger published Die scnsorischen Functionen des Riickenmarks der rJ',rheltiere. The \veil-known lav.rs of reflex activity (homolateral conduction, symmetry, medullary and cerebral irradiation, generalization) C'sscntially recast, in apparently more experimental fOrm, "-hiller's notion of the association of movements and the radiation of sensations. In fact, PflUger followed Miiller in using the reflex concept to l'xplain so-called sympathetic or consensual phenonll'na, whose interpretation had previously divided proponents of the principlt' oLmastomosis of the peripheral nerves (Thomas Willis, Raymond Vieussens, Paul-Joseph Barthcz) from believn~ in the principle of a confluence of impressions in the 1·ensorium commune (Jean Astruc, Robert Whytt, Johann August Un1.er, George Prochaska). According to Prochaska, the reflex <:onccpt preserved the explanation of sympathies in terms of the sensorium commune but located the latter outside the brain in the medulla oblongata and spinal cord. Unlike Whytt, Prochaska distinguished the sensorium commune from the soul but continued to credit it with a teleological function, according to which the r~~flex action was a fOrm of self-preserving instinct (nostri conservatio). So it is hardly surprising that POuger in 1853 felt that Prochaska had had a better understanding of the nature of the reflex process in 1784 than Hall had managed in 1832--33. For the same reasons that had persuaded Prochaska to hold on to the concept of a sensorium commune Pflliger believed in the existence of

THE:

CONCEPT OF-

REFLEX

a medullary soul (Riickcnmarksscele), which enabled him to explain the purpose of reflex actions. Hall, on the other hand, drew a sharp distinction between adaptive or intentional movement, deliberate and stemming from the brain, and reflex movement, \vhich he characterized as "aimless." Less mechanistic than llall, MUller had raised the rigidity caused by certain generalized reflexes as an objection against Prochaska's view, though it is true that Miillcr \Vas careful to note that this occurred only "in a suitably prepared animal." Pfliiger's concept of the reflex must be regarded as a misleading dialectical synthesis: its experimental basis was as old as Marshallllall, whereas the philosophical coo· tt>xt that made it meaningful was as old as Prochaska would have been. had he not died in 1820. In fact, PflUger did not succeed in 1853 in finding a strictly physiological o;,olution to a problem that Hall, rather than really facing, had sidestepped by attributing what he called "excitomntor powers" tu nerve fihers. The problem lay in the terms '\ensat ion" or '\emibility" as lhey wnc used in the earliest definition~ of the reflex. \Vii lis had said that "rdlex motions immediateh, fOllow sensation" (motus rejlexus est qui a sensionc prae1·ia imme· diatus depcndens, illico retorquetur), whereas Prochaska had s
HISTORY

THE

CONr:FI-'T

OF

R!::f'"LE:X

J.iddel points out that ·when Charles Todd coined the term "affer-

clinical observations thus fOrced physiologists to consider seg-

ent" in 1839, a major step \Vas taken toward distinguishing be-

ments in the context of the- organism as a whole.

tween the two kinds of sensation. Yet it may be that the truly

\A/hen Sherrington discovered that the scratch reflex was not

major step came only later, when the subjective concept of sen-

inextricablv associated \vith a strictly defined rdlexogl'nic zone,

sibility (le sens de /'influx) was replaced by a purely objective one

he laid the- grounchvork f(>r a ne\v rectification of the concept.

defined in terms of the histology of receptors. What is interesting about the history of the reflex concept

The reflex wa~ now seen not so much as the reaction of a specific organ in response to a stimulus as an already coordinated

between Pfhiger's work and Charles Scott Sherrington's first pub-

movement determined in part by stimuli in a certain part of the

lications is its importation from physiology into clinical work,

organism and in part by the organism's global state. Reilex move-

which began with !!all. The latter was the first to use the dis-

ment, even in its simplest, most analytical fOrm, was a hxm of

ruption or disappearance of certain reflexes as diagnostic symp-

behavior, the reaction of an organic whole to a change in its rela-

toms. The concept of the reflex arc gradually took on meaning

tion to the environment.

beyond that associated with the schematic structure introduced

Although the word "integration" did not appear in Sherring-

by Rudolph Wagner in 1844; incorporated thus into symptom-

ton\ vocabulary until after the ninete-enth century had ended,

atology and clinical examination, it influenced therapeutic deci-

the concept of integration wao;, the crmvning achievement of nine-

sion-making. Hut as the reflex concept passed frorri the laboratory

teenth-century neurophysiology. Sherrington's work on rigidity

into the hospital, it did not go unchanged. VVhile most phys-

due to decerebration ( 1898 ), reciprocal innervation and synapses

iologists tended to look upon reflexes as fundamental, unvarying

converged on a demonstration of the fact that a basic reflex involves

mechanisms, a fe\v clinicians, among them Emil Jendrassik, who

medullary integration of a muscle bundle into an entire member

f(Jiiowed up the work of Wilhelm Heinrich Erb and Carl Friedrich Otto Westphal (1875) by looking systematically for tendon re-

through convergence of afferent influxes and combination of antagonistic reactions. The functions of the brain are an exte-nsion

flexes, were surprised to discover that such reflexes were neither

of the medullary integration of the parts to the entire organism.

constant nor unifOrm, and that their absence 'vas not necessarily

In adapting Hughlings j,lckson\ concept of integration, Sherring-

a pathological symptom. It would not be long bdore physiol-

ton was interested not in its evolutionarv implications but only

ogists would be obliged to abandon the idea of a reflex as a

in its structural ones.

simple arc establishing a one-to-one rdationship bct\veen stimulus and muscular response.

It seems reasonable to sav that Shcrrington achieved, in the field of phy~iology, the dialectical synthesis of the refle-x concept

The generalization of cell theory, the identification of neu-

with the concept of organic totality that first Prochaska and then

rons under the microscope and technological advances in histol-

!\-hiller had sought and that Pflliger had misleadingly achieved b~

ogy demonstrated, of course, that nerves cnuld be decomposed

interpreting the results of his physiological experiments in meta-

analvticallv into smaller- in some sense atomic -structures. The

physical terms.

con~ept ~fa

segmental reflex was thereby corroborated. New 200

By the end of the nineteenth century, the reflex concept had 201

HISTORY

thus been purged of any teleological implications, while it had also ceased to be seen- as Hall had seen it- as nothing more than a simple mechanical reaction. Through a series of corrections,

CHAPTFR

NINF

Biological Objects

it had become an authentically physiological concept. [Etudes, pp. 296-304]

A Principle of Thematic Conservation [75] The history of a science would surely fail of its goal if it did not succeed in representing the succession of attempts, impasses and repetitions that resulted in the constitution of \vhat the science today takes to be its object of interest. Unlike geometry and astronomy, terms that are more than two thousand years old, the term biology is not yet two hundred years old. When it was first proposed, geometry had long since ceased to be the science of figures that can be drawn with a straightedge and compass, while

.,., .,.

astronomy had only recently expanded its scope of interest beyond the solar system. In both cases, the signifier of the scientific discipline remained the same, but the discipline in question had broken \Vith its past. By contrast, the concept of biology was invented to characterin~, in retrospect, a discipline that had not yet broken with its past.

202

, l

The vvord "biology" occurs fOr the first time in Jean-Baptiste Lamarck's Hvdrogiologie (1802). When he mentioned the word again, in the preface to his Philosophic /Oologique ( 1809), it was in allusion to a treatise to be entitled Biologic, which he never actually wrote. Strikingly, this preface is concerned with general problems of animal organization "as one traverses their entire series

.-~

,·~

20J

'

..

~ ., B'OLOGICAL

HISTORY

from the most perfect to the most imperfect." The idea of a hier-

ORii=C:lS

that end, I direct the reader's attention to thc end of the his-

archical series of ,wimals, a chain of being, indicates that the

torical process. For contemporary biochemists, the functions of

object of the new biology was the same as that of Aristotle's

sclf~preservation,

1-listoria animalium and De partibus onimalium. Hence, Lamarck's

acteristic properties of microorganisms such as bacteria. Thc

own invention- modification in the organs through force of habit

model oftcn proposed by scientists themselves and not just by

self-reproduction and self~rcgulation arc char-

and under the influence of changing environmental conditions-

popularizers of their '1-vork is that of the "fully automated chemi-

was explicitly intendcd to reestablish "the very order of nature"

cal factory." 4 ~ The organic functions are acknmvlcdgcd to be

beyond the lacunae and discontinuities in the system of classifi-

superior to their technological counterparts in reliability, if not

cation proposed by naturalists -in other words, to establish a

infallibility, and in the existence of mechanisms fOr detecting and

clear progression and gradation in organization that could not be

correcting reproductive errors or flaws. These facts makc it rea-

overlooked despite any "anomalies."

sonable to ask \Vhether there is not some principle of thematic

As for the other inventor of the term and concept of biology,

conservation at work in the historical constitution of biology. On

Gottfried Reinhold Tn:viranus, the very title of the book he pub-

this view, \vhich contrasts with an idea of science elaborated by historians and philosophers in the era when physics dealt with

lished in 1802, Biologic oder Philosophic der l.cbendcn Naturfiir 1 ,'\ aturjorscher und Arztc (volume 2 in a six-volume series, the last of \Vhich \vas published in 1822), indicates that he had no wish to separate or distinguish the naturalist from the physician as to their philo5ophical or general conception of the phenomena of life. Thus, at the turn of the nineteenth century, a ne\v \vay of looking at the study of living things, which entailed a new logic, was in fact limitcd by the traditional association of the standpoint of the naturalist with that of the physician, that of the investigator with that of the healer.[ ... ] Since the turn of the nineteenth century, hm.vevcr, definitions of biology's specific object have been purged of value~ laden concepts such as perfection or imperfection, normality or abnormality. Therapeutic intentions, which once informed or, more accurately, deformed, the biologist's view oflaboratory work, have since been limited to the applications of biological knmvledge. l-Ienee, it would seem that the question of"norm~lity" in the history of biology ought to be classed as a matter of historical rather than current intcre!;t. I shall attempt to prove the contrary. To

ation from the 'parts' to the wholf' living body; for what the

204

20\

macroscopic objects, biology is different fl-om the other sciences, and the history of biology ought to reflect that fact in the questions it asks and the way in \vhich it answer~ them. For the alleged principle of thematic conservation in the history of biology is perhaps only a reflection of the biologist's acceptance in one way or another of the indisputable fact that life, whatever form it may take, involves !;elf~preservation by means of selt~regulation. [Ideo/ow and Rationolitr, pp. 125-28]

Various Manifestations of the Bioloeica/ Object In anliqui~l' [76] The fundamental concepts in Aristotle's definition of lik are those of soul and organ. A living body is an animate and organizf'd body. It is animate because it is organized. Its soul is in fact act, form and end. "Suppose that the eye were an animal- sight would have been its soul. ... We must now extend our consider-

BIOLOGICAl

HISTORY

OBJECTS

fn the serenteenth and eiahteenth centuries [77] Descartes contr.tdictcd Aristotle's propositions point by

departmental sense is to the bodily part which is its organ, that the whole faculty of sense is to the whole sensitive body as such."46 The organ., arc the instruments of the soul's ends. "The body too

point. For him, nature was identical with the laws of motion and conservation. Every art, including medicine, was a kind of machine·lmilding. Descartes preserved the anatomical and phys-

must somehow or other be made fOr thl' soul. and each part of it for some o;ubordinate function, to which it is adapted." 47 It is impoo;sible to O\'erstate the influl'nCl' of Aristotle's use- of the term orgllnon to designate a fUnctional part (marion) of an animal or vegetal body such as a hand, beak. wing, root or ,vhat have you. Until at least the end of the eighteenth century, anatomy and physiology preserved, 'vith all its J.mbiguities, a term that Aristotle borrowed from the lexicon of artisans and musicians, \\'hose use indicates implicit or explicit acceptance of some sort of analogy het'"Ten nature and art, life and technics. As i'> well known, Aristotle conceived of nature and life as the art of ,lfts, by which he meant a process teleological by its very nature, immanent, unpremeditated and undeliber,1tcd- a process that e\'ery technique tends to imitate, and that the art of medi-

iological concept of an organ but eliminated any distinction between organi1ation and fabrication. A living body coulrl serve as the model for an automaton or vice versa. Yet there was an ambiguity in this reversibility. The intention behind the construction of an automaton was to copy nature, but in the Ctlrtesian the· ory of life the automaton serves as an intelligible equivalent of nature. There is no room in Cartesian physics for an ontological difference between nature and art. "[S]o it is no less natural fOr a clock constructed with this or that set of ,vheels to tell the time than it is fOr a tree which grew from this or that seed to produce the appropriate rruit.""[ ... ] ·10 begin with, the Cartesian watch is no less subject to the laws of mechanics if it tells the time incorrectly than if it tells the time correctly. 'iO Similarly, it is no less natural for a man to be sick than to be healthy, and sickness is not a corruption of nature. 51 Yt:t the thirst that drives the victim of dropsy to drink is a "\'critable error of nature," even though it is an efl(·ct of the substantial union of :-oul and body, whose sensations, such as thirst or pain, arc statistically valid indicators of things or situations favorable or ham1ful "to the conservation of the human body when it is fully healthy."'i2 This idea is confirmed at rhe end of the "Conver~ation'> with Burman" (1648), in which the medicine of the physicians, not bast>d on sound Cartesian mechanics, is denigrated and ridiculed in favor of a course of conduct amenable, as animals are, t<J the ~ilcnt lessons of nature concerning "self-restitution." "Evt.•ry man is capable of being his mvn physician."5 3 Even fOr Descartes, self.·pre-servation remains the primary

cine approaches most closely when it heals by applying to itself ruks inspired by the idea of health, the tdos and fOrm of the living organism. Aristotle, a physician's son, thus subscribed to a biological naturalism that had affinities with the naturalism of! Iippocrates. Life's teleological process is not perfectly efficient and infallible, howe\'er. The existence of monsters shmvs that nature does make rnistakes, 4 H which can be explained in terms of matter's resistance to form. Forms or ends are not necessarilv and univero;ally exemplary; a certain deviation is tolerated. The form of an organism is expressed through ,1 rough con')tancy; it is what the organism app~ars to be most of the time. Hence, we can consider a form to be a norm, compared to which the exceptional can be

characterized as abnormal. [Ideology and Rationalitv, pp. 128-29]

206

207

'

j

[1101 (JC·CAI

HIS>OR·•

distincti\'e characteristic of the living hody. [ .. -l Undoubtedly it was Georg Ernst Stahl who most stubbornly

proce'~

flEJ_•E(~

TS

of reproduction from generation to generation, accumu-

lating in the bodies of living things in specific tOrms shaped by internal mold-;. The latter, determined by the fl;rm of the organ-

defended, in his De divcrsitate DJganismi et mccanismi ( 1706 ), the irreducibility of the organism, that is, the idea that a certain order oht.1ins in the relations of the parts of a mPchanism to the whole.

ism, dictated the way in which the parts had to be arranged in order to form

J

wholt.

A living body is both in~trumented and instrumental. Its efficient

Consider fUr a moment the internal mold metaphor. rvtolds are

structure (strvctura, constrvctio, (lrdinatio, distributio are all useU

used in smelting and masonry to impose a certain threC'-dimcn-

in paragraph 19) reveals cooperation on the part of mediate or

sional shape. Etymologically, the \Yord is fl·lated to "modulus'' and

imnwdiate agents. The material constitution of the body is sub-

"model." In common usage, it indicate-. a structural norm . In liv-

ject to rapid corruption. Stahl observes, hmvever, that disease is

ing organisms, hovv·ever, the structural norm can accommodate

an exceptional condition. J lence, there must be some po,ver of

irregularities, to vvhich RufTon refers on more than one occasion

conservation, some immaterial pmver offering active resistance

as anomalies (Ctres anomaux). An organic anomaly is not the same

to clecomposition, permanently at work in the bodies of living

,1s

a physical irregularity, hnv,. evcr. Initially, ButTon conceived

things. Self-preservation of the organism h achieved as a result

o~

generation J.s analogous to crystallization, but ultimately he

not of some mechanical but of natural "autocracy.''5 4 [ •.. J

came to think of crystallization as a fOrm nf organit.ation. lie \vas

It is not only the history of.:matomy and physiology that begins

unable to avoid associating anomalies \vith degt.>neration, h~._·nce

\Yith Ari•aotle but also the history of vvhat was long called "nat-

with the problem of the mutability of -;pecic~. On this point,

ural history," including the classification of living things, their

Huffon was never able to achieve certainty. lie did not regard the

orderl;.' arrangement in a table of -;imilaritics and diffrrences.

idea of dcrivatin· species as absurd on its face, but he believed or

study of their kinship through morphological comparison and,

professed to b...:lieve that ob:-,crvation confirmed the teachings of

finally, study of the compatibility of different modt>s of e:..istcnce.

the Bible. S'>

Natural hbtory <:.ought to explain the diversity of Iif(~ f()rms able

Piern_· Louis Moreau de Maupcrtuis wa-. boldc.:r in thcnri;ing,

to coexist in a given environment. In 1749 Caroh1-; Linnaeus re-

perhap-; because he posses'\ed les'\ extemive empirical infonna-

ferred to this coexistence as the occonomia naturae. [ .... J

tion. For him, 'itructural variation was the ruk· of organic progression. In paragraph 31 of the Systc?mc de Ia ndture (1751), he 'ict

In the eighteenth Ct:>ntury. the status of species \vas the foremo~t problem of the naturalio;ts, as can be seen most clearly of

k1rth


theory of generation ba~ed on tht' t·xi'itencc of elementary

all in the work of Comte Buffon and Linnaeus. The latter did not

particles of miltter endowed with appetite and memory, whose

experience as much difficulty as the fOrmer in holding that the

"arrang('ment" reproduce-; the pos.,ibly miraculous struclurt._· of

spE-cies were fixed at creation and pc-rpctuatc(! from generation

the first individuals. The phenomena of resemblance, miscege-

to generation. Buffon .It tempted to resolve the problem \Vith his theory of"intemal molds'' and "organic molecules." Organic molecules, he.: maintained, \Verc indestructible; they -;urYived the

,,~ '

nation and mom.tro'lity could be cxpfaitwd, he ,1rgued, in terms of the compatibility or incompatibility of"arrangements" in seeds mingled through copulation. rhus, fatcr, in pangraph -1-5, he a~b. 20'-)

GIOLOGICAL OCJ,,ECTS

HISTORY

Can we not explain in this way how from just

t\'m

individuals the

most dissimilar species could have multiplied? Originally they may have stemmed from fortuitous productions in which the elementary

advantage fOr survival in novel ecological situations. Darwin thus

i

,

..

substituted a random fit for a preordained adaptation. Natural selection is eliminative. Disadvantaged organisms die; the <mrYi-

parts did not retain the order they occupied in the father and mother

vors arc all different in one degree or another. The reader who

animak Each degree of error could have produced a new species,

takes litnallv such Darwinian terms as "selection," "advantage,"

and repeated errors could have given rise to the infinite diversity of

"adaptation.~' "favor" and "disfavor" may partially overlook the

animals that we see today.

fact that teleology has been excluded from Darwin's theory. Does this mean that all value-laden terms have been excluded from the

It is tempting to read this text with spectacles provided by con-

idea of life? Life and death, success or failure in the ;-,truggle for

temporary biochemical and genetic theory. Order and error occur

survival -are these value·neutral concepts, even if success is

both here and in contemporary accounts of hereditary biochem-

reduced to nothing more than continued existence? Does Dar-

ical defects as ground and cause of both normality and abnor-

win's language reveal his thought or does it suggc.:st that C\'Cn for

mality. But today biochemistry and genetics offer us a \vay of

Darwin a causal explanation of adaptation could not abolish the

interpreting organic abnormalities that was v'rorked out in coop-

•·\·ital meaning" of adaptation, a meaning dett:rmined by compar-

eration with the Darwinian explanation of the origin of species

ison of the living with the dead? As Darwin observed. v,uiations

and the adaptation of organisms. Hence Maupertuis's proposi-

in nature would have remained without ~...ffect had it not been

tions should be regarded more as fictions than as anticipations

for natural ~election. \Vha.t could limit the
of scientific theories to corne. He was unable to ov<:rcome the

operating over a long period of time and rigorously scrutinizing

difficulty posed by the natural mechanism fOr nonnalit.ing differ-

the -.tructure, overall organization and habits uf every creature,

ences. Roth he and BufTon believed that human intervention through technique.;_, of husbandry or agronomy - was the only

to promote good and reject evi)?Jh And Darwin's \\'ork ends with a contrast: "while this plane-t

way to stabilit_e variations within species. [Ideology and Rational-

has gone circling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from

ltr,

pp. 129-35]

so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and mmt wonderful have- been and arc being evolved." In suggesting that individual variations, deviations in ~tructun.'

In the nineteenth ccntun'

[78] The publication of On the Origin of Species bv Means of Natural Selection; or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle

or instinct, are ust..+ul because they yield a survival a(hanragc in a world in v\rhich relations of organism to organism arc the most

for Life in 1859 occasioned doubts in the minds of some early read-

important of all causes of change in living beings, Darwin intro-

ers because of the traditional meaning of certain concepts men~

duced a ne\v criterion of normality into biolog:'• a criterion based

tinned in the title and frequently alluded to in the body of the

on the living creature's relation to life and death. By no means

work. The theory of natural selection states that certain devia-

did he eliminate morality from consideration in determining the

tions from the norm can be seen a posteriori to provide a tenuous

object of biology. Before Darwin, death was considered to be the

210

211

HISTOPY

HIOLOGICAL

OBJ'-CTS

regulator of the quantity of life (Buflon) or the sanction imposed

in the physical science-;, only the first history exists; the second i~

fOr infractions of nature-'s order, the instrument of her equilib-

nowhere to be found. Physiology is to the motion of living bodies

rium (Linnaeus). According to Danvin, death is a blind sculptor of living fOrms, forms elaborated without preconceived idea, as

·h't hvdraulics, hvdrostatics J.nd so f
deviations from normalitv are converted into chances for survival

corresponds to them a-; pathology correspond~ to the former. lK

in a changed environment. Danvin purged from the concept of adaptation any reference to a preordainl'd purpose, but he- did not

Hut not all physiologists agreed with Bichat that there exist vital

';(

separate it completely from the concl'pt of normality. In the spirit

f{xces not subject to the laws of physics. Here I must cite Claude

of Darv,'inism, hcnvcvn, a norm is not a fixed rule but a transi-

Bernard once more, because his position is so up to date. He

tive capacity. The normality of a living thing is that quality of its

admitted, first of all, that vital phenomena are subject only to

relation to the environment which enables it to generate descen-

physical and chemical causes, but he also held that the organism

dants exhibiting a range of variations and standing in a ne\v rela-

develops from the egg according to an immanent design, a plan,

tion to their respective environments, and so on. Normality is not

a regularity, which is responsible fOr its ultimate organization, for

a quality of the living thing itself but an aspect of the all-encompassing relation bet\vecn life and death as it affects the individ-

I . I I

ual life f(Jrm at a given point in time.

its harmony, persistence and, if need be, restoration. \Vhat Bernard de<;cribed in image.;; is today explained by the theorems of macromolecular biochemistry. Like the metaphor of

Thus, the e-nvironment decides, in a nonteleological \vay,

the "internal mold," the images of "design," "plan," "guiding

\vhich variations will survive, but this does not necessarily mean

idea" and "order" are given retroactive legitimacy by the concept

that evolution does not tend to create an organic order firm in

of a program encoded in sequences of nucleotidcs. 'i<J h>r the first

its orientation if precarious in its incarnations. llercdity is an

time in the history of biology. all the properties of living things-

uninterrupted delegation of ordinal power. \Vhat difference docs

growth, organization, reproduction, hereditary continuity- can

it make if, in Salvador Luria's words, "evolution operates with

I

be explained in terms of molecular structure, chemical reactions,

. ")57[ t hreats, not promises . . .. J

!

enzymes and genes. [Ideology and Rationali~v. pp. !36-39]

The physiologists took their inspiration from a distinction first made bv Xavier Hi chat: There arc two kinch of life phenomena: (I) the 'it ate of health, and

In the twentieth ccntun [79] The level of objectivity at which the opposition between normal and abnormal was legitimate was shifted from the surface

(2) the state of sickne~~- Hence, there arc two distinct 'iciences: phys-

to the depths, from the developed organism to its germ, from the

iology, which is concerned with phenomena of the first state, ~nd pathology. which is concerned with

tho~e

macroscopic to the ultramicroscopic. Now it is the trano;;mission

of the -;ccond. The history

of the hereditary ml'ssage, the production of the genetic prograrn,

of phenomena in which the vital forces have their natural type leads

that determines what is normal and ''"hat is a deviation from the

us to that of phenomena in which those IOrces are 212

di~torted.

Now,

normal. Some- human chromosomal anomalies such as mongolism 21J

rliSTORY

can be observed din.:ctly in the clinic. Others, such a~ Klinefelter's ~yndrome, are tolerated without apparent ill effect and manifest themselves only in special ecological circumstances. As for genetic anomalies, I shall mention only "innate errors of metabolism"- to usc the phrase that Archibald Edward Garrod coined in 1909- that is, specific biochemical lesions that result from thl' presence of a mutant gene, which is called "abnormal" not 50 much because of its statistical rarity a~ because of its pathological or even fatal effects (for example, hemophilia, Huntington's chorea and ~o on). A nt'w nomenclature of disease is thus established, referring disease not to the individual cono:;idered in it'i totality but to its morphological and functional constituents: disease~ of the hemoglobin, hormonal diseases (such as hyperthyroidism), muscle diseases and so forth. Gene mutations that block chemical syntheses by altering their enzyme catalysts are no longer interpreted a~ deviation5 in J\,1aupertuis's sense but as errors in reading the genetic "message," errors in the reproduction or copying of a text. The term "error" does not imply that science has returned to the Aristotelian and medieval notion that monsters are errors of nature, fOr the failure here is not .some lack of skill on the part of the artisan or architect but a mere copyist's slip. Still, the ne\v science of living things has not only not eliminated the contrast between normal and abnormal but it has actually grounded that contrast in the structure of livino~ thin bas themselves. no [ldcologr ' and RationaMr, pp. 140-41]

E3

OLOGICAL OBJECTS

tions of wh
1 anticipate one possible objection, however. In looking tl)r a distinctive concept of normality in biology, have I not confused the issue by considering different orders of biological object~? Astronomers ffom Sir William Herschel to Echvin Hubble revolutionized their discipline by magnifying their object to an unimaginable degree, revealing galaxies beyond the ~olar system and mt·tagalaxies beyond the g.alaxit"S. By contrast, biologi~ts ha\·t· discovered the nature of life by making their objects 5maller and smaller: bacterium, gene, enzyme. In the preceding discussion, am I dealing \Vith observations at one level and explanations at another? Normality appears to be a property of the organism, but it disappears \vhen we look at the elements that make up

A New Historical Crux [80] Perhaps the epistemologist may now be allowed to remain skeptical about dogmatic rcductionist views, given what can be learned if \VC look at the history of biology. without any simplifying a priori assumptions, in light of the various manifesta-

that organisnl. At all h:n:l~. however, biologists have idenrified ordering structun.·~ that, while gcnL'rally reliahle, sometimes fail. The <..·onn'pt of norm;tlity is intended to rckr to tlw.-;c ordering structures. No such concept io; needed in the epistemology of physics. By introducing it as I have done here, I in no way intend to deny that biology is based on physics and chemistry. I do intend to prevent the coalescing of two properly distinct approaches to history. In the history of biology, the pseudotheoretical content of prescienti fie conceptualizations of structural and functional normality wa-, ahandnnl·J, but the C<)nccptualilations them'>clve., have heen preserved, in "di-.placeJ" fonn, as indices of the objective uiliquencss of the living organism. Dmitry i\-1encleleye-v's pe-riodic table doc~ not justify Dcmocritus's intuitions a posreriori, but the decoding of the genetic program does provide a posteriori justification of Claude Bernard's metaphors. Even within the terms of a monistindeed a materialist- epistemology. physics remaim radically dH~ fcrent from biology. Physics was produced, sometimes at risk of

"4

21\

·.,I

~ HISTORY

life and limb, by living things subject to sickm.'ss and death, but

I

PART FouR

sickness and death an· not problems of physics. They arc problems of biology. Between the bacteria in a laboratory culture and the biologists who observe them, there is a whole range of living things permitted to exist by the filter of natural selection. Their lives are governed by certain norms of behavior and adaptation. Questions about the vital meaning of those norms, though not directly matters of chemistry and physics, are questions of biology. As Marjorie Greene points out, alongside the biochemists there is room in biology for a Frederik Jacobus Buytendijk or a Kurt Goldstein.r,J History shows that she is right. [Ideology and Ration-

alitv, pp. 142-44]

216

Interpretations

T

CHAPTER TEN

Rene Descartes

Relations between Theory and Technology [81 J What did Descartes know about technology, and what did he hope to learn from it? I lis correspondence, reread ·with this que~tion in mind, gives a strong impression of a man with a wide

curiosity about practical techniques and keen to discove-r principles or lav,'s that might account for their efficacy. The subjects that recur most Frequently in his meditations are, of course, the grinding of lenses for optical instruments, the construction of machines and the art of medicine. Yet he also fOund in the routines of peasants and soldiers and the lore of travelers material

fi.H comparison and opportunities to put his theories to the test. The influence of the soil on the growth of transplanted plants, the maturation of fruits, the separation of materials of different density in the manufacture of butter, the \vay a child's legs flail \vhile mounting a horse, the ringing of bells in order to cause thunder clouds to burst- these commonplaces of rural life provided Descartes with occasions for reflection. As a soldier, he rubbed the tip of his pike \vith oil and noticed sparks. And as a resident of Amsterdam, he \vas aware of all that a great port had to offer in the \vay of practical and luxury goods, and of all that a population that each day welcomed travelers from the antipodes 2ll)

r .

:NTf=RPRFTATIO~S

"'C"-JE

•·

could teach about human diversity. With astonishment and admiration

\\T

I

watch Descartes apply his scrupulously methodical

DESCAF
I

Descartes's willingness to "lower his thought to the least of the mechanics' im·entions" (I, 185) that enabled him to conceive of

intelligence to the most diverse and specialin·d technical prob-

the relation between theory and practice in a way that is impor-

lems: smoking chimneys, water pumps and marsh drainage, medi-

tant not only fOr understanding his thought but for grasping the

cal diagnosis, drugs, alkgedly miraculous hmntains, automata, the

nature of philosophical reflf'ction in general.

trajectory of cannonballs, the velocity of bullets, the strength of

I low did De~cartes conceive of the relation bet ween theory

a sword thrust, the sound of bells. Descartes's interest in artil-

and technology?

·ro ans\-ver this question,

let us turn to the texts.

lery, medicine and automata \\'aS, of course, shared by many of

In any number of passages he deplored the failure of artisans to

his contemporaries in France and Italy; but underlying his atten-

learn from what was known about the materials and phenomena

tion to the most minute details and problems was a comprehen-

they used in daily practice. All purposive action, he maintained,

sive doctrine incorporating the smallest details and difficulties

should be subordinate to its associated science. lie had contempt

of physics and metaphysics. Yet his ambition to achieve mastery

f<.lr technique without understanding (I, 195) and inventors with-

of the natural world seems almost modest in comparison \Vith his

out method (X, 380) and \Vas extremely wary of artisan~ who

dreams: to restore sight to the blind, to view the animals on the

refused to take his directions (I, 501, 506). The most significant

moon (if any), to make men wise and happy through medicine,

pa~~ages

in this regard are to be fi.)uml in the Ruin for the Direc-

to fly like a bird. Medical observatiom are scattered throughout

tion of the A"!ind. From the outset, Descartes contrasts the diversity

his work. He confessed to the Marquess of Newcastle that the

of technological skills with the unity of theoretical understand-

primary purpose of his studies had ahvays been to preserve health, 1

ing and proposes using theory to achieve total knowledge. As each

and he probably believed, as Constantijn lluygens reported, that

acquisition of truth becomes a rule of method, thought moves

"that vexing custom, death, will one day disappear" (II, 550). His

from truth to truth, and it thereby acquires the ability to act reli-

technical preoccupations \Vith optics can be f()und in his corres-

ably and efficiently. Thb ability is the reo;u]t of a o;ustained atten-

pondence with David Ferrier (1629-1638) as well as in the Optics.

tiveness that the specialized artisan, limited and partial in his

A.s h)r his research and experiments \Vith machinery, apart from

view:;, seeks in vain to achieve. In Rule Five, Descartes mentions

the brief treatise on lifting engines \Vritten for lluygens in 1637,

among the illusions that his method tends to eliminate that of

have only Adrien Baillet's account of Descartes's relations with

people who "study mechanics apart from phy'>ics and, without

Villebressieu, the king's engineer (I, 209, 214, 218). Baillet lists those ofVillebressieu's inventions allegedly due to suggestions

any proper plan, comtruct new instruments ... ."2 Countering such

from Descartes: a water pump, a wheeled bridge tOr usc in attack-

phy: "All the rules of ,\-1echanics belong to Physics, so that all

\\'l'

presumption is this admirable affirmation of Principles of Philoso-

ing fOrtres'le'l, a portable fOlding boat for crossing rivers and a

things that are artificial are also natural" (IX, 321). That is wh:'

\Yagon chair f<Jr the transport of \VOtmded soldiers. This brief

"one must fir~t explain what the laws of nature are ,md how nature

rl~suml· of Descarte~'s technological interests, insignificant though

usually behaves before one can teach how those law~ can be made

it may seem, is nevertheless worth remembering because it was

to produce unusual effects" (II, 50).-)() do without understanding

210

22J

j '.

.

RENE

INTERPRETAriONS

DESCARTES

the \vhy of what he is doing is the lot of the mere technician. To

cal: "One can indeed make a machine that sustains itself in the

promise \vithout perfOrming is the definition of the charlatan.

air like a bird, metaphysice loquendo, for birds themselves, in my

To obtain effects at \viii through understanding of their causes is sible by studying \vhat is theoretically necessary. Thus far, there

opinion at any rate, are such machines, but not p~_vsice or mora/iter loquendo, because it would require springs so light yet so povvcrftJI that humans could not manufacture them" (Ill, 163 ).

is nothing in Descartes's philosophy concerning technology that

Descartes never explained his thinking about the difference

does not seem obvious, if by obvious we mean something that

bet\veen science and construction, two human activities that his

has become familiar owing to modern philosophy's long-standing

philosophy seems to suggest not only stem from a common source

interest in ,a theme that, from da Vinci to the Encyclopedists on

but are convertible_, in the sense that knovvledge can be converted

to Auguste Comte and Karl Marx, became a standard topos.

into construction. Hence, it is up to us to clarify his meaning by

the ambition of Descartes. We learn what is technologically pos-

In Descartes's thinking, however, there \vere important restric-

looking at the texts and comparing various strands of his think-

tions on the conversion ofknmvledge into action. Descartes saw

ing. De~cartes maintained that one should be able to deduce

obvious "difficulties" in moving from theory to practice vvhich

empirical results from intuitive principles that he called "seeds

not even perfect intelligence could resolve by itself. Even given

of truth" or "simple [or occasionally, absolute J natures." An effect

perfect knowledge, the technological embodiment of that knowl-

had not been explained, he held, until one could s<1y how by an

edge would in some cases contain inevitable imperfections. No

act of Go.d it might have been made different but no less intelli-

Archimedean mirror, even one polished by an angel, could burn

gible. The celebrated passage of Part Six of the Discourse on the

an object a league away unless it were made extremely large (I,

Method in which the impossibility of completely deducing effects

109). Even if an angel \vere to give instructions, based on theory,

from causes leads to acknm,dedgment of the need to "judge the

for building a steelyard balance capable of weighing objects up

causes in terms of their efl'ects" clearly indicates that technologi-

to two hundred pounds, "it is almost impossible to be so precise

cally useful "forms or types of bodies" may be impediments to

in all aspects of construction that there should be no fault in

analytic deduction. From first causes, the scientist can deduce

the scale, and thus practice will discredit theory" (II, 469). The

"the heavens, the stars, an earth, and even, on earth, water, air,

instrument must therefore be calibrated empirically, Descartes

fire and minerals," that is, "ordinary effects," "common and

recommends. Five years after formulating a theory of lenses, he

simple things." But whereas science treatr.; matter as homogene-

wrote Marin Mersenne that in lensmaking the gap between the-

ous and without distinctive identity, the technician, who relates

ory and practice \vas so great that theoretical perfection could

matter to "our use of it," tre-ats it as particular and diverse-

never be achieved (Ill, 585). Note that the three examples dis-

hence the need for experimental trial and error. The passage in

cussed thus far - mirrors, lenses and scales - involve the theo-

the Discourse in \vhich Descartes proceeds from theory to tech-

ries of optics and levers, which were among the earliest successes

nology is greatly elucidated, I think, by another passage, this one

of Cartesian science. Even more explicitly, Descartes held that if

from the Principles of Philosophy, which proceeds in the other

men could not fly, the problem was not theoretical but practi-

direction, from technology to theory:

222

22]

,I

I

INTERPRETATIONS

i\h·dicine, .r-..t..::ch,mics ,md, in generJ.I, J.ll the arts in which knowlt"dge

)~

RENE

DESCARTES

pnfections of technology provide "the occasion" tOr theorNical

ot physic-; mJ.y be meful have but one goal: to apply sensitive bodies

rest.:'arch aimed at resolving "difficulties." Science, therefore,

tn one another in <;uch a \\',1~' that,

grows out of technology. not in the sense that the true is a codi-

0\\

ing to natural cause<;, '>t'll'>ible

dlvns art• produced. In this \\-e do just as wdl if the seric'i of causes

fication of the useful, a record of success, but, ratht:r, in the sense

thus imagined is fa\<;e a:o. if it were true, since the ~erie~ is supposed

that technological obstacles, setbacks and failures lead toques-

to be similar insofar as it~ sensible effects are concerned (IX, 322).

tions about the nature of the resistance encountered by human .ut. Obstacles to progress are seen to be independent of human

If, in many case!'., practice "discredits theory," it is because "any

des in·~. and this leads to a search fOr true knowledge. Science may

application of sensitive bodies to one another," or, in other words,

later claim to impose di~cipline on technologies born \vithout

any technical synthesis, will normally include unpredictable and

permission from any theorist. But where do such technologies

unanticipated cHects, given that

originate? Not in the faculty of understanding, although that fac-

'-W'

an.· working with substances

abom which nut everything can be deduced. Descartes aho believed that knowledge and construction were

ulty might enable learned men to surpass "the ordinary artisan"

(VII, 227), but, rather, in the exigencies ofhje. Thus Descartes,

related in another way, howeq_;r: things could he built without

who had long dreamed of an infallible medical scienct, felt an

knowledge of the theory of hO\v they \Vorked, and this in turn

urgent need tOr it when hb hair began to turn white (I, 4 3 5) and

could provide theoretical opportunities. This, I think, is the les-

he sensed that death might deprive him of the "more than century-

son of the Opt1n when rere.-td in the light of the problem that

old hope" that justified his concern with his bodv (I. 507 ). Bt~fOre

concerns us here. Optical theory begJ.n with the invention of the

he could write the Optics, moreover, his failing eyes vvhich \vere

magnifying glass, "vhich initially was the fruit of trial and error,

easily deceived had interff.red with his ability to perceive useful

and luck. That initial success was later blindly copied. Yet the

things. Since "we cannot make ourselves a new bodv" (VII, 148 ),

ne\\· invention still suffered from many deficiencit.:'s, and Descartes

we must augment our internal organ.'> \Vith external org,ms (VIr,

believed in the need for scientific study of what constituted a

14~) and supplement our natural ones with artificial ones (VII,

good lens. I le proposed to deduce the proper shape of lenses from

165 ). The impetus to create ne\v technologies stems from man's

purely fortuitous technological discov-

needs, appetites and will (IX, Principles cf Philc
ery provided dw occasion fOr "many good minds to find out a

theory of tht• union of soul and body, Descartes \vas careful to

the laHs of light. Thus,

.1

numher of things about optics" (VII, 82). In particular, it pro-

emphasize the irreducibility of the emotions, and in his theory of

vided Descartes with the "opportunity to write this treatise" (VII, ~2, 159).

error he stressed the prim<1l importance of the will. These emphases suggest that he bclien:d that lit{·. ,.,·hose philosophy con~ists

According to the Optics, knowledge of nature depend<; on tech-

in the desire to live \veil, cannot be apprehended in terms of pure

nology in two \\",lys. First, technology provides instruments, in

understanding alone, that is, "vithin a system of purely intellec-

thi-; case the nugnif),ing glass, that lead to the discovery of ne\V

tual judgments. Thus, the conviction that techo. logy cannot be

phenqmcna (VII, 81, 226). Second and more important, tlw im-

reduced to sci~·nce and construction cannot be reduced to under-

22-J-

IN 1

ERPRE:~AT

01\JS

standing, together with the converse belief that the whole edi-

RENE

DE:SCARTFS

The Theory of the Animal-Machine

fice of science cannot simply be converted into action, comes

[82] Descartes's theory of the animal-machine is inseparable from

dO\·Vn to a belief in the existence of a unique "power." Liberty

hi'> famous dictum, "I think, therefOre I am." The radical distinc-

and will are not subject to the same limitations as intelligence,

tion betvvcen soul and body, thought and extension, implies tht'

not only in the human mind but also in God. For Descartes, tech-

substantial unity of matter, whatever its fOrm, and thought, \Yhat-

nology \vas ahvays to some degree a synthetic and, as such, un-

cver its function.l Since judgment is the soul's only function,

analyzable fOrm of action, but I do not believe that he vie\ved it

there is no reason to believe in the existence of an "animal soul,"

consequently as unimportant; rather, he saw it as a f(xm of crea-

since animals, bereft of language and invention, show no sign of

tion, though admittedly an inferior one. If the foregoing analysio.; is correct, one question remains un-

being capable ofjudgment. 4 The denial that animals possess souls (or the faculty of rca-

answned: Why is there no theory of creation in Descartes's phi-

son) does not imply they arc devoid of life (defined as warmth in

losophy? Or, to put it another \vay, why is there no aesthetics?

the heart) or sensibility (insofar as the sensory faculties depend

Of COUrSe, it is difficult to draw any COnclusion \VhatSOl'Vt'r ft·om an absence- but there are grounds fOr asking whether Deo:.;cartco:.;

on the djsposition ofthe organs).r; The same letter I cited above reveals one of the moral under-

might not havl' felt an obscure sense that admitting the possibil-

pinnings of the theory of the animal-machine. Dc'icartc..; doe' lOr

ity of a general aesthetics might have contradicted his general

animals what Aristotle did fOr slaves: he devalue' them in order

thc()ry. for Dcsc:trtl's, the intelligibility of reJlity deriYed from

to

mcchanin and math(:matical physics. For him, movement, along

cruel to animals than it i~ overly rious trm·.ud rncn, freed from

jtL.;,tif~

using them as instruments. ".l\1y opinion is no more

with extension and number, was a fundament
the supnstitions of the Pythagorcans, becau'.;c it absolves them

cept of which it was safe to neglect all qualitative and synthetic

of thl· hint of crime whenever they cat or 1, ;11 anirn<1ls." Surpris-

asplTts. And although he saw movement as the source of all mate-

ingly,

rial \·ariety, he simultaneously precluded himself from r.1ising the

Leibniz to Conring: if we must look upon animals .ts something

Wl'

find the same argument stood on its hecld in cl letter from

issue of diversification, which is one aspect of the problem of cre-

more than machines, then we should become PythagoreJ.ns <md

ation. As we know from the Discourse on the Method, he candidly

give up our dominion over the beasts.h This attitude is rypical of

admitted that geometric analysis had its limits, but he may not

VVestern man. The theoretical mechanization of life is insepar-

have \vi shed to acknowledge, or admit to himself, that the impos-

able from the technological utilization of the animal. !'vlan c
sibilitv_. of a "definitive" morality. (since action normallv- involves

claim possession of and mastery over nature only by denying that

desire and risk) also implied the impossibility of a "definitive"

nature has any purpose in itself, and then only by regarding all of

analytic science (as he wished his own to be). ["Descartes," Tra-

nature other than himself- even that which appears to be ani-

mux, pp. 79-85]

mat(~-

as a means to an end.

Such an attitude justified the com,tructinn of a mechanical model of the living body, including the human body - f(H· Des2 26

227

INTERPRETATIONS

RENE

DESCARTES

cartes, the human body, if not man himself, was a machine.

construction of the animal-machine that models their behavior.

Descartes fOund the mechanical model he was looking fOr in

In other words, in order to understand the animal-machine, one

automata, or moving machines.7

must think of it as preceded, in the logical as well as the chrono-

In order to bring out the full significance of DeScartes's the-

logical sense, by God, as efficient cause, and by a preexisting liv-

ory, let us turn now to the beginning of the Treatise on Man, a

ing thing, as formal and final cause. In short, I propose to read

work first published in Leyden in 1662 in the form of a Latin copy and only later published in the original French, in 1664.

as involving a break with the Aristotelian concept of causality, as

He wrote there:

one in which all the types of causality that Aristotle invokes can

the theory of the animal-machine, "vhich is generally interpreted

be found, but not simultaneously and not where Aristotle would These men will be composed, as we are, of a soul and a body. First

have placed them.

I must describe the body on its ov,rn, then the soul, again on its own;

The text explicitly states that the construction of the living

and finally I must show how these two natures would have to be

machine' is to mimic that of a preexisting organism. The mechan-

joined and united in order to constitute men who resemble us.

ical model assumes a live original. Hence, Descartes in this text

I suppose the body to be nothing but a statue or machine made

may be closer to Aristotle than to Plato. The Platonic dcmiurge

of earth, which God fOnns \'t'·ith the explicit intention of making it as

copies Ideas. The Idea is a model of \vhich the natural object is

much as possible like us. Thus God not only gives it externally the

a copy. The Cartesian God, Artijex maximus, tries to equal the liv-

colors and shapes of all the parts of our bodies, but aho places inside

ing thing itself: The living machine is modeled on the living thing.

it all the parts reCJuired to make it walk, eat, breathe, enabling it to

Think of approximating a circle by means of a series of inscribed

imitate all those functions which seem to proceed from matter and

polygons, each with one more vertex than the preceding one: in

to depend solely on the interacting movements of the organs.

order to conceive of the passage from polygon to circle, one has

We sec clocks, artificial fOuntains, mills and other such machines

to imagine extending this series to infinity. Mechanical artifice

which, although man-made, seem to move of their own accord in

is inscribed in life in the same way: in order to imagine the pas-

various ways; but I am supposing this machine to be made by the

sage from one to the other, one has to imagine_ an extrapolation

I think you may reasonably think it capable of

to infinity, that is, to God. This is what Descartes appears to mean

a greater variety of movements than I could possibly imagine in it,

hands of God, and

by the final remarks of the above quotation. Hence, the theory

and of exhibiting more artistry than I could possibly ascribe to it. 8

of the animal-machine is to life as a set of postulates is to geom-

•.;o

etry, that is, a mere rational reconstruction that only pretends to Reading this text as naively as I possibly can, I come to the conclusion that the theory of the animal-machine makes sense

ignore the existence of what it is supposed to represent and the priority of production over rational justification.

only by virtue of t\VO hypotheses that often receive less emphasis

This feature of Descartes's theory \vas clearly perceived, more-

than they are due. The first is that God the fabricator exists, and

over, by a contemporary anatomist, the celebrated Nicolaus Steno,

the second is that the existence of living things must precede the

\vho delivered a Dissertation on the Anato~v of the Brain in Paris

228

INfERPRFT.O.TI<Jh~:O,

RENF

IJf-C,CARTE:S

in 1665, one year after the publication of the Treatise on .Man

appropriate disposition of the bodily organs which arc required

appeared. Hi<; homage to Descartes is all the more surprising in

for making the movement. On the contrary, when all the bodily

that anatomists did not ah\'ays appron· of the philosopher's way

organ'i are appropriately disposed f()f some mon'nll'nt, the body

nf looking at thl'ir subject. Stcno noted, in fact, that Descartes

has no need of the soul to produce that movement."Hl In other

saw man not as anatomists saw him but as reconstructed by the

words, the soul's relation to the body is not that ot a king or a

,,,.

philosopher from a divine vantage point. In substituting mecha-

general issuing orders to his subjects or troops. Envisioning the-

nism for organism, Descartes might appear to be banishing theol-

body in terms of a clockwork mechanism, Descartc~ saw the vari-

ogy from the philosophy of life, but that appearance is misleading:

ous organs as controlling one another in much the same \vay as

the theology was reinstated in the ver_v premise of the argument. . '\n anatomical form had been 'lub-.tituted fOr a dynamic one, but

'I

the gear~ of a clock. Descartes thus replaced a political image of command and a magical type nf causality (involving words or

since that anatomical ff)rm was a product of technology, the only

.,igns) "-(th a technological image of "control" Lllld a po-;itivc

possible telcolng~- was implicit in the technique of production.

type of camality involving a mi.:chanical meshing or linkage.

In fact, mechanism and anthropomorphism are not diametrically

[Connaissance, pp. 110-14]

[83 J In short, it may seem that, appearance-; to the contrary

opposed, for while the operation nf a machine can be explained in purely causal terms, the construction of that same machine can-

notwithstanding, the Carte<;i,m explanation fails to get m beyond

not he understo(IJ without a telos or, t()r that mattn, without man.

teleology. This is because mechanism can explain t'Yerything once

,.:\machine is made by man and ttlr man in order to produce cer-

\H'

tain dlects and move toward some goal.

9

\A'hat is positive in Descartes. t!H:refore, and in his project to

.wmme the existence of machines constructed in a certain way,

bur it cannot explain why the machines arc built that way in the fir~t

placi..'. There is no nuchirw f(lr building machines, so that,

understand life in terms of mechanics, is the elimination of all

in a sen.'>e, to explain the workings of an organ or organism in

anthropomorphic aspects of finality. In carrying out thi'> project,

tnms of a mechanical model is to explain it in terms of itself.

hmvever, one kind of anthropomorphism appears to haw been

In the f•nd, we arc dealing\\ ith a tautology. 'J("Jol<; and machines

substitutt'd for another- technological anthropomorphism for

are kinds of organs, and organs are kinds of tools or machines. 11

political anthropom<,rphism.

l-l<..·nce, it i:-, hard to dcrcct any incompatibility bi..·t"·ecn mechaBo~v

and All of fr,, functions, a

nism and te-leology. No one doubts the need ~(lr tools to achieYe

short treatise written in 1648, Descartes took up the question of

certain goals. And conyersely, every mechanism must have a pur-

voluntary movement. With a claritv that dominated all theories

pose, becau'lc a mechanism is a determinate as opposed to a ran-

of automatic and reflex movement dmvn to the nineteenth cen-

dom sn of motions. The real contr,lst is between mechanisms

tury, he offered the observation that the body obey' the soul

whose purpose is obviou-; and those whose purpnsf' is obscure.

In the Dt.:scription of the I /unum

onJy if it is mechanically disposed to dn so. The decision of the

Tht· purpose nfa lock or a clock

soul is not

of a crab's prc~.')urc sensor, which is often cited as a marvel of adaptation, is obscure.

Ll

sufficient condition for the movement of the body:

''The soul cannot produce any movement in the body without the

j.;;

2 l'

obYiom, \\·hcn:,v.. tlw purpor.;e

I

PEI\.F-

r< T E R PRE TAT I 0 '' S

It is undeniably true that certain biological mechanisms serve

UEoSCARTES

of the imtrumcnt. 11 Second is the position of the pineal gland

certain purposes. To take an example that mechanistic biologists

in relation to the brain, together with tht" state of the gland's

often citt", consider the broadening of the female pelvis prior to

outer surface; Descartes devoted a great deal of time to the efTects

birth. Given that the fetus is 1-1.5 centimeters larger than the pel-

of the will, memory, imagination and common sense on these

vic opening, birth would be impossible if a relaxation of the pubic

variablc.~.

14

The instincts arc the third and last fJ.ctor affect-

symphyses and a posterior movement of the 5acrococcygian bone

ing the animal spirits. To understand what Descartc~ meant by

did not increase the diameter of the aperture. Given a phenome-

instinct.<;,, recall his distinction between external movements and

non whose hiological purpose is so clear, one can legitimately

jntern External movt:ments can be

refuse to believe that the mechanism that makes it possible (and

further broken down: they an_~. either expressive (laughing or cry~

that is essential tOr it to occur) has no biological purpose. A mech-

ing, fi-Jr ~:.·xample), and thus purely circumstantial, or adaptive,

anism is a necessary sequence of operations, and to verify the presence of a mechanism, one must determine what effect those

that is, "useh1l fOr pursuing desirable things or
op<"rations produce. [n other \vords, one must find out what the

h)r Descartes, the physiological mechanism that determined the

intended purpose of the mechani~m is. The shape and structure

dio;tribution of animal spirih emanating from the brain dept·nded

of a machine tell us about its use only if we already know how

on what can only be called a biological teleology (the pursuit of

machines of similar shape and structure arc used. Hence, we must

desirablt· things and the avoidance of harmful ones). This was not

find out how a machine "vorks in ordt•r to deduce its function

a lapse. Other. similar examples can be fOund elsewhere in the

from its structure. [Connaissance, p. 115]

Treatise on Jfan. In the Primae cogitationes circa generationem ani-

The Distinctiveness of the Animal-Machine

m,dium, Oescartc~ Invokes the commoda and incommoda naturae as came') of various animal movements, the mechanism of which

[84 J De~cartes began by attempting to formulate what he him-

i:-. explained in terms of animal spirits. 1s Martial Gueroult, more-

self called a "theory of medicine," 12 that is, a purely speculative

over, has pointed out the remark-1bk significance of the .)·;ah

anatomical and physiological science as rigorous and exact as

;Heditation.

marhem.1tical physics and just as rct:cptive to conversion into prac-

To sum up. Descartes distinguished three types oftJctnrs influ-

tical applications, or therapies. But what ""'aS to be deduced from

encing the How of animal spirits: external and contingent tJctors

the physics ofthe human body, namely, a determination of"vital

(:-.ensory excitations), acquired and individual factors (memory)

utility," was in fact present from the beginning in the subject's

and nawral and specific factors (instincts). In rhis he showed a

principles. [Formation du refbe. p. 53]

remarkable alertness to the biological phenomenon of interac-

[85] According to Descartes, the distribution of the spirits upon leaving the brain depends on several factors. First are the

tion bet\vecn organism and environment. [Formation du rCflcxe,

pp. 31-32]

effects of objects that stimulate the senses, or excitations, which

[86] A vitalist principle of sorts thus remained part of the

Descartes compares to the fingers of an organist touching the keys

explanation of movements that, according to the original proj-

2J2

23J

ii',TERPRETAT

r->toriE:

ONS

DESCARTES

ect, \Nere to be explained exclusively in terms of material la,vs.

to tell the time than it is for a tree which grew from this or that

Gueroult is correct, then, \Vhen he says that Descartes began with

-;ced to produce the appropriate fruit." 25 But may we not reverse

a conception of medicine as pure physics which he later rejected,

the order of this relation and say that what('ver is natural. that is,

and, furthc·r. that "one of his chief reasons fOr confessing the fail-

mechanical, in the animal organism is also artifici;·!l, giwn that

un· of his medical project was his growing conviction that me-

animal-machines are automatons constructed, as it wert', by Cod?

chanical concepts alone would never suffice to create a medical

And in constructing these machines, did God not pnwidc for

science bccau~c the human body is not pun· t'xtcn":~iun but in part a p<;ychophy~ical substancc." 19 rollowing Gucroult, perhaps, but

their conservation, indiYiduoHion and reproduction by lllLThanical means? In other words, \\Tr(' not cntain teleological ends incor-

mon.· boldly, I ,.,·ould ask whether the attempt to reduce animal

porated into rhe assemblage of mechanical parts? Since thmt' emh

biology to mechanics did not reveal the resistance of vital phe-

surpass our understanding, hmvcver, cannot and -.,hould not the

nomena to full expression in mechanical terms. I earlier alluded

.,cience of living things leave them out of its account? Thus, in

to the pas<;age in the Primae Wfjitationcs in which commoda and

positing mechanical equivalents for living things, Descartes ban-

incommoda naturae were seen to influence the movements of or-

i~;hed teleology from the realm of human knowledge only to rein-

ganic part~ and even entire organisms. 70 True. Descartes, who

state it in the (immediately fOrgotten) rt'alm of divine knowledge.

prided himself on explaining what we would call the natural

1f, moreover, a poorly made clock obeys the <;arne J.n,·s of me-

Jppetires nr inclinations of animals "solely in terms of the rules

chanics a'i a we\1-m.ldc one, so that the only way to distinguish

of mechanics alonl',":1 pointed out that "hrutt's ha'T no knowl-

between the t \\"U i-; tn invoke ''the makn\ dc-;irc" and "tlw usc

edge of what i~ adYantageous or ha.nnful''- meaning that they are

for which the nMkcr intendnl" 2*'l his creatiom, it follows that an~

nm consciou~ of ~uch things or able to articulate such knm-vlcdge,

working machine is an a.'l.'lCillblagc of parts embodying a purpose.

so that what we observe is simply an association between certain

\Vhat defines the rn,Khine is not the laws ofmech<miu that dic-

movements and certain events that enable animals to

Here,

tate how it works hut the purpose for which it was built. If an

however, we touch on what is probably the limit of mechanistic

animal that lives in this \\·orld i'i also a machine, it mmt be the

explanation, for the three aspcct5 of animal life and develop-

embodiment of some, purpose. The fact that the purpose eludes

grow.22

ment - conservation, individuation and reproductionn - point to

both the animal's a\\·areness and human understanding does not

a. distincti,·e difference between animal-machines and mechanical

alter thi':i state of aihirs in any fundamental way, for ()therwise

onl's. To be sure, Descartes continually imisted on the identity of

there would lw no dillcrcncc between the living anim,ll and the

the two types of machine: "Since art copies nature. and people

dead animal, bnwc~·n tHUctio vi\·cntium and aarctio mortwvom.

can m,1ke various automatons which mon' without thought, it

Gucrnult, 1 think, \\,ls clearly a"·.ut> that iL in considering organ-

seems n:a.,onable that nature should even produce its mvn autom-

ism'!, we ab-.rra(.-t l"rnm all t~.·k·ological considerations, nrgani.'lm~

atons, which are much more splendid th.m artificial ones- namely,

cea<;e to be indivisible entitie-s: "If we n·mm·c one hoof !"rom a

the animab."2-+ Another passage expresses the same idea: "It is no

horse, doc<; it bccomt· kss 'horselike' than other lwrs~__'~?" 21 And ii",

less natural h)r a clock constructed with this or that set of \Vheels

in the :>pccial casc of man. there is no \\'ay to avoid recourse to

2]4

INTERPRETATIONS

"God's transcendent purpose, namely, that the la\\'S of mechanism

CHAPTFH

ELEVEN

alont: should suffice to engender and preserve machines whose parts are arranged so as to fulfill the requisite conditions for a

Auguste Comte

union of bodv and soul, that is, a relation of means to end"28does this not imply, then, as Gueroult suggests, that if we assume that machines lack this Hsame organization and interdependence of parts and \vhole,"29 we must accept an "incomprehensible clivi~ sion" bet'vveen men and animals? Indeed, without such interdepcndenct:, which allows a mechanical relation of structure to be transformed into a teleological relation of fitness for purpose, the indivisible functional unity of the organism becomes inconceiv~ able. The incomprehensible division is tolerable only when pre~ sen ted as an "unfathomable mystery" that situates man in relation to God's wisdom.JO

The Montpe/lier School [87] After being banished to Montpellier for his role in the closing of the Ecole Polytechnique, Auguste Comte took courses at the

In short, only a metaphysician could have set forth the prin-

faculty of Medicine, where Paul~Joseph Barthez had taught until

ciples of a mechanistic biology without falling at once into con-

his death ten years prior to Comte's arrival. Tht: man who actually

tradiction (contradiction that must in any case emerge in the end).

introduced the father of positivism to biology was Henry Ducrotay

Few historians of biology have noticed this, and even fewer histori-

de Blainvillc, a former professor at the Museum and the Sorbonne.

cally minded biologists. It is more regrettable that philosophers

J laving met him at Claude Henri de Saint-Simon's, Comtc at-

have made the same mistake. [Formation du rijlcte, pp. 54-56]

tended Blainville's course in general and comparative physiology

from 1829 to 1832. He admired his teacher's encyclopedic knowledge and systematic mind. The Cours de philosophic positi~'C was in fact dedicated to Blainville and Charles fourier, and its forti~ eth lesson is full of praise for Comte's erst\vhile teacher. [ ... ] In portraying the eras that preceded the advent of the positive

spirit in philosophy, Comte liked to sketch the. history of biology in broad strokes, dra\.ving on a keen awareness of the interrelatedness of biological discoveries that he took from Blainville's lectures. A striking example can be found in the Fifty~sixth lesson of the Cours, \Vhich concerns the naturalists of the eighteenth century.1 1 Comte excelled at giving summary descriptions of the contributions of various scientists and at \Veighing their relative 2]6

2J7

11\.TEof.!PRETAT'O"JS

AUGU'31E

COMTE

importance. Among those whom he singled out as precursors of

metaphysical state of physiology," maintained that Barthez's "vital

positivism were Hippocrates, Barthez, Bichat, Johann Friedrich

principle" pointed to "a mctaphysical state of physiology farther

Meckel, Lamarck and, of course, Claude Bernard. The range of

removed from the theological state than the IOnnulation used by

the citations proves that Comte was genuinely learned in the sub-

Stahl assumed." Unlike so many of his own contemporaries and so

ject, whence the easc with lvhich he attained a lofty vantage fi·om

many of Barthu's, Comte refused to be misled by a mere change

which he was able to conceive of the history of science a') a critical

0

history, that is, a history not only oriented toward the present but

stituted a new name fi)r what Stahl had called "the soul." On this

judged against the norms of the present. Thus, in the forty-third

point, he made a profound ,md pertinent remark: "For so chimer-

fterminology. He did not believe that Barthez had merely sub-

lesson Comte's account of the controversy between mechanists

ical an order of ideas, such a change in terminology alwayo, indi-

and vitalists was planned to reveal the "obviously progressive

cates an authentic modification of the central idea."

intent" of the Montpellier vitalists, especially Barthez and Bichat,

Barthez's invaluable historian, his friend Jacques Lordat, points

whose work was so unjustly decried at the time in Paris. [Ftudes,

out that Albrecht von Haller was primarily responsible for the

pp. 62-6 3]

mi,;interpretation that Comte avoided. It was von Haller who

f88] In a note in the twenty-eighth lesson of the Coun, Comte hailed the illustrious Rarthez as "a far more influential philoso-

wrote in the second volume of his Anatomicol Ubra~v that Barthez

pher" than ConJillac, and in his preface to the j~1 om'eaux rilriments

source of the lift-_ fOrce.

de !a science de !'hom me he praised it as a text "of eminent philo-

copy of his 1772 inaugural address to the Montpellier Faculty of

sophical power" and an "excellent logical theory," far superior

i\·1cdicine, "De Principio vitali hominis," von Haller indicated

believed that what he called the "vital principle" was the ultimate P

But in thanking Barthel fOr sending a

to the "metaphysician" Condillac's Traiti des .~vstc'mes. In the fOrty-

that he himself was not so bold as to "accept a principle of a novel

third lesson, Barthez is praised fOr having established "the essen-

and unknown nature.''

tial characteristics of sound philosophical method, after having

Note, moreO\Tr, that while Rarthez's \vork was certainly one

so triumphantly demonstrated the inanity of any attempt to dis-

'iource of Comtc's philosophy, it i~ at least plausible that Barthe1\

cover the primordial causes and intimate nature of phenomena

Fxposition de Ia doctrine mridicole, which Lordat published in 1!-~18,

of any order, as well as having reduced all true sciencc to the dis-

influenced Comte's judgment of that work. Jacques Lordat was a

cover;' of the actual laws governing phenomena." There can be

professor of anatomy and physiology at Montpellicr when Comte,

no doubt that it was from a medical treatise published in 1778

who was banished to Montpellier in 1816, attended courses there.

that Comtc took the fundamental tenets of his positive philoso-

When Comte characterit.ed Barthez's cxpression "vital principle"

phy, which he believed were confirmed by Pierre-Simon Laplace's

as a mere "formula," he wa') actually using the same term that

1796 Exposition du systCme du monde and Fourier's 1822 Thiorie ana~l'tique de lo chaleur.

Lordat had used in critici1.ing von llallcr's C1ilurc to understand

It should now be clear why Comte, who characterized Georg Ernst Stahl's doctrine as "the most scientific f()rmulation of the

that the phrase implied no belief in a special substance or entity distinct from body and soul. Comte encountered the teachings of the Montpellier School in iVlnntpellier itself, and that, coupled

I"'TERPRETATIONS

AUGUSTE

with his outspoh·n animosity tmvard certain leading figures of the Paris School, may have had something to Jo with the admiration that enabled him to form a clear picture of Montpellier's doctrine. [Etudes, pp. 7 5-77] [89] Comte was able to perceive the direct, authentic insight into biological realities that lay hidden behind the abstract concept of the vital principle. From Barthez as well as Bichat, he learned of the intimate relations among the concepts of organization, life and consensus. This debt to BarthE'Z may explain Comte's tl'ndency to present him as the sole representative of the Montpellier School. He overlooked, or pretended to overlook, ThCophile de Rordeu. The idea that the life of an organism is .1 synthesis of elementary lives, an idea that delighted Diderot in D'Alembert's Dream, would no doubt have seemed as unsatisfactory to Comte as did the theory of organic molecules- and he woulc! have raised against it the same objl·ctions that he leveled. in the k)rty-first ksson of the Cours, at th~, first formulations of cell theory. If Bichat dissuaded Comte from f()Jiowing Lorenz Oken, Banhez overshadowed de Bordeu in his mind. The concept of complex living things composed of organic molecules or animalcules suggested a misleading analogy between chemistry and biology. Life is necessarily a property of the whole organism: "The elementary animalcules \vould obviously be even more incomprehensible than the composite animal. even apart from the insoluble difficulty thJ.t one would thereby gratuitously create concerning the effective mode of so monstrous an association." Very much in the spirit of Barthez, Comte held that "every organism is by its very nature an indivisible whole, which we divide into component parts by mere intellectual artifice only in order to learn more about it and always with the intention of subsequently reconstituting the whole." The statement reveals as manv taboos as it does ,crupks. [Etudes, pp. n-79] c

-

COMTE

Bioloyical Philosophy [90] The invention of the term "biology" reflected a growing awareness on the part of physicians and physiologists that their subject matter was fundamentally different from that of the physical sciences. The coining of the word suggests an assertion of the discipline's autonomy, if not ofits indept'ndence. Comte's biological philosophy provided systematic justification fOr that assertion: it connoted full acceptance of, as well as a need to consolidate, "the great scientific revolution \vhich, under Bichat's leadership. transferred overall priority in natural philosophy h·om astronomy to biology."n Comte was not entirely wrong to see the disappointments he had suffered in his career as consequences of the fact that he, a mathematician, had taken up cudgels on behalf of the biological school in the struggle to maintain, "against the irrational ascendancy of the mathematical school, the independencl' and dignity of organic studies."H Comte's conception of thl' milieu ju~tified his belief that biology could not be a separate science. And his conception of the organism justified his belief that biology must be an autonomous science. The originality and fOrce of his position lies in the correlation- or, some \vould say, dialectical relation- between these two concept~. Comte took the Aristotelian term "milieu" from Lamarck via Blainville. Although it "''as in common use in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century nwchanio and thl' physics of iluids, it was Comte who, by reverting to the word's primary sense, transf(xmed it into a comprehensive, synthetic concept that would prove useful to later biologists and philosophers. When he suggested, in the forty-third lesson of his Cours in 1Rl7, that the first duty of biology is to provide a general theory of milieus, Comte, who may not have known thl' \vork ofVVilliam Edwards (1824) or Etienne Geoffroy Saint-llilairc (1831) in this area, thought he was pro-

1'-jTERPRETATIONS

claiming Lamarck's superiority over Bichat. Hichat's distaste for

AUGUST tO

COMTE

to whom he alludes, enabled him to see, in the earliest formula-

the methods of the eighteenth-century iatromathematicians had

tions of cell theorv, the first glimmerings of a theory of"degrces

led him to insist not only that the distinction between living and

of individuality." For Comte, the very concept of the cell implied

inert was legitimate but also that the living and the inert were

a misleading analogy bct\vccn organic bodies and inorganic com-

fundamentally antagonistic. Against this, Comte argued that "if

pounds composed of indivisible molecules. l7 [Etudes, pp. 6 3-66] [91] Clearly, the idea underlying all ofComte's positions on biology was the necessary duality of life and matter. In biological philosophy, the eighteenth century bequeathed two temptations to the ninctct·-nth: materialism and hylozoism, that i~. the doctrine that matter is animated or that matter and life are inseparable. Comte, like Descartes, battled on two fronts, and his tactics were, if nothing else, Cartesian. The matter/life dualism was the positivi ':it equivalent of the Cartesian metaphysical dualism of extension and thought. For Comte, dualism was a prerequisite of univcrs,1l progress, which to him meant nothing other than the subjugation and control of inerl matter by the universe of the living under the guidance of humankind. "\Vc are, al bottom, even less capable of conceiving of all bodies as living," wrote Comtc,

all that surrounds living bodies really tended to destroy them, their exbtence would be fundamentally unintelligible."l'i Comte's successive judgments of Lamarck are revealing, however, of the deeper meaning of his biological views.[ ... ] Beyond the first consequence of the Lamarckian theory of the milieunamely, the variability of species and the gradual inception of ne\v varieties - Comte perceived a possibly monist, and ultimately mechanist, tendency. If the organism is conceived of as being passively shaped by the pressure of the environment, if the living thing is denied all intrinsic spontaneity, then there is no reason not to hope that the organic might someday be explained in terrns of the inert. But here the spirit of Bichat rose up in Comte against the threat of "cosmological usurpation," 36 against the shouldering aside of Larmarck 's insights in favor of an uncompromising mathematical approach.

than as inert, because the mert' notion of life implie~ the exi'itcnce

Similarly, Comtc held, like Bichat and following his lead, that the tissue was the lowest possible level of anatomical analysis; he therefore denied that the cell, . .vhich he called the "organic monad," could be the basic component of all complex organisms. It was not simply that he was suspicious of microscopy, whose technique-, were still relatiYely primitive; Comte's opposition to cell theory was primarily logical. For him, an organism was an indivisible structure of individual parts. Actual living things were not "individuals" in any simple sense. Neither his superficial knowledge of German nature philosophy, especially that ofOkcn, nor his reading of Henri Dutrochet (at around the time he \vas preparing the Cours), nor even his reading ofTheodor Schwann,

of thing~ not endowed with it .... Ultimately, living being-, can c:-.ist only in inert mili(·us, which provide tlwm with both a 'iubstrate ,md a direct or indirt•ct source of nourishment. ... If everything were alive, no natural law would be ros~iblc, for the variability that is ah,·ays inhert'nt in vital spontaneity is really limited only by the preponderance of the irwrt milieu. ~x

Even in beings where the only manif(·-,tation oflifc is vegetative, one finds a "radical contrast between life and death." Hetween plants and animals there is simply a "real distinction," whereas between plants and inert substances there is a "radical st>paration." The traditional division of nature into three kingdoms

AUGUSTE

INTERPRETATIONS

COMTE

(animal, mineral, vegetable) allowed one to imagine a gradual

Lamarck's doctrine. Gall provided Comte vvith an argument in

transition from one species to another along a chain of being;

favor of innate aptitudes and, more generally, of innate func-

Comte therefore proposed replacing that tripartite scheme with

tions - an argument that Comte elaborated into a guarantee of

a new one consisting of two "empires" (living and inert). He was

continued progress through development of a preexisting order. Comtc claimed to have achieved comprehensive, critical in-

convinced that "vital science cannot exist without this irreduc-

sight into the biology of his time. If I have correctly identified

ible dualism."l9 In essence, Comte saw, between Lamarck and Descartes, a par-

the grounds of his self-confidence, it should now be possible to

allel that no one would think of disputing today. Perhaps more

state his most important conclusions in a systematic fashion. First,

perspicacious with respect to the fUture than accurate in his per-

Comte believed that he, following Georges Cuvier, had eliminated

ception of the present, Comte anticipated the consequences of

teleology from biology: the "conditions of existence" replaced

the idea that animals can be conditioned by their environments-

the dogma of final causes, and the only relation assumed to exist

that is, he fOresa\v the possibility of behaviorism. The assumption

between an organism and its environment, or betvveen an organ

of a direct muscular reaction to external impressions is incom-

and its functions, was one of compatibility or fitness, implying

patible, Comte argued, with the idea of "animal spontaneity, which at the very least implies that inner motives are decisive." 40

nothing more than viability. "Within certain limits," Comte states

This would lead to a "restoration of Cartesian automatism, which,

existence is possible." 42 The harmony between fUnction and organ

though incompatible with the facts, continues in one fOrm or

"does not go beyond what actual life requires."·B Since, moreover,

another to mar our leading zoological theories."4l

organisms depend on their environments, living things arc sub-

in the Cours, "everything is necessarily arranged in such a \vay that

Nm"· we can sec why Comtc ascribed such importance to the

ject to cosmic influences. Biology is therefOre related to cosmol-

theories of Franz Joseph Gall, who argued that the fundamental

ogy; hence, the principle that nature's laws are invariable, first

inclinations and drives of human and animal behavior arc innate.

h.lrmulated in astronomy and eventually extended to chemistry,

His cranioscopic method, so easy- all too easy - to celebrate or

could now be extended to biology, thereby invalidating the helief

ridicule, actually stemmed from his principled hostility to sen-

that variability and instability are essential to organic processes.

sualism. If it could be shown that certain areas of the brain were

Finally, generalizing a principle borrowed from Franyois Joseph

by their very nature associated with certain psychic faculties, then

Victor Broussais, Comte held that all pathological phenomena

one must ascribe primordial existence to those faculties. Hence,

coold be explained by the laws of physiology. Thus, he argued that

nothing could have been more alien to Gall's (or Comte's) think-

the difference betv.veen health and disease was a matter of degree

ing than the Lamarckian idea that the biological functions are

rather than of kind - hence medicine should base its actions on

independent of the organs that embody them (and may even influ-

the analytic la\vs of anatomophysiology.

ence the development of those organs). True, Gall did map cere-

Yet, as even the Cours made clear, the very organic structure

bral topography by studying the mental functions of his patients,

of living things constituted an obstacle to further progress in

but in doing so his intention was to refUte, not to corroborate,

~·

'•

positive, experimental physiology. An organism, Comte argued,

r~

AUGUSTE

1 ERPRETATIOI\.S

CO'-.IITE

is a consensus of orgam and functions. The harmony that e-'ists

and that of Kurt Goldstein, to find in the former a phcnomcno-

among the functions of' the organism is "intimate in a ver} dif-

louiccll hiolngv amnt Ia lcttre and in the l.utcr a hitherto-ne~lected t--

ferent sense from the harmon} that exists between the organism

positivi~t inspiration. In fact, Comte had an idea, albeit a con-

and the milieu."H An organism, Comte maintained, is a uni-

fu-;ed one, of where he was going. The intellectual function was

fied whole; to dissect it, to divide it into component parts, was

the distinguishing feature of animal lite. To interpret all life as a

"mere intellectual

artifice." 4 '>

~-

~

The biologist, then, must \vork

series devolving from man, the perfect embodiment of that hmc-

from the general to the specific, from the whole to the parts:

tion, was to trt:>at biology as subordinate to sociology, fl:lr the true

"How can anyone conceive of the 'vholc in term-; of its parts once

theory of intelligence was to be found, Comtc believed, in soci-

cooperation attains the point of strict indivisibility?" 4 b Between Immanuel Kant and CLwdf Hernard, Comte oncl' again made

olog\' and not in psvchology. [Etude<, pp. 67-71] [9~] Comtt>\ biological philo'iophy, that cdiHcc of erudi-

finality, in the guise of totality, an essential element of the defi-

tion and learning, hid an intuitive conviction whose implication-; were. far-reaching. The impetus behind that conviction no doubt

nition of an organism. This was not the only place \\'here the positivist method vio-

stemmed from the fact that a utopian spirit breathed life not only

lated the principle of working from the simple to the complex

into the bold assertions of a brand-new science but al-;o into the

and the known to the unknown. In celebrating the promotion of

time-tested truths of a philosophy almost a-; old as life itself. Sim-

anatomy to the quasi-philosophical dignity of compar.HiYe anat-

ply put, this was the conviction that life takt·s place but does not

omy. a system that providl'd a basis f(x cla .. -.if~·ing the multitude

origin,ue in the ,,-orJd of the inert, wht:"re it abandons to dc,uh

of spl'cific forms, Comtc \vas led to reject Cuder's fond notion

individual organisms that stem from elsc,dH.TC. "The collection

that the animal kingdom consists of a number of distinct branches

of natural bodies does not fl:lrm an absolute whole-" This bel it-t',

and to accept instead Lamarck's and Blainville's th . .~ory of a unique

combined with the i(ka of a continuous, linear series of living

series. Once again, his grounds for making this choice involved a

things culminating, logically as well as tt.•lcologically, in man, was

subordination of the simple to the complex, of the bl'ginning to

eventually transformt>d into the idea of Biocracy as tht· necessary

the end: "The study of man must always dominate the complete

condition of Sociocracy. This was the positivi 'it equivalent of tht·

old metaphvsical itka of a Kealm of Fntk rFtudes, p. 7 3 J

system of biological science, either as point of departure or as

;_,'/I

goal."- 1' This is became the general notion of man is "tlw only

p

immediate" datum we haw.-+:-: Comte thus claimed to be keeping

~~.

Positive Politics

faith with his general program, "which consists in ,1lways reason-

) 'i

[93] The superiority of positive politic~ "rl·~ults ffom the fact

ing from the better known to the lesser known," even though he

"

,_.,

',,';'il

,,

that it discon.'rs what others im·ent." The di~covnv that the inven-

insisted on arranging the animal series in order of decreasing com-

tor of positive politics claimed as his own was that "the natural

plexity - this in order to read the series as "revealing a devolu-

laws that govern the march of civili1.ation" are derived ffom the

tion ffom man rather than

J

perfection ffom the sponge." It \vould

strain credulity to draw a p.-uallt:>l between Comte's approach here

I

laws of human nrganintion. To the extent that "the state of -;ocial organization is essentially dependent IJn the ~tate of civilization,"

c. 1J

INTFRPRETATIONS

social organization is nothing other or more than an aspect of human organization "not subject to major change" (so far as we can see). \Vhat we know of human organization, moreover, is the result of a methodological decision "to envisage man as a term in rhe animal series, indeed, from a still more general point of view, a') one of a collection of organi1.ed bodies or substances." St.•erningly faithfUl to Claude Henri de Saint-Simon's terminology, Comte gave the name "physiology" to the "general science of organized bodies." But a difference between his me of the term and Saint-Simon's is already evident. For Comte, physiology was not just a discipline recently instituted for the study of man as living being, one whose method could serve as a model for the study of m.m in society; more than that, the content of physiology was to become the nucleus of a new science. Physiology owed its content to medicine, and medicine taught this lesson: "Long having hoped that he might learn to repair any disturbance to his organi1atinn and cwn to resist any destructive force, [man J fina1ly n.·al i1ed that his efforts \verc futile as long as they did not cooperate with tho~c of his organization, and still more fUtile when the two were opposed." And further: ''The fact that many illnesses were cured in spite of defective treatments taught physicians that every living body spontaneously takes powerful steps to repair accidental disturbances to its organization." Hence, politics is like medicine in that both are disciplines in \vhich perfection requires observation. And just as there were f\.\'0 schools of medical thought, so, too, were there two <;;chools of political thought: the "politics of imagination" involved "<;;trenuous efforts to discover remcdie~ without sufficient consideration of the nature of the disease"; the "politics of observation," on the other hand, knowing "that the principal cause of healing is the patient's vital strength [force ~'itale ]," is content, "through observation, to remove the obstacles that empirical methods place in the way of a

r~

IJ ST E

CO MTE

natural resolution of the crisis." The linking of the terms "vital force'' and "crisis" alerts us to what is going on here: this was

,,

Hippocratic medicine reinterpreted in the light of the Montpellier School's doctrine. In Comte's text, the term "crisis" took on a pathological ,mcl therapeutic ')ignificance that it lacked in Saint-Simon. It was a tt..Tlll freighted with all the weight and decked out with all the majesty of a medical tradition. Thus, ' 4 nature" was continually invoked as the ultimate reason why unfavorable political circumstance') failed to prevent "the advance of civilization," whi<..:h in fact "nearly always profits from mistakes rather than being delayed by them." This recourse to nature is so basic that it enables Comte to naturalize, as it \vere, the most distinctive feature of human history, namely, the labor or industry \vhereby society pursues its ends: this Comte desnibed as "action on nature to modify it for man's benefit." Thi') teleological end was "determined by man's rank in the natural system as indicated by the fact'\, something not susceptible of ex planation."[ ... ] This limitJ.tion of man's power to knowledge of rlJ.ture \ law~ and prediction of their effects, hence to harnessing natural forces to human designs, has more in common with the pru
1~1

T C R P Rf TA-r' C)N S

AUGIJSl E

law that linked the dcYelopment of str>?ngth to the presence of

COMTE

perfect themsclve~. Hy interpreting this capacity as an inherent

resistance. From this I venture to conclude that well before he

property of the nature of org.ani1.atinn, he was able to k~·ep l~tith

added Anthelme Kicherand's E/Cments de physiologic and Barthez's

\\·ith the precepts of positivism.

.'iom·eaux ClCments de Ia science de /'homme to the annals of posi~

On December 25, 1824, Comte wrote Jacques-Pierre fanny

tivbm, Comte had read what both authors had to say about ani-

Valat: "The state in which we find society today is a long way

n'lal movement. l-ticherand wrote of "l.igzag moveml·nt in the

from normal. ... It is. rather,

space between two parallel lines." And Barthcz, in his Nouvelle

he viewed organization as a normative property of organisms, he

,1

very violent state of crisis.'' Because

mCcanique des mouvements de l'homme et des animaux, discussed

could on three difll>rent occasions ch.uactt·rile political projects

waves and reciprocating motions. Comtc also used the word osci\A

or practiu·-; as ''monstrusitic.," or "monstrous" 1nd on fqur


lation. And -when he spoke of the peculiar impetus leading to

sions characterize conduct or behavior as "defective." Th(·sc terms

improvements in the social order, he again referred to Barthez,

were borrD\ved from teratology, a science intimately associated

to the Barthe;. who, in his Nouvelle micanique, tried to reFute the

with the emerging field of embryology: Etienne· Geoffroy Sa.int-

idea that animals mo\T for no other reason than that the ground

1\ilaire's treatise on I es .4-fomtruosicis humoincs had hn~n published

repels their ft:ct. And again. it was Barthcz- specifically, ChapA

in IR22. Comtc's philosophy clearly implies a concept of normal

tcr Four of Now'eaux elriments- from whom Comte borrowed the

a'. opposed to pathological development. In fact, ifComte, in the

Plan des tnH'aux scicntifiqucs, invoke~ tlw lldture of things as fre-

law relating strength w rc-,i-;tance. To sum up, then, Comte left the Ecole Polytechnique and purA

(luently as he does, it is because by "things" he means life and by

sued the study of biology. as ht· indicates in the preface to the

"lifE-" he means a distinct capacity to persist in a "norm.1l" direc-

sixth and final volume of the Cours de philosophic positive. A.t that

tion. To borrow an t'xpression fi-equcntly employed by Franc;oi...,

time, he dbcnvered and made his own an idra of the organism

Pt.::-rroux, Comtc's conceptualization is "implicitly normative." By

that became the h·y concept of his theory of social organization.

reintegrating the human into tht~ organi~. the history of man into

When Saint-Simon published De Ia phvsiologic appliquee

a /'ame-

the history of things, Comte bestowed a guarantee of nccessit~

lioration des institutiom sooalc1- in 1813, he did not attempt tn

on till' moral destination of the species. He was 1hle to do

'iO

impo<:>c a biqlogical model nn social structure. His conception of

without contradiction only because, under cover of the positive

an "organized body" required no such analogy. and his conception

term "nature," he superimposed an order of meaning on an order

of "crises" implied no necessary relation to pathology. Comte,

of law.[":\. Cnmte," Etudes phdosoph,qucs, pp. 294-'17]

on the other hand, found in Barthez. still in a metaphysical form, or autonomous. And h·om a lecture that Barthel. gave in 1801,

The Positivist Disciples r')4] ln the Srstcme de poliuque pmitn-e (1851), Comte dc,cribed

entitled "Discours sur le gl:nic d'Hippocratc," Comtc drt>w the

two young phy.,icians, Dr. LouisAAuguste Segond and Dr. Charles

Hippocratic condu<;ion: all organisms (or organi?ations, as Comte

Robin, as his disciples. In IR4H, the two men t()llmkd the Sociext.'·

liked to call them) have a spontaneous capacity to preserve and

de Riologic, an organiF.ltiun whose rL'ports and journaLs gi\'e the

the idea that organi7.ecl systems are to some extent selfrcgulating

2\1

lf'J

rERPRETATIONS

most comprehensive and vivid image we have of biological research in France over the past century or nlore. The Societe's first governing board was ch.1ired by Dr. Rayer, who later became dean of the Facultv of Medicine; Claude Bernard and Charles Robin served as vice chairmen; and Charles-Edouard Brown-Seguard and Robin were the secretaries. The group's first charter \vas drafted by Robin, and its first article stated that "the Societe de Biologic is instituted for the study of the science of organized beings in the normal state and in the pathological state." The spirit that animated the founders of the group was that of positive philosophy. On June 7, 1848, Robin read a paper "On the Direction That the Founding Member5 of the Societe de Biologic Have Proposed to Ans\ver to the Title They !lave Chosen." In it, he discussed Comte's classification of the sciences, examined biology's mission in much th{· 'lame :,pirit as Comte had done in the Cours de philosophic positi~·c, and noted rh
existed. Robin even had a name for this proposl'd subdiscipline"mesology.'' \Vhen the Societe celebrated its fiftieth anniversary in 1899, the physiologist Emile Gley read a report on the evolution of the biologic,ll sciences in France, in which the impetus that positivism gave to the subject is frequently alluded to. Gley's report still makes interesting reading.4 9 In 1862, Charles Robin became the first person to hold the chair in histology at the Faculty of Medicine in Paris. 50 From that position he remained faithful to one tenet ofComte's biological philosophy in his refusal to teach cell theory in the dogmatic form in which it had been expressed by Rudolph Virchow. Robin taught instead that the cell w
AUGUSTE

C 0/JI T E

latt:'r translate John Stuart Mill\ book Auguste Comte and Posilirist Philosophy into French. subst:"qucntly achieved a fame that has tl'nded to overshadow his early interest in biology. His name was Georges Clemenceau. Robin was also, along with Emile Littn~. the author of the Dictionnaire de midecine, which in 1873 supplanted the series of revised editions of Pierre Hubert Nysten's Dictionnairc. This reminds us that Comte's biological phii<wJphy also left its mark on the development of lexicography in France as \veil as on the production of critical editions of medical texts and on the history of medical science. [Etudes, pp. 71-7 2] [95] With an author as careful about the meaning of v-.:ords as \vas Littre, one must take literally what he said about his personal relations \vith Comte. On at least two occasions he stated, "I <.;ubscribe to the positive philosophy."'il He also said that he had chosen Comte's great book as a "model." adding, "There, happily, I feel that I am a dbciple."'>l He described his allegiance to po<;itivism as a kind of conversion: "Having been a mere freethinker, I became a positivist philosopher.";) When Littre died, hi'> journal, La Philosophic positil'C, sought to counter rumors that he had converted to Catholicism by publishing its late editor-inchief's final editorial under the title "For the Last Time": "The positive philosophy that kept me from being a mere negator continues to accompany me through this final ordea\."'i 4 If there was one principle of the positive philosophy set forth in the Cours about which Littre never expressed the slightest reservation, and which he tirelessly defende-d, it was the hierarchy of the six fundamental sciences, expressing the historical progression of human knowledge. What interested him, of course, was the relation of biology to its predeccssors. physics and above all cht:'rnistry, but he may have been even more interested in the relation of sociology to biology. This was the sou ret' of his dis<1grt'C-

INTERI~RETAr

ONS

AUGUSTE:

c,-lf/1 T E:

ment with Herbert Spencer, \Vho argued in the "Classification of

cal theory known as ''organicism,"

the Sciences" th
ity of the properti~·s of living matter. Note, by the way, that both

f(->r

neglecting tlw irreducibil-

dence. Littre held that no change in the relath·e ranking ofthe sci-

LittrC\ Dictionnairc de la langue fran(ai~c and his Diuionnairc de

ences was pos-;ible,5'i and he was able to persuade Mill on this

Im:dccine contain articles on the word irriductiblc. ["I ittn\'' Actc\'

pointY' An immediate consequence of the hierarchical principle was that importing a method \·alid for the study of a lmver level

du Colloquc Emile Uttre, 1801-1881, pp. 271-73] [96] In what respects did Xavier Bichat inf1uence Emile Littrl·

or stage of phenomena into a discipline at a higher level wa~ "the

and other positivist physicians such

greatest theoretical mistake one could

make.'"' 7

J_\

Charles Robin (not only

Littre's philoso-

dinTtly but also through Auguste Comtc )? To begin with, there

phy of biology, hence of medicine as \veil, can be summed up in

was his celebrated distinction betv:een two forms nflife, vegeta-

one brief passage: "Biological facts must first obey the laws of

tiYe and sensitive (or animal), the latter being subordinate to

chemistry. Any correct interpretation must re~pect this principle.

the f~)rmer. Littn:~ alluded to this dis~inction in his article on

Rut the n..·vcrse is not true: chemical facts need not obey the la\vs

Fran\'Ois Magendie, where he criticized his subjt·U f(,r not having

of biology. for which they lack nne thing, namely, the characteris-

respected the order in which the functions ought to be <>tudied:

tic of life."'i:-l That "one thing" \vould persist to the end of Littn~'s

in P~niolof}ie, Magendic had taken up the sensory fimctions bekHT

life: for him it was an incontrovertible obstacle, "the crucial dif~

considering nutrition. 61 Hut the main thing that the positivists

ferencc between mechanism ,wd organism ."'.iq LittrC was, to use

took tlum Bichat wa~ his contention that the tissues 'n'rc the ulti-

a modern tnm, an implacable enemy of"reductionism." In 1846,

mate elements of anatomical analysis, a view that tended to push

f()r example. in a study of Johannes MUller's Handhuch der P~vsi­

the new .;;cience nfhio;;tology in one direction rather than another.

ologie des Mcmchen, Littre came to the dcfen<>e of the "irreduc-

Bich.H's views, repe,1ted by Comtc in the f()ny-first les:.on of the

ible": "It is important to determine the irreducible properties of

Cours, explain the persistent skepticism of French physicians in

things .... Irreducible mcam that which one cannot effectively

the first half of the nineteenth centurv with rt''>pect to cell theorv

<;f

redun·. In chemi'itry. for imtance, efft.·ctively indecomposable

and microscopi<-· technique<;, which .were dispara~!Sd in I~H·or

compounds are called irreclucible." 60 In 1856, in a major article

-.uch hi'>tologica] meth()ds as dissect inn, desiccation, maceration

on r:ranyois Magendie, Littn~ found that

r. . ·lagendie

had been

and trf'atment vdth acids. True, the microscopes avail.1ble at the

more an opponent than a disciple of Xavier Richat. In essence,

time were mediocre, and Louis Ram·ier noted in his 1876 inau-

Magendie had failed to distinguish betvveen the occult and the

gural lt.-cturc at the CollCge de france that Bichat had been right

irreducible, the immanent properties uf living nutter, \vhereas

to be w._lry of tht.·m. Newrthck:-.s, pnsiri\'i-.·t physicians di..,playcd

l)ichat had recognized the irreducible \vhile exorcising the occult.

persistent hostility to microscopy. p,ntly in obedience to Henry

Magcndie had been unable or unwilling to state a clear position

Ducrntay de Blainvilk's authoritative Coun de p~viiolofJie gCnCrolc

on the reducibility of biological phenomena ro the laws ofphys·

( 1829). Rcnt--Tht~ophile llyacinthe Lai..'nnec also numbered among

of vital organization.

the instrument's detrJctors. Thanks to Marc Klein\ work on the

Linn', \\·as abo critical of L(·on Ro'itan. tht· author of tht.· medi-

hi~lorv of cell theory, rhcn· is no net·d to belabor Rnbin\ oppo-

ics and chemistry or on tlw irreducibilit;'

INTERPRETATiONS

sition to any form of research that claimed to go beyond what he took to be the basic constituent of the anatomy (tissue). Even as late as 1869, ten years after the publication of Rudolph Virchow's celebrated work, Rohin wrote in La Philowphie positive that the cdl was a me-taphysical construct and commented ironically on "the alkgcdly typical or primordial organic cell." 02 \Vhen Littn~ reviewed Robin's Anatomic ct ph_vsiologie cellull1ires in the same jour~ nal in 1874, he accepted his friend's doubts as fact. Yet in an 1870 article on the "Origine de l'ide_e de justice," Littre had discussed two kinds of brain cells, affective and intellectual: Was this a theoretical concession or a mere stylistic convenience?~'>'~ In what respects, moreover, did Franyois-Joseph-Victor Brous· sais influence LittrC (either directly or through Comte)? Surely, Littn:'· inherited Broussais's stubbornness in defending the theories of physiological medicine, which were based on a belief in the identity of the normal and the pathological. as well as on a rdU.<:.al to view disease as introducing any new functional process in the organism (a case made even bef()fc Broussai'i by John Hunter). Littrt thus accepted and championed what Comte called "Broussais's Principle." In the preface to the second edition of Midecine et midecins, LittrC stressed the need for medicine to revise its theories in light of physiology\ having attained the positive stage of development. Pathology had thus become "physiology of the disturbed state," and this, Littre argued, was an "essential notion." This Broussaisist dogma would later prove to be one of the obstacles to understanding microbiology. But for the moment, let us ask ourselves what the practical efTects of this revolution were. In an t846 article containing a new translation of Celsus, Littre was not afraid to write that '\o long as physiology \Yas not fully constituted as a science, there remained gaps in which hypotheses could emerge. But now that it has become, almost before our eyes, a science, every medical system is dis-

AUGUSTE

COMTE

credited in advancc." 04 ["LittrC," Actes du Colloque Emile /_ittn!,

1801-1881, pp. 274-75] [97] Littre set f(Jrth his views on hygiene in a commentary on the TraitC d'hntiCne publique et privCc by Michel Ll·vy, the fOrmer chief physician of the Armees d'Oricnt and director of the Val-de-Grn a liYel: medic.1l subspecialty in France ~ince the work ofjean-Nofl liall& and Franyois Emmanuel fockrC early in the nineteenth century; it had profited from tht> experience of such military phy<>icians as Villerme, \vho had served as surgeon-major in Napoleon's army. This medical subspt·cialty had no doubt lent credence to the notion of milieu, fir~t put fonvard in the works ofBlainville and l_amarck. I Iygiene, according to Littn?, is the science of actions and reaction~ bet..veen milieus <md organisms. humam included. :\-..for milieu, Littn~ noted in IRSR that the term had a tt:'chnical meaning, and h(' g.an~ a detailed definition in many respect'\ rrminiscent of the t.-tble of phy~ical agent~ that Blaim·ille hJd called "external modifiers." The scientific elaboration of the word "milieu" in the nineteenth century require-d the participation of a number of sciences that had achieved the stage of "positivity"- physics, chemistry and biology. The term also served in part as an ideological substitute for the notion of"climat<:," which had been used extcn~ively by eighteenth-centur:' authors, pO that the prescriptions of"pri\'nc" could claim only a historical or empirical rather than ,l thf'nrctical basis/'s Ha.ving written several articles on the cholera of 18 32, the contagiousnes-. uf equine gland cr.., and the transmi')sion of the plague, Littr& could hardly fail to comment on Levy's

lr>-'TERPRE= TATIONS

AUGUST Eo

COM rE

observations on endemic and epidemic diseases. Not a word was

importance must bt· attached to variuu_., articles that appeared in

said ab<.nlt ctiologii...·~ invoking mkroorganisms, although the .n-

ChJrles Renouvkr\ journal, 1 a Critique philosophique, the very

ticle on"l_t·ptothrix" in the Dictionnairc de midecine reported on

title of which was antipositivist. In 1878, the journal published

Casimir Davaine and Pierre Franyois Olive Rayer's research on the

thrl:'e articles by Pill on on biology and positivism, t\VO of which set

anthrax bacillus, and l.ittrC surely kncvv about this work mving

Claude Bernard up as Comte's judge. In the same year Renouvier

to his relations ""'ith Rayer. It was not until 1880, in an article

posed, and ans,:vered in the negative, rhis question: "Is the Cours

entitled "Transratiunalisme," that Littn? mentioned "the circu-

cfc plnlosophie positin: -;till abrca~t of -;cicncd" Claudt:> Hern.ud \\·as

lation of infinitesimally small [creatures J that cause infectious

proposed as an ideological antidott" tn Comtt:'. No brief account

diseases";~> 6

but by then it was no longer possible to ignore Louis

can do justice to the relations between Littre's biological positiv-

Pasteur's work. Nevertheless, LittrC's rcm,uks on public hygiene

ism and Bernard's guiding philosophy. On the one hand, Bernard

in the third article are worthy of attention. ror Littre, history and

wa'>


ft"Junder of and participant in the Societe de Biologie along

seems to have

with Rayer, Loui~-Augu<;tc Segond and Charle'\ Rnbin, who drafted

been particularly alert to sociomedical issues a'\sociated with the

ih charter in a frankly positivist ~pirit and tone. I ittrC\ journal

sociology serve as instruments of analysis.

Littri...~

rise of industrial society. I k strikes off a fine phrase, reminiscent

l.tJ Philosophic positive showed great interest in Bernard's work,

of Saint-Simon: "Civilized man ... has assumed responsibility for

publishing, in the year of his death, a very balanced article by

administering the earth, and as civilization advances, that ardu-

Mathias Duval and an article by Littr~· on determinism. These

ous administration demands ever more ingenuity and industry." 07

!acts may muddy the waters, hut tht:>y do not just if~- any blurring

Human life, though. suffl'rs from the unanticipated yet inevi-

of rlw lines, f<x

tablr t.·ffects of the contlict between work and nature. "I laving

scarcely concealed hio; hostility to Comte's dogmati-;m. That ho'>-

,'IS

attentive readers of Bernard already knmY, he

become so complex, industries cannot do without the oversight

tility i-, expres-;ed openly at the end of Rerna.rd's most widely read

of a highn agency that appreciates the dangers, preserves the envi-

·work, the Introduction

ronm<':nt, and does not lt:'ave such important issues to the ~elf~

tivism, which in the name of science rejects philo'iophical sys-

interPst of private

indivicluals."~>ro;

Thus, Littn.:· had some pertinent

a I'Ctudc de Ia ITh.,.dccinc npCrimcntdle: "Posi-

tem<;, err'> as theY do by being such a <;y-;tem." Ucspite these

remarks to offer on the subject of ecology. yf'ars before the word

reservations, of which Littr£•_ was pnkctly well aware. he several

\vas coined. 69 And no one can deny the clarity or courage with

times prahed Bernard's methods and the principles that inspired

which ht:' expressed hi.-, astonishment that no civilized nation had

tlwrn. His 1856 article on Magendic ends with an acknowledg-

yet seen fit to establish a ministry of public lwalth.7° ["Lito·e,"

ment of Rernard's <,upcriority over his reacher. Th(' thirteenth edi-

.1ctcs du Colf,>quc Emile Littrc, 1801-1881. pp. 276-77]

tion of the Dicticmnairc de mCdccinc contain<; a number of articles,

[98] \Ve can no longt:>r avoid a brief survey of the reactions of

obvinu5ly written hy I ittn\ which refer implicitly or explicitly

Littre's contemporaries to this biological philosophy. Little atten-

to Bernard. While the article on "()bservation" seems rather

tion need be paid to the inevitably biased judgments of official

to summarize the ,·jews of Cnmte, those on "Experience" and

spirituali . . rs such as Paul Janet and Fdmi..' Caro; however, greater

"Experimentation"

,He

condensation-; of llw vie,,s of Bernard.

:•·J T E R PRE TAT I ON S

"Experimentation" ends with the same comparison that Bernard borrowt·d from Gl·orge:-. Cu\'ier: the observer listens, the experimenter questions. The article on "Medicine" mentions Bernard's name in the discussion of experimental medicine. In Bernard's teaching and conception of life, Lirtre no doubt saw arguments capable of supporting his own personal conviction that biological phenomena could not be reduced to physics and chemistry. ["Littre," Actes du ColloqtJC Emile Littn!, 1801-1881, pp. 279-80]

CHAI'TFH

Twll

VF

Claude Bernard

A Philosophical Physioloyist [99] A philosophical physiologist: arranged in that order, the two words cry out fOr an immt·diatl' correction. Philosophical here does not mean inclined tO\vard metaphysics. Claude Bernard never claimed - as a physiologi:o,t and in the n.1mt' of physiology - to go beyond expnicnc('. He had no patience with the idea of rnt'tJphy-.iology, meaning the claim to kno\\' nor just the laws, or invariants, of the organic functions but the very essence nf that plastic force which we refer to as life. But neither did he ever intend to limit biological science to the merl' reporting of experimental results. Rather, by "philosophical physiologist" I mean a physiologist "vho, at a given stage in the evolution of a \veil-established science, explicitly recognizes the fact that science is above all a method of study and research, and vvho sets himself the expn.'s.;; ta'ik, the personal responsibility that can be assigned to no ont.~ else, of providing that method with J fOundation. In this sense, the philosophical work of the physiologist Claude Bernard provided the foundation for his scientific work. Just as nineteenthcentury mathematicians st.·t tht.·m:o,l·ln·s the task of exploring the klundations of mathcmatin, so too did a physiologist take it upon himself to establish the foundations of his disciplin ...·. In both 260

.I Cl AI. DE

INTERPRETAliONS

BEPr<·\RD

cases, scientists assumed responsibility for what h.1d pre\'iously-

ic">? Chemistry? V\'ho know~? It is bt"ttcr tn do anatomy. [Johanne~J

in the time of Descartes as well as of Plato J.nd Aristotle- been

,\hiller, [Friedrich] Tiedemann and p_hniel FriedrichJ Eschricht

the task of philosophy. Rut the f<JUndational work of the mathe-

wt_-rc- disgusted and turnt:d to

,1natom~.

matic i<ws w.:ts \'ery different from that of Bernard. Vv"ork on the foundation.;; of mathematics has continued L~ver since; it has be-

In other words, \vhat Rernard wanted was a way of doing research

come
in phy<.;iology based on assumptions and principles stemming from

blan·d by Claude Bernard has been negle-cted by later physiolo-

physiology itself, from the living organism, rather than on prin-

gist~- ~o neglected, in fact, that \Vhen physiologists today feel

ciples, viC\vs and mental habits imported from scicncPs as pres-

the need to justify distinctive aspects of their \vork, they fre-

tigious, and as indispensable to the \\·orking physiologist, as even

quently, and sometimes anachronistically. rely on the work of

physics and chemistry. There is a chronological fact whose importance cannot he

Bernard himself. ["Claude Bernard," Dialogue, pp. 556-57] [100] In the few lines that Claude Bernard devoted to Francis Bacon (laudatory by convention and critical by conviction, though

overstated: Claude Rcrnard alluded to rhe distinctive character of phy-.iological experiml'ntation in public for the first time on

less so than Bernard's contemporary von Liebig), he noted that

[kcember 30, 1854, in the third kcturc of a course on experi-

"there were great l'xperimentalists before there was a doctrine

rnenul physiology applied to medicine, which ht:> delivered at the

of expcrimentJ.Iism." There can be no doubt that he meant this

Colkge de France in hi'i la . . t appt:>arance there ,1s f\1agendic\ 'iub-

rnJ.xim to apply to himself. An c.:xplanation c.1n he t~1und in his

stitute. In rhat lecture, he reviewed tht.• cxperimt'nt'\ .1nd the con-

note boob: "Everyone t()llows his own path. Some undergo lengthy

clmion<.; reported in the doctoral tlwsi'i he had defended the year

preparation and tOIIovv the path laid out fln them. I took a tvvist-

bek)re on a nevvly discovered function oft he liver in humans and

ing route to science and, abandoning the beaten path, exempted

anim,1\s- the ability to synthesir.e gluco<,c. "It is surprising,"

nwselffrom all the rules." What rules did this man who had learned

Bernard noted, "that an organic function of such importance and

the experimental method in the shadow of Franc;ois Magendic

so readily observed was not discovered sooner." The reason for this

think he had cxemptl'd himself from? The answer can be gleaned

bilure, he showed, was that nearly all previous physiologists had

from the.._~ names of two physiologists whom he quotes on several

attempted to study dynamic functions \Vith methods borrowed

occasions: Hermann von Helmholtz, tmvard whom he \vas always

fi-om anatom:', physics and chemistry: such methods, though, were

respectful, and Emile Du Rnis-Reymond, for whom his admira-

incapable of yielding new knowledge about physiological phe-

tion \\'J.S less unalloyed. The rules Bernard had in mind were those

nomena. The only way to explain an organic hmction is to observe

nf mJ.thematical physics:

it in action in the only place ''"hnC' it me.:tningfully exists, to wit, within the organism. From this, Rc.:rn,trd dcrin·d

It fus been s,1id that I found wh_at I w.Isn't looking fnr, wherc,1s Hl'imholtt found only what he

wa~ looking

for.

Thi~ j, correct, hut

exclu"ionary pre~criptiom arc harmful. \\'har is phy">iology? Phys-

262

.1

principle of

which the Introduction, pub(i..,ht.·d ckn·n year" latL·r, might fairly be called the elaboration:

INTERPRETATIONS

CLAUDfo

RERNARD

Neither anatomy nor chemi~try can answer a question of physiology.

of all from the fact that, behind this plain title, Hern
What is crucial is experimentation on animals, which makes it pos-

atically pursued the consequences of a discovery that was a sur-

sible to ob5erve the mechanics of a function in a living creature, thus

prise to him and a paradox to his contemporarie~. That discovery

leading to the discovery of phenomena that could not have been

was set forth in the doctoral thesis he defended on J\\arch 17,

prcdictt·d. which cannot be studied in any other way.

!85 3: "Recherches 'iur une nouvelle fonction du foie considl·re commc organc producteur de matifre sucrl'L' che;_ l'homme et

The lectures at the College de France k1flowed Bernard's completion of work on his doctorate, so the assertion that "there

cho. lcs animam.:.'' This

thcsi~

dethroned the dogma according

to which <mimals, being incapable of synthcsi;ing dw nutrients

were great experimentalists befOre there was a doctrine of exper-

they need, must ingest vcgctable matter in order to obtain them.

imentalism" and the insistence on having left "the beaten path"

Bernard, in his work on glycogenesis, showed that that the I iver can

were more than literary flourishes; they \vere generalizations of

synthesize glucose and, therefOre, that animals need not obtain

the lessons Bernard had drawn from his own intellectual adven-

this substance from plants. [Preface, Ie,ans, p. 9] [102] ror our purposes, it is not important that Rernard obtained his result by dint of flaws in his chemical analytic techniques and rough approximations in his measurements. The fact that he dl'tected no glucose in the portal vein but did detect it in the <.,uperhepatic Yf"in leU him to conclude- and then to n·rif~, - th<.'C rctes bile but J.lso produces the glucose that is t.'Ssential to .'>ustaining living tissue and <.·nabling various parts of animal organisms, in particular tlw muscle~, to do their \vork. Yet Bernard's faith in his vC"rification procedure, the famous "clean liver" experiment, \Vas also greater than the accuracy of his methods warranted. His genius, however, \vas to have grasped at once the ~ignificancc, implication<; and consequences of his disetwny. First, he undcr<;tond that he had taken the first step toward the solution of a problem that dated back tn the eighteenth century: \Vh.u was th(' fum.:tion uf the .so-ca.l!ed ductlt:ss gland.-:: (or blood vessel gland~) such as the thyroid? Bern.ud solved this problem through a series of experiment'> intended to demonstrate the new concept nf "internal secretion" ( 185 5 ), a phrase that onlv a few yc.u.., earlier would have been taken as a contradic-

ture. Nothing else is worthy of the name "method." As Gaston Bache lard has written in The New Scientific Spirit, "Concepts and methods alike depend on empirical results. A new experiment may lead tn a fundamental change in scientific thinking. In science, any 'discourse on method' can only he provisional: it can tlt:'ver hope to dc~cribc the definitive complexion of the scientific spirit." 71 Not\vithstanding Bachelard's dialectical insistence, it is by no means clear that Bernard himst.•lf did not succumb to the belief that he \vas describing the "definitive constitution of the scientific spirit" in physiology. Yet he clearly understood, and taught, that physiology would have to change because it had seen something new, something so new that it tfJrced Bernard to agree with the judgment that some had uttered in criticism of his vmrk: that he had found what he was not looking for. Indeed, one might even go -;o far as to say that he had fOund the opposite of what he

was looking lor. [ Ftude>, pp. 144-46]

The Implications of a Paradoxical Discovery [101 J The importance, then and now, of the Le,ons sur les pMnomCnes de Ia ric communs au• animaux et aux t'i8itaux stems first

INT!-Rf-'RETATIONS

CL AUDC

E3ERNARD

tion in terms, an impossibility as unthinkable as a square circle.

philosophical, or, to usc a term less suspect to the scientific mind,

Second, and more important, Hernarcl understood that he had

meta physiological. That idea can be summed up in a sentence first

hit upon an argument capable of exploding a theory firmly estab-

written in 1878: "There is but one \Vay of life, one physiology,

lished in the minds of contemporary chemists. Whatever misgiv-

ways to live, there was probably only one way to die a natural

for all living things." ["Claude Bernard," Dialogue, pp. 560-62] [103] In the eighteenth century, Immanuel Kant argued that the conditions under which physical science was possible \vere the transcendental conditions of knowledge in general. Later, in Part Two of the Critique of Practical Reason, entitled "The Critique of Teleological Judgment," he modified this vie\v, acknowledging that organisms were totalities \vhose analytic decompo~ition and causal explanation were subordinate to an idea of finality, the governing principle of all biological research. According to Kant, there could be no "Newton of a blade of grass." In other \\'ords, the scientific statu~ of biology in the encyclopedia of knov,:lcdge could never compare with that of physics. BefOre Claude Bernard, biologist'i were forced to choose bet ween identif). ing biology with physics, in the manner of the materialists and mechanish, or radically distinguishing between the tvm, in the manner ofthe french naturalists and German nature philosophers. The Newton of the living organism was Claude Bernard, in the sense that it

death. In 185 3, Claude Bernard proved that there was no division

\Yas he who realized that living things provide the key to deci-

of labor among living things: plants

not essential as suppli-

phering their own structures and functions. Rejecting both mech-

ers of the glucose without which animals cannot live. The t\\'O

anism and vitalism, Bernard was able to develop techniques of

kingdoms do not form a hierarchy, and there is no teleological

biological experimentation suited to the specific nature of the

subordination of one to the other. This discovery paved the \vay

object of study. It i~ impo~sihle not to be struck by the contrast,

fOr a general physiology, a science of the life functions, and this

probably unwitting, between the lOllowing two passages. In l.erons

ings one may have about illustrative comparisons, a comparison here is irresistible. \Vhen Galileo observed spots on the sun, he ddivcrcd a decisive blmv to the old Aristotelian distinction between the sublunary world, supposedly susceptible to generation and corruption, and the supralunary \vorld, supposl'dly etl'fnal and incorruptible. He taught mankind to sel' analogous things in analogous ways. Similarly, when Claudl' Bl'fnard discovcrl'd the glycogenic function of the liver, he delivered a decisive blmY to the old distinction between the plant and animal kingdoms, according to which plants can and animals cannot synthesize simple organic compounds, in particular hydrocarbons. lie taught the human eye to see life in a new way, without distinction bl't\vecn plant and animal.

.,

In the fOrtil'th lesson of the Coors de philosophic positive, Auguste Comte had written in 1838 that while there were hundreds of

\Vl'fl'

discipline immediately gained a place in the academy alongside comparative physiology. From Bernard's doctoral thesis to the last

."i'

mr fcs phCnomCncs ph_rsiqucs de la vic (Leo;~ons of December 28 and ~0.

1836), franc,·ois Magendie wrote, "I see the lung as a bellows,

courses he gave as professor of general physiology at the Musl·um

the trachea as an air tube, and the glottis as a vibrating reed ....

(published in 1878 as Le(ons sur lcs phCnomCncs de la vie commons

We have ,m optical apparatus f(n our eyes, a musical instrument

aox animaux ct aux vCaCtau.\ ), his work was all aimed at proving

for our voice'l, a living retort lOr our stomachs." Bernard, on the

the validity of a single guiding principle, \vhich might be called

other hand, in his Cahicr de notes, wrote, "The larynx is a larynx,

266

,1-JTERPRETATIONS

and the lens of the eye is the lens of the.' t'yc: in other words, the mechanical and physical conditions necessary for their existence are satisfied only \Vi thin the living organism." Thus, while Bernard took from Lavoisier and Laplace by way of Magendic what he himself called the idea of "detcrminism," he was the sole inventor of the biologica:J concept of the "internal environment," the concept that finally enabled physiology to become a deterministic science on a par with physics but without succumbing to fa5cination with the physical model. [Etudes, 148-49]

The Theoretical Foundations of the Method

[l04] The unusual, and at the time paradoxical, nature of what Bernard had "inadvertently" discovered was what enabled him to conceptualize his early results in such a way as to determine the course of all his fUture re,C'arch. Without thl· concept of the inner environment, it is impossible to understand Bernard's stubborn advocacy of a technique that he did not inn·nt but to which he lent nl·w impetus: the technique of vivisection, vvhich he was obliged to defend against both emotional outrage and the protests of Romantic philosophy. "Ancient science was able to conceive only of the external environment, but in order to place biological science on an expnimental fiJoting one must also imagine an internal environment. I believe that I was the first to express this idea clearly and to stress its importance in understanding the need for experimentation on living things." Note that the concept of the internal environment is given here as the theoretical underpinning of the technique of physiological experimentation. In 1857. Bernard wrote, "The blood is made for the organs. That much is true. But it cannot be repeated too often that it is also made by the organs." What allowed Bernard to propose this radical revision of hematology was the concept of internal secretions, which he had fOrmulated two years earlier. After all, there is a consid-

C LA U 0 E

8 ERN AR ll

cra.ble c !Terence between the blood's rci.ltion to the lungs and its relat m to the liver. In the lungs, the organism interacts with the inor;anic world through the blood, whereas in the liver the organisrr interacts with itself. The point is important enough that it bears ·epeating: without the idea of internal secretions, rhne could bt no idea of an internal environment. and without the idea of an in·~rnal environment, there could be no autonomous science of:hysiology. [Etudes, pp. 147-48] [lOS: The concept of the internal environment thus depended on the vi or formulation of the concept of internal secretions; it also der,·nded on cell theory, whose essential contribution Bernard acepted even as he grew increasingly skeptical of the theory of d·: fOrmative bl<1Stl·me. Cell theory\ crucial contribution was its i~sistence on the autonomy of the anatomical components of comr ex organisms and their fUnctional subordination to the morphoDgical whole. Bernard squarely embraced cell theory: ''This Ct I theory h more than just a word," he wrote in his Lc(ons sur lc5 prCnomCnes de ld ric wmmuns aux dnimaux et au.r rigt!taux.

By so dClng, he was able to portray physiology as an experimental scier.,_'e with its own distinctive methods. In fact, cell tlwor:' made it Jossible to understand the relation between the part and thl." wh( e, the composite and the simple, in a way that differed sharply ···om the mathematical or mechanical model: the ce!l rl'vealed a :ype of morphological structure quitl' different tl·om that of e,u[ie· "artifacts" and "machines." It became possible to imagine way~ of analyzing, dissecting and altering living things using mechJn "'a!, physical or chemical techniques to intervene in the econom nfan organic whole without intt·rfering with its essenti .ll orgJ1ic nature. The Hfth of the /.e~·ons de physiologic ope.rtJtoire contain~ a number of crucial passages on this ne\\' conCt..'ption of the n-lation between the parts and the "'.rhole. First, Hernard explaim that '"'all organs and tissues are nothing hut a comb ina-

INTF-RPRETATIONS

tion of anatomical elements, and the life of the organ is the sum

r

'

. .

Cl AUDf'

HERNARD

analytical study of functions po-~siblc. In the Principes de mCdccine

cxpCrimentale, Bernard \\Tote, "For analyzing life phenomena, is

of the vital phenomena inherent in each type of element." Second, he points out that the converse of this proposition is false: "In

it better to study higher or lower animals? The question has been

attempting to analyze life by studying the partial lives of the var-

examined frequently. Some ':iay that the lower animals are simpler.

ious kinds of anatomical elements, we must avoid an error that is

I do not think so, and, in any case, one animal is as complete as the

all too easy to make, \Vhich is to assume that the nature, form

next. I think, rather, that the higher animals are simpler because

and needs of the total life of the individual are the same as those

they are more fully differentiated." Similarly, in ,\Jotcs dCtachCcs

of the anatomical clements." In other words, Bernard's general

he observed that "an animal higher up the scale exhibits more

physiology grew out of a combination of the concept of the inter-

highl_v differentiated vital phenomena, which in some ways are

nal environment with the theory of the cell, which enabled him

simpkr in nature, whereas an animal lower down the organic scale

to develop a distinctive experimental method, one that was not

exhibits phenomena that are more confused, less fully expressed,

Cartesian in style yet conceded nothing to vitalism or Romanti-

and more difficult to distinguish." In other words, the more

cism. In this respect, Bernard was radically different from both

complex the organism, the more distinct the physiological phe-

Georges Cuvic-r, the author of thl' letter to Mertrud that snved as

nomenon. In physiology, distinct means differentiated, and the

Le~ons

d'anatomie comparCe, and Auguste Comte,

hmctionally distinct must be studied in the morphologically com-

the author of the h)rtieth lesson of the Cours de philosophic positive

plex. In the elementary organism, everything is confused becausE'

preface to Cuvicr's

and a faithful disciple ofBlainville's introduction to the Cours de

physiologic gCnCrale et wmparCe. For all three of these authors Cuvier, Comte and Blainville- comparative anatomy was a sub-

';\

everything is confOunded. If the laws ofCartnian mechanic-, are best studied in simple machines, the la . .vs of Bernardi an physiology are best studied in complex organisms.[Ftudc~. pp. 149-51]

stitute for experimentation, which they held to be impossible or so they believed, distorts the essence of the organism, which

Life, Death and Creation li06 J All of Bernard's work bears traces of the struggle tl1<1t went

because the analytic search fOr the simple phenomenon inevitably, functions holistically. Nature, by exhibiting (in Cuvier's \vords)

on in his mind between his profOund but not unconditional admi-

"nearly all possible combinations of organs in all the classes of

ration h>r Xavier Bichat and his sincere gratitude for the lessons

animals," allowed the scientist to draw "very plausible conclu-

lw had learned from FrarH;.·ois t'v1agendie. Yet Bernard f()lmd a way

sions concerning the nature and use of each organ." By contrast,

to reconcile the two men's conflicting philosophies of biology

Bernard saw comparative anatomy as a prerequisite for develop-

without compromising either. lie did this by persistently exploit-

ing a general physiology on the basis of experiments in compara-

ing his own fundamental experiments and the new concepts he

tive physiology. Comparative anatomy taught physiologists that

had been obliged to f<m11ulate in order to interpret his rf'sults.

nature laid the ground\vork for physiology by producing a vari-

The up':ihot wa':i a "fUndamental conception of life" incorporat-

ety of structures for analysis. Paradoxically, it was the increasing

ing two lapidary propositions: "life is creation" (IR65) and "life

individuation of organism~ in the animal series that made the

is death" (1875).

2]0

2]1

INTERPRETAT:ONS

CLAU[)E

BERNARD

Life is death. By this Bernard meant that a \vorking organism

ment. Bernard thus rejected any attempt to portray his doctrine

is an organism engaged in the process of destroying itself, and that

as a kind of vitalism or as somehow implying that life is exempt

its functions involve physical and chemical phenomena that can

from the laws of physics and chemistry.

Life is creation. If Bernard was not a mechanist, was he not a

be understood in terms of the laws of (nonliving) matter. Was this a mechanist position? Absolutely not. Nmv that chem-

materialist insofar as he attempted to base thc laws of living things

istry \vas a positive science, the \'
un those of inert matter? The ans\vcr is no, because he insisted

unified by a law of conservation, and the explanation of electrical

that "life is creation." VVhat did he mean by this?

phenomena had necessitated the formulation of the new concept

The phrase "life is death" acknowledged the pmver of physi-

of a "field"- it was no longer possible to be a strict mechanist.

cal and chemical laws over \vhat is organic in living organisms.

More than that, Bernard found in his concept of the intern.1l envi-

The phrase "life is creation" acknowledged the distincri,;t>ness of

~h:chanism

the organism's organi:tation. Vital crcation, organizing synthesis-

implied a geometric representation of things: the mechanist phy-

these terms referred to that aspect of life that Bernard also called

ronment yet another reason not to be a mechanist.

sicians of the eighteenth century had represented the organism

"evolution," though not in the Danvinian sense, since it referred

a~

a machine composed ofinterlocking parts. But Bcrnard did not

only to ontogcnetic development. It was the one phenomenon

think of organisms as machines, although he continued to use the

of life with no nonorganic analogue: "It is unique, peculiar to liv-

phrase machine \'ivante (without in any \vay being bound by the

ing things. This evolutionary synthesis is \\'hat is truly vital in

metaphor). The internal environment welds the parts together

living things:' 7 l Bernard applied the term "organic creation" to

in a whole immediatdy accessible to each one. The organism is

both chemical synthesis, or the constitution of protoplasm, and

not rooted, as we represent it, in metric space. Indeed, the exis-

rnorphological synthesis, or the H~constitution of substJnces de-

tence of the internal environment assures the "higher" organism -

stroyed by the functioning of the organism. Creation or t>volution

so-called because it po~sesses an internal environment - of an

wa~

"obvious independence," "a protective mechanism," an "elastic-

ter. ["Claude Bernard," Dialogue, pp. 566-6R] lJ07] In Bernard\ most carefully written texts- the Introduc-

ity."72 Thus, the relation of the organism to the environment is not one of passive dependence. What is more, it was because.: Bernard was not a mcchanistthat science in general. and his physiology in particular, vvere to introduce the term "determinism" into the language of scien-

tists and philosophers. The macroscopic organism's relative independence of the environm<.~nt was ensured by the determinate dependence of its microscopic ~._·lements on the internal environ· 1]2

tion. the RapprHt .1nd Lll Science npCrimemalc- he distinguished Jrt' general and applicable to all things, and forms or processes, which are specific to organisms. This specificity is sometimes termed "morphological," sometimes "evolutionary." In f~1ct, in Fkrnard's lexicon, evolution rd('rs to the regular de-velopment of an individual from inception to maturity. The mature fOrm is the secret imperative of the evolution. In tht..~ Introduction lw stateo.; rhat "specific. evolutionary, phy.siolngical conditions are lhe quid proprium of biological scit..·ncc," and the Rapport confirms between hm·s, which

and knew that he was not seen as one - that he always insisted deterministic, and further, that he was the first (as indeed he was)

the living expression of the organism's need to structure mat-

•

!

r .

INTEf?PRETATIONS

C:l AUDE

\,.I

E3ERrl4f-
thio;; vie": "It is obvious that lh-ing things, by nature evolution-

thought or rnechanisms." 70 Recall, too, that heredity, which

ary and regenerative, differ radically fi-om inorganic -.ubstances,

stil! an obscure concept and heyonJ man's reJ:ch in 1876,

\\'JS

!W\'tT-

The dift(-r~._·rKc between

thelcss seemed to Bernard an essentiall·lcmcnt of the laws of mor-

biology and the other science~ is that biology takes account of

phology, of ontogenetic cvolution. 77 Am I stretching words, then,

.md the vitalists are correct to say

so."7 4

the guiding principle of vital evolution, of the "idea that expresses

or distorting Bernard's meaning, if I suggest that, in his own way

the nature of the living being and the very essence oflife."75

and in defiance of the reigning supn·macy of physical concepts

The notion of an organic guiding principle may well have been the guiding principle of Claude Bernard's philosophy of biology. That may be why it remained -.onwwhat vague, ma<;ked by the

in biology, lw vvas formulating a concept similar to what today\

very terms it used to express the idea of organization- vital idea,

wrote tlut the vital ~(_~rce has legislatin.· powers, his metaphor lllcl~

vitJ.l dc.-.ign, phenomenJ.l order, directed order, arrangement,

have been a harbinger of things to comt>. Rut he glimpsed only a

ordering, vital preordLTing, plan, blueprint, and fOrmation, among

part of the future, for he docs not seem to have guessed that C\'l'n

biologisto;, t·ducated by cybernetics, call the genetic code! The word "code," after all, has multiple ml·anings, and when BernJrd

others. Is it too audacious to suggest that \\'ith these concepts,

information (or, to usc his term, legislation) requires a certain

equivalent in Bernard's mind. he intuitively sensed \vhat

might

quantity of t'nergy. Although he called his doctrine "phy~ical

nowadays call the antirandom character of life - J.ntirandom in

vitalism,"7X it is legitimate to ask whether, given his notion of

\VC

the sense not of indeterminate hut of negative entropy?/\ note

phy~icJ!

in the Ropport seems to support this interpretation:

of a /()rCP, he really went beyond thl· metJph~·sical vitali-.m Lhat

force and his failure to grant the "vital idc,1" the <;latus

he condemned in Bichat. [Etudes. pp.

15~-601

II special matnial conditi(lns ,uc necessary to cre.ltc specific pheof order and succession that gives meaning to, or creak~, relc1tions

The Idea of Experimental Medicine [IOHJ Just as certain philosophers bt"lieve in an eternal philo-;o-

.1mong phcnonwna come~ from matter ibelf. To argue the contrary

phy, many physicians even today believe in an eternal and primor-

would be to fall into thL· crude error ofthe rnateriali"r".

dial medicine, that of Hippocrates. Tu '>Orne, then, it mJy -.eem

nomena of nutrition or endution, that docs not mean that the law

deliberJtcly provocative that I date the beginning of modern medIn .wy case, there can be no dot1bt that Bernard, in the lntrodut:-

icine from the moment when C'xperimt>ntal medicine declared

thm, identified physical nature '""ith disorder, and that he r~:garded

war on tht' Hippocratic trJdition. To do <,o is not to dispcuage

the properties of life as improbable relative to thost' of matter:

Hippocrate~. In fact, Claude Bernard m,vlf" free use of Comtl·\

"f lt.•re as always, everything comes from the idea that creates and

la\v of three stages of human development. He acknov,: !edged that

guides all things. All natural phenomena express themselves by physicochemical means, but those means of expression arc dis-

"the stage of experimental medicine depended on a prior evolution."79 Yet, while history shmvs Hippocrate-. to have been the

tributed haphazardly like characters of the alphabet in a box, from

f(>under nf nhsl·rvational mcdicint·, concern f(,r the future i-. lfnc-

which a fl)rce extracts them in order to expre<;s the most diverse

ing mecliciiH.' nut to renounCI' llippocrate.., but to divt'-.t it"cll-uf

174

CLAUDE

~ _L . The Hippoct.ltic method was to rely on nature; IS meti\od. . . . ~ , . )b < senat 1011 ;: t nedicine wa~ passive, contemplative and descnptive. F .. ·ntal medic in" is aggressive science. "With the aid -Xf',cnr· . , f th . . •erimental scic....-r:s, man becomes an mventor of phe> eacttve.; . . .. nomena, a f( man in the f3,·:ury of creatiOn, and there IS no hmlt

h.

hat he may ,,~,tain over naturC'." 1!1 By contrast, an

to tl

le P'owc · .. . . . ~cience "pn·.:tcts, \vatchcs, avo1ds, but actively Obs·en.at 1on< cha 1 ,g."K~ In paro.ular. "obst>rvational medicine exam-

' ges not· ines, ob~en~· lnd explains n>~·sscs but does not touch disease ....

r1 _ . . rates J aband.·:1ed pure expectation to administer n ~ l-hv· . . remt:d' l~ alwavs to f··,:ourage natures own tcndenctcs, to " IC~s. il''' "' "Rl . hast I.. through its ,,,ular phases. Bernard apphed the en C (ISeC' . des. 1•gnat, •ton ··lippocratic" :.'any modern doctor vvho failed to mak . , s patient his :.1p priority, and who was concerned e cullrtn' 1 abo ve, a II 1 to· 'l dnc and class:··. diseasc5 - who chose diagnosis and ro , . . treatment. · 'l'Se were the nusologists: Thomas P gnos._ 15 ()ll Sydcnh, -,mc;:ois Boissi:· de Sauvages d<: Ia Croix, Philippe Ul].J1l, 1 ·lvacinthe Laenncc, and all the othP 1· nt'I • l'~ven c·ne-Thcophih ~· ' Whc

crs who heiJ:hat diseases ,.~·rc essences that manifested themselvt•.s m,,on-.,1cn than not ... impure fOrm. In addition, Bernard branded asmt·re naturalists;· the physicians, including Rudolph Virch 0\\-.-"lf . m11 • since the tif'' of Giovanni Battista Morgagni and

Bichat. ~ )1a41voked for etic ·;ical relations between changes in anatomi, caln~eturcs and ::·:ectable symptoms in the hope of 1 . ...lllr mak < 1ng r--- 16uic;t\< aJl
BERNARD

ifcst themselves in pathological phenomena."KS "\Vhatevcr exists pathologically must present and explain itself physiologically."Kn rhus, it follows that "the experimental physician shall bring his influence to bear on a disease once he knmvs ib exact determinism, that is, it~ proximate cause."H 7 It was indcrJ time to say farewell to expectant medicine. Pierre Jean George Cabanis had earlier distinguished between the Ancients' art of observation and the Moderns' art of experimentation. Bernard saw the hi')tory of scientific medicine in similar terms: "Antiquity does not seem to have conceived of the idea of experimental science or, at any rate, to have believed in its possibility."HH Hut instead of linking medicine and observation to the Ancients, as Cabanis did, Bernard urged medicine to set out on the path of experimemation toward a future of domination and pm"·er. "To dominate living nature scientifically, to con<Juer it for the benefit of man: that is the fundamental idea of the experimental physician."X<J The idea of experimental medicine, the domination of living nature, was the opposite of the Hippocratic idea as exprL·ssl·d in the title of Toussaint Guindanr's 1768 treatise, "La Nature opprimee par Ia medecine moderne.""" [Etudes, p. 131] [109] Bernard took from Fran~ois Magendie not only the name of the new discipline he was about to create but also a certain idea of what its content should be: namely, that the subject matter and method of physiology should be the same as those of

lrnilrd, who die ·_Jt believe in the existence of dis-

pathology. In one of his [_e\ons sur les phinomCncs physiques de Ia vic (December 28, 1836), J\·1agendie stated that "pathology is ,1lso

tinct di~ . .;l"lll)tilics, the uJr-J.te goal ofexperirncnral medicine all n',~()k ~s and do away with pathological was to c.. " • ...,,,,, of dis~'a5.: :here are only organhms in normal anatonl\-.

physiology. For me, pathological phenomena are nothing but modified physiological phenomena." As a theoretical proposition,

case.

F

,_ ( 1 0

or abnorr) cxpe

~"''"diti'o'''' art.: ~iseasc is just

disturbance in the ~!'•ol<>eic,•· IUrc::·ms. Experimental medicine is the "'••;si-ol<>l'' IJf·~r morbid. "Physiological laws man· .1

this was not a new idea: in the early part of the nineteenth century, even a modestly cultivated physician would have associated the idea that pathology is a subset of physiology with the still prestigious name of Albrecht von Haller. In the prefact' to his 17 55

'NTERPRETATIONS

r '

CLLUOE

Hf-,l'\JARD

rrench translation of von Haller's De partihus corporis humani

year'> that had passed since his first cour-.e.'ll He was

scntientibw; ct irritabilibus ( 17 52), M. Tissot \\Tote, "If pathology's

progress had been made: "I am the founder of experimental med-

dependence on physiology were better known. there would be

icine." Magendie had blazed a trail, according to Bernard, but he

no need to belabor the influence that the new discovery ought

had neither set a destination nor dt:"veloped a method. Nor could

SUIT

that

to have on the art of healing. But unfOrtunately we lack a work

he have, bccau<.;c he lacked the means to build a bridge hl'twecn

e-ntitled lhe :1ppliwtion nf Theory to Practice, so I han:-· ,·entured

the laboratory and the clinic, to prove that dTective trl'atnll'nt-.

to express a ft;"w thoughts concerning the practi<..:al benefits of irri-

could be deduce-d from the results of phy.~inlogy. VV!lJt sustained

tability." This statement is f()llowed by

scrie:-, of observations on

Rcrnard in his path-bn.>aking l'ntcrprise was the awart_ 'tH_·~~ o~ just

<1

the administration of opium, tonics, purgatives and so fOrth. To

such a possibility, of ju~t . . uch a reality: "I think that there arc

be sure, this was a mere "system," \vhereas i\lagendic claimed to

now enough facts to prove clearly that physiology is rhc ba~is of

be able to read, and to teach others to read, the natural identity

medicine, in the senst' that a certain number of pathological phe-

of physiology and pathology in the facts themselves, indepen-

nomena can now be traced back to physiological phenomena, and

dent of any interpretation. Yet it took a medical system, indeed

it can be shown, moreover, that the same laws govern both." 9 -1

the last of the medical systems according to Rernard,YI to reveal

Stated more clear!~. Bl'rnard\ claim to have founded a di.,ciplinc,

thC' idea of l''\pnimental medicine, that is, the idea that the meth-

even though he credits others with having the idea fir<;t and obtain-

od-. of the laboratory and the methods of the clinic are one and

ing the earliest result-.,, rnts Pn the physiopathology of diabetes,

the same. Built on the ruins of the great nosologies, this idea

that i'i, ultimately, on the di..,L·on·ry of the gl~cogcnic funl"tion

turned mcdicim· from a speculative system into a progressive

of the li\'l·r.[ ... 1 for Hernard, the experimental n:pl.m
science. The system Bernard had in mind, that \vhi<..:h paved the

mechanism ofJiabet~..· .., dl·monstrated the validity of the principles

way for

medicine without systems, was fran<;:oi::.-Joseph Victor Broussais's. [Etudes, p. 135]

set f()rth in the lnrroduction of 1865: the principle ohlw identity

[110] In recognizing that Broussais had demolished the idea

ism of biological phenomena; and the principle of the ~pecificity

of pathology as a science of disease dbtinct from the science of

of biological functions, that is, the distinction between the inter-

physiological phenomena, Bernard did not relinquish his own

nal and external environments. 'I(J f()uml experimental medicine

claim-. to originality, which lay in his ha,·ing been the first to pro-

was to demonstrate the consistency and compatibility of these

pose ba<.;ing a scientific medicine. on ,m experimental physiology.

principles. That done. Rt>rnard went on to re.,cue- the

Bur what did he make of Magendie! In 1R5·l. ,,. hen he filled in

pline from ito, detractors, the old-fashioned "'Y"temati'ls incxtri-


of the laws of health and disease; the principle of tlw determin-

Ill'\\'

disci-

for ,r...Llgendie at the Collt~ge de France, his first words were that

lably wedded either tq ontology or to vitalism, hy showing them

"the scientific medicine I am supposed to teach does not exist."

that these same principks could explain the \ery plwnonwna on

In IS65. hl' noted that "experimental or scientific medicine is

\vhich they based their objections. Magendic\ -;tylc was very

now coming together on the basis of physiology ... this develop-

different from Ikrn,1rd\: J"v1agendil' had asserted truths. rehttcd

ment is now certain." 9 2 In the Principcs, ht:" summed up the twenty

errors, pronounced judgments- for him, life ,,.a., a tnl·chanical 279

i

•. I

INTERt'RE:TATIONS

CLAUDE

BERNARD

phenomenon and vitalism an aberration. The discovery of inter-

trialized societies of the mid-nineteenth century, vvhen science,

nal secretions, the formulation of the concept of the internal envi-

through its applications, became a social fOrce. That is why Ber-

ronment, the demonstration of certain regulatory mechanisms and

nard was immediately recognized by his contemporaries as one

stabilized parameters in the composition of that environment-

of those who symbolized the age: "He \vas not [merely] a great

these things enabled Bernard to be a determinist \vithout being

phvsiologist, he was Physiology," Jean-Baptiste Dumas told Vic-

a mechanist, and to understand vitalism as an error rather than a

tor Duruy on the day of Bernard's funeral, thereby transfOrming

fOlly. In other words, he f(mnd a way to change perspectives in

the man into an institution. It may even be that Bernard, in all modesty, identified him-

the discussion of physiological theory. When Bernard proclaimed, with a self-confidence that could easily be mistaken for smug-

tudes toward disease changed: mankind nmv rejected illness and

self with physiology. When he staked his claim as the fi>under of experimental medicine, he simply demonstrated his awareness that it \vas his own research \vhich had enabled him to refute the various objections raised against the new discipline. Bernard knew that he had invented neither the term nor the project of experimental medicine but, by reinventing the content, he had made the idea his own: "Modern scientific medicine is therefOre based on knowledge of the life of the elements in an internal environment. Thus, it relies on a different conception of the human body. These ideas are mine, and this viewpoint is essentially that of experimental medicine." 95 However, no doubt remt.~mbering that he had written in the Introduction that "art is I, science is we," he added: ''These new ideas and this ne\\.1 point of vinv did not spring full-blown from my imagination. They came to me, as I hope to show, purely because of the evolution of science. My ideas are therefore far more solid than if they had been my mvn personal views and nothing more."[ ... ] At se\'eral points in the foregoing account, I have written that "Claude Bernard did not know hmv to say" this or that. Someone might object that I am substituting for what he actually said \vhat I think he should have said. I am perfectly willing to concede that I do not share the admiration of some commentators

sought to stamp it out. Thus, experimental medicine was but

for Bernard as a writer; perhaps my critics vvill concede that, in

one form of the demiurgic dream that afflicted all the indus-

attempting to situate Bernard's Introduction historically and con-

ness, that there would be no more revolutions in medicine, it \vas because he lacked the means to describe philosophically what he was conscious of having achieved. He did not know what to call his idea of experimental medicine; he did not knmv how to say that he had brought about a Copernican revolution. Once it could be shown that the internal environment afforded the organism a certain autonomy \vith respect to changing conditions in the external environment, it also became possible not only to refUte the misconceptions of vitalism but to explain hmv they had come about in the first place. And once it could be shown that the processes responsible fOr the symptoms of a disease such as diabetes exist in the normal as well as the pathological state, it became legitimate to claim that the proper approach to understanding disease was to understand health. At that moment, the culture's attitude toward disease changed. When people believed that diseases were essences with a nature all their mvn, their only thought was, as Bernard said, "to be wary of them," that is, to strike a compromise with them. But \vhcn experimental medicine claimed the ability to determine the conditions of health and defined disease as a deviation from those conditions, atti-

280

NTERPRETATIONS

CLAUDE

BERNARD

ceptualize it epistemologically, I have given him precisely the

f<Jr a proposed work on problems raised by the practice of medi-

credit he deserves, 'lincc everything I say is borrowed from him.

cine (preserved at the CollCge de France). "Scientific empiricism

As Victor Cousin, a philosopher I do not cmtomarily quote, once

is the opposite of rationalism and radically different rrom science,

put it, 'Tame is never wrong. The only problem is finding out

Science is based on the rationalism of the facts .... Medical sci~

what con
cnce is the science in which we rationally and experimentally explain di<;easeo; in order to predict or alter thf'ir

progres~."'-' 7

The Limits of Bernard ian Theory

Another formulation is <.'n~n clearer: "Medicine is the an of llf'al-

[Ill J There can be no doubt that the accumulation nfknmvledge

ing. but it must becometh<.· science of healing. The art of healing

in such basic disciplines as pathological anatomy. histology and

i'l empiricism. The science of healing is rationali-;m."·Jr: In a \vork

histopathology. physiology and organic chemistry necessitated

devoted to epistt•mnlngy. the author will perhaps be ,11lowed to

painful revision of many of the attitudes toward disease that the

express a preference f(Jr the term "rationality" over ~·rationalism,"

eighteenth century bequeathed to the nineteenth. Of all the dis-

\vhich is out of plaC(· beyond the history of philosophy. In any

ciplines, it \\'aS physiology that most directly challenged the nat-

case, Emile Littn~ and Charles Rubin\ Dictionnairc de mCdccinc

uralistic paradigm, which rightly or wrongly claimed the authority

contains an article on "r.1tionalism" that is really a definition of

of a llippocratic tradition revamped to suit contemporary tastes.

"rational," where it is stated that a rational treatment nf an i\1-

While in')isting on the fundamental identity nf the normal and

neso; is one hJsed on principles of physiology and JnJtomy. and

the pathological, physiology promised to deduce modes oftrcat-

not on mere empiricism. This definition of a rationJI therJp~· is

mctH from knowledge of their practical cHt'<. b. Being an experi-

repeated verbatim in the 1~78 Diclionnairc de lo longut! jran(aisc

mental science, like physics and chemistry. ·whose results and

under "rationality."[ ... J

techniques it used, physiology \vas not only not antagonistic to

There is no exemplary figure, no classical period, in the his-

the idea of a scientifically based medicine but actually called

tory of rationality. The ninctt:'cnth century taught the twcntif'th

fOr the rat ionali1.ation of medical practice. The term "rational-

that every problem requires an appropriate method t<)r its solu-

ism" was in fact widely used to characterize the medicine of the

tion. In medicine as in other fields, rationality reveals itself after

future; one of the first to use the term in this way \vas Charles

the fact; it io; not gin·n in advance but reflected in the mirror of

Schiitlcnherger in Strasbourg, who in 1844 adYocated the appli-

succes-.. Bernard sometimes found it difficult to accept that not

cation to medicine of what he called "experimental rationalism,"

every rational method had to resemble his, which he considered

""hich as latt> as 1879 he still prefe-rred to Rernarcfs "experimen-

paradigmatic. His critkisms uf Rudolph Vircho\\' and cellular

tal rnedicin<.·."% In 1846, the Gcrn1J.n Jakob Henle published a

pathology were harsh. Although lw approVt·d of Louis Pastt•ur's

Jlandhuch dcr ratJOncllcn Patholo,qic. At the time, Claude Bernard

refutation of the theor} of "pnntaneous generation, he 1wn·r imag-

was -;rill

,1

young doctor, and it was not until the 1860s that he

in('d how fruitful g\.'rnl tlwory \\'ould prove in treating disease.

took up the term "rationalism," fOr example in his Principe<; de

An obsession with tlw dogma that all disea..,cs arc

mCdccinc cxpCrimcntalc (first published in 1947) and in his notes

gin proved to be an obstacle to rational undcrst,1nding of in fee-

I

Jtl

ll<.T\'(JlJ<.,

in ori-

lr-!TERPRfTAT'ONS

tion and contagion. While it is correct, as Bernard claimed, that

PART FIVF

the nerves exert an influence on infectious disease, it would have been better if he had never written that "a nervous paralysis can produce a septic diseasc.'":IY llere the physiopathological type of

Problems

rationality leads to an explanation of symptoms, but it was Pasteur and Heinrich Hermann Robert Koch \vho developed a different type of rationality capable of ansvvering questions of etiology. Extreme physiologism had its limits: for proof one need only consider 1he rear-guard action waged by Elie de Cyon against the triumphant Pasteurians in his study of Eticnne-jules Marcy, the author of a little-known work entitled Essai de thiorie ph_ysiologique du cho/Cra ( 1865 ).llln Marcy \vas perfectly well aware that "the -;earch for an absolutely effective medication or certain prophylaxis" would require the identification of \vhat he still called a microscopic parasite . 101 The adverb "absolutely" and the adjectivL" "certain" reflect tlw Bernard ian conception of rationality: the vt'!l('ration of dctt.:rminism led to outright rejection and scorn for attt·rnpts to introduce concepts of probability and statistics into medicine. Hut at least Marcy was fully a\vare that knowledge of the role of the vasomotor nervous system in circulation and calorific.ttion wa~ not enough to suggest an anticholera therapy more "r
peopks."W< [Etudes, p. 393-96]

I

Knowledge and the Living Science and

I i~c

The Vitalist Imperative [112] Vitalism as defined by the eighteenth-century Montpellicr phy'>ician Paul-Joseph Barthez explicitly claimed to be a continua-

tion of the Hippocratic tradition. Thi" Hippocratic

anCC')try \VJ'l

probably more important than the doctrine's other forebear, Aristntelianism, lOr while vitali'\m borrowed much of its tcrminology from Aristotle, its spirit w.1s alway.., llippocratic. Harthc1 put it this way in his ]\Iom·ctJU\ dhnt!nts de lo .Kicmc de !'hom me ( 1778 ):

By man's "vital principle" I rncan the cau..,c ()I all the plwnonwna of life in the human body. The name ~~in-n to that cause i~ of relati\'ely little importance and may he cho<,cn at will. I prefer "vital

principle" because this suggests a less circumscribed notion than the term impctum {acicns (To rvop]l(dV) that llippocratt:'s used or than any of the other terms that have been U
Vitalism \vas in one respect .1 biolog.y for physicians skeptical of the healing powers of medication. :\ccnrcling to the Hippocratic theory of natura mcdn-azri.\', the defensiH' reaction of the organism is more important than diagnosing the cause of the disI

I

~

PROHI

EMS

ease. By the saml' tokt:n, prognosis, though dependent on cliagnosi~. is the dominant art. It i-; a~ important to anticipate the

course of a disea<.,e as to determine its cause. Because nature is the first physician, therapy is as much a matter of prudence as of boldness. Vitalism and naturalism \vere thus inextricably associ-

I

KNOWLEDGE

[
AND

THE

LV

"JG

a harmonious sy~tern obedient to certain laws and dedicated

to certJin ends. They conceived of them-.elve~ as an organi1ul part

..~

of this universe, a sort of cell in the universal organism, all of

"

whnse cells were unified by an internal sympathy. It thercf()re

:~ ·~·

ated. Medical vitalism reflected an almost instinctive \Variness of

seemed natural to them that the fate of the partial organ should be bound up with the movements of the heavens.

the lll'aling arr's powers over life. There is an analogy to bt· drawn

Such an interpretation may \Yell be

focick.r for the psychoanal-

here; the contrast between nature and art i.;; rl'miniscent of Aris-

~sis of knowledge. That it may have some merit is sugge'ited by

totle's contrast bet\veen natural movement and violent move-

its convergence vdth Walther Riese\ comments on Constantin

ment. Vitalism was an expression of the conficlence among the

von Monakow's biological theories: ''In von Monakow's neuro-

living in life, of the mind\ capacity, as living consciousness of life,

biology, man is a child of nature who never leaves it~ mother's

to identif\· with the living J~ like with like.

brl'J<>L"2

These remarks suggest the follovdng observation: vitalism

There cJn be no doubt that, for the vitalists. the funda-

nwntJl biological phenomenon was generation, which conjured

reflected an enduring life-imperative in the consciousness of liv-

up certain images and posed certain problem-, that, to one degree

ing human beings. This was one reason for the vagueness and

or another, influencecl thC' representation of other phenomena.

nebulousness that mechanist biologists and rationalist philoso-

A vitalist, I would venture to suggest. is a person who is more

phers saw as deft:cts of vitalisr doctrine. If vitalism was above all

likely to ponder tht· problem-.; oflifl· by contemplating an <'R._t!, rhan

an imperative, it was only natural that it should have some dif-

by turning a \'t:lru.:hor operating the hrllows of a f<Jrgc.

ficulty expressing itself in determinate formulations. [Connais-

Vitalists were coni'ident of the spontaneity of life and reluc-

wnce, p. 86] [113] Indeed, Emanuel Radl recognized that vitalism was an

tant- in some C
imperative r,Hher than a method and more of an ethical system,

parado\.ically reduced to

perhaps. th,m a theory. 1 Man, he argued. can look at nature in

which human beings had created in thPir quest to nn•rcnme the

two ""·ays. lie feels that he is a child of nature and has a sense of

obstacles that nature had placed in their v·;ay. Typical of these atti-

belonging to something larger than himself; he sees himself in nature and nature in himself. But he also stands before nature as

tudes was a man like Jean Baptiste van I !elmont. r.. -l \'J.n l-ldmont dt·nied Descartes's contention that the fOrces

bdOre an undefinable alien object. A scientist who fed~ filial,

of narure are unified. Fvery being. he argued, has both its own

nature conceived of as a series of mechanical processes and, thus, .1

congeries of devices similar to those

~ympathetic .-.entinwnts toward nature will not regard natural phe-

individual force and thf' f()rce of it-. spec in. Nature is an t·ndlcss

nomena as strange and alien; rather, he will find in them life, c;oul

hierarchy of f(Jrces and h"lrms. This hierarchy comprises seeds,

and meaning. Such a man is basically a vitalist. Plato, Aristotle,

lean~ns, principles and ideas. The living body is organil'ed as a

Galen, all medieval and most Renaissance scholars \vere in this

hier.lrchy of arches. Tht..' term anhc, fir~t principle, borrowed from

sense vitalists. Thev rq!:ardecl the univnse as an organism, th,lt

·,

288

j

Paracdsus, descrilwd an organizing, commanding power, some-

PROBLEMS

KNOWLEDGE

AN[)

THE

L'VING

thing rather more akin to the general of an army than to a workman. It marks a return to the Aristotelian conception of the body as subordinate to the soul in the same sense as the ~oldier is subordinate to his captain or the slave to his master.3 Vitalism attacked the technological version of mechanism at least as much as, and

n.·.-tch. That is what Theophile de Bordeu. the first great theorist of the Montpdlier School, meant when he called van Helmont "one of those enthusiasts that every century needs in order to astound the scholastics."' [Connaissance, pp. 91-92]

perhaps even more than, it did the theoretical version. [Connaissance, pp. 88-89] [114] It may seem absurd to argue that vitalism \vas in fact a fertile doctrine, particularly given the fact that it always portrayed itself as a return to ancit•nt beliefs- a tendency quite evident in the naive penchant of many vitalists to borrow Greek terms for the rather obscure entities they felt obliged to invoke. The vitalism of the Renaissance was in one sense a return to Plato intended to counter the overly logicized medieval version of Aristotle. But the vitalism of van Helmont, Georg Ernst Stahl and Paul-Joseph Barthez has been called a return beyond Descartes to the Aristotle of De anima. For Hans Driesch, the case is patent. But how is this return to the Ancients to be interpreted? Was it a revival of older and consequently timeworn concepts, or was it a case of nostalgia for ontologically prior intuitions, for a more direct relation lwtween intention and object? Archaeology stems .1s much from a nostalgia kJr original sources as from a love of ancient things. We are more apt to grasp the biological and human significance of a sharpened flint or a(h.e than of an electric timer or a camera. In the realm of theory, one must be c;ure of a theory's background and development to interpret reversion as retreat or rejection as reaction or betrayal. Wasn't Aristotle's vitalism already a reaction against the mechanism of Democritus, and wasn't Plato's finalism in thC" Phacdo a reaction against the mechanism of Anaxagoras/ In any case, there can be no doubt that vitalists were after a cer~ tain pretechnological, prelogical naivete of vision, a vision of life as it was before man created tools and language to extend his

The Technoloeical Madel [llS] The word "mechanism" comes from the Greek ).lnxavn, or device, \vhich combines the two senses of ruse (or stratagem) and machine. Perhaps the two meaning'> are actually one. Is not man's invention and use of machines, his technological activity in general, what Hegel calls the "r!Jse of reason" in Section 209 of his Logic? This ruse consists in accomplishing one's own ends by means of intermediate objects acting upon one another in conformity with their own natures. The essence of a machine is to be a mediation or, as mechanics say, a link. A mechanism creates nothing, and therein lies its inertia (incrs), yet it is a ruse whoc;e construction necessarily involves art. As a scientific method and philosophy, mechanism is therefore an implicit postulate in any use of machines. The success of this human ruse depends on the lack of any similar ruse in Nature. Nature can be conquered by art only if she herself is nor art: only a man named Ulysses (No-Man) is capable of devising a scheme to get the wooden horse insidt• the gates of Troy, and he succeeds only because his enemies are fOrces of nature rather than clever engineers. The ruses by which animals avoid traps are often adduced .1s objections to the Cartesian theory of the animal-machine. In the foreword to the ]\/cw Essays, Leibniz offers tht' case with which animals are trapped as evidence for Descartes's contention that they are capable only of responding to immediate sensations (what we would today call "conditioned reflexes"). Conversely, Descartes's hypothetical description in the Meditations of a deceptive God or evil geniu.<:o effectively transfOrms man into an animal surrounded by traps. If

KNOWLEDGI-

PROBLEMS

AND

'HF

I IVING

on one or more mechanisms. A mt'chanism is a configuration of

(_;od uses human ruses agaimt humankind, man descends h·orn the statlls of living creature ro that of mere inert object. Is the the-

i

I

un· of the living machine just such a human ruse, which, it taken literally, \vould prove that there i~ no such thing as life? Rut why then, if animals are mere machines, if nature is merely one vast

mo,·ing solids whose configuration is maint.:tincd throughout its movement; or, to put it another way, a mechanism is an assemblv of parts who~t~ relation to one another change'l over time but is periodically restored to an initial configuration. The assembly consists in a system of linkages with fixed degrees of freedom:

machinl', does the domination of animals and nature cost human beings so much effort? [Connaissance, p. 87]

f{H

example, a pendulum or a cam-driven valve has one degree of

[llh] Mechanist philosophers ann biologists took machines as

freedom; a \\·orm gear shaft has two. The material embodiment

a give-n, or, if they studied rhe problem of machine-building at

of thc'ie degrees of freedom con<;ists in guides, that is, structures

all, solved it by invoking human calculation. They relied upon

limirirw the movement of solids in contact. Tht' movement of am·.

the engineer or, ultimately, as it seemed to them, the scil·ntist.

machine is thus a function of its structure, and the mechanism

Misled by the ambiguity of the term "mechanical," they looked

is a function of its configuration. The fundamental principles of

~

upon machines as nothing more than r~ifi_eQ theorems, theorems

a general theory of mechanisms (as defined here) can be found

made concrete by the relatively trivial operation of construction,

in any standard work, fOr example- Franz K.euleaux's Kinemotics 6

which, they believed, involved nothing more than the application

(which was translated from German into hench in 1877). [ ... ] The point of this brief review of the h.mdamcntals of kinemat-

of knowledge in full consciousness of its limits and full cert.1inty of it~ effects. ln my vie\\\ huwe..-er, the biological problem of the

ic" is that it allows me to point up the paradm.ical significance

org
of the tOIIowing problem: \Vhy did scienti~t:-. use machines and

logical problem whose solution it assumes, namely, the problem

mechanisms as models for understanding organic structures and

of th<.· relation benvecn technology and science. The usual solu-

functions? OtH: problem with any mechanical model is its ~ourcc

tion is to say that knowledge is prior to its applications both

of energy. A machine, as defined above, is not self~cnntained: it must take energy from somewhere and tr,msform it. \Ve alway~

logicallv and chronologically, but I shall try to show that the construction of machines involving .uJthentically biological notions cannot be understood \\·ithout n· ..·ising this view of the relation her ween science and rechnulog~. [.,. J

.i

think of mm·ing machines as connected with some source of energy. 7 r:or a long time, the energy that

'-.t't

kinematic machines in

To a <;crupulous observer, living creatures other than verte-

motion came from the muscuiJ.r efh.1rt of humans or animals. In

brates rarely exhibit structures likely to suggest the idea of a

that stage, it wa~ obviously tautological to explain the movement

mechanism (in the technical sense). To be sure, julien Pacottc

of a living thing by comparing it to tht..· movement of a machine

note<; that the arrangement of the parts of the eye and the move-

dependent on muscular effort for its source of energy. Histori-

ment ofthe eyeball correspond to w·hat mathematicians would call

cally, theref(Jn·, a.;, has frequently been shown, there could be

a mech.mism.5 Perhaps a few definitions arc in order. A machine

no mechanical explanation of life functions until men had con-

i~ a man-made object that depends, for it~ essential function( s ).

structed automata: the very word "uggests both the miraculnu"

PROBLEMS

quality of the object and it.;; appearance of being a self-contained mechanism whose energy does not come, immediately at any rate, from the muscular effort of a human or animal. [Connaissance, pp. 102-104] [117] Aristotle, 1 think, took a custOJ1l~[J' way of looking at animal organisms, a sort of cultural a priori, and raised it to the level of a concept of life in general. The vocabulary of animal anatomy is full of terms for organ~. parts and regions of organisms based on technological metaphors or analogies.s The development of the anatomical vocabulary in Greek, Hebrew, Latin and Arabic shmvs that the perception of organic forms was shaped in part by technological norms. 4 This explains why physiology was traditionally regarded as subordinate to anatomy. For follmvers of Galen, physiology was the science of the use of the parts, de usu partium. From William llarvey to Albrecht von Haller and beyond, moreover, the science of organic functiom was called anatomia animata. Claude Bernard was a forceful critic of this way of looking at things. though often with more rhetorical energy than practical consequences. As long as technology served as the source of models for explaining organic fUnctions, the parts of the organism were likened to tools or machine parts. 10 The parts were r.1tionally conceived as means to the organism's end, and the organism itself was conceived of as a static structure, the sum of its parts. The standard histories may \veil overemphasize the contrast between Aristotelianism and Cartesianism, at least as far a'i their theories of life are concerned. To be sure, there is an irreducible difference between explaining animal movement as a consequence of desire and giving a mechanist explanation of desire itself. The principle of inertia and the conservation of momentum led to an irreversible revolution in natural science: with the theory of stored energy and defi..·rred utilization, Descartes was able to

"r'lOWLEDGE

ANO

THE

LIVING

refUte the Aristotelian conception of the relation be-t\veen nature and art. All that notwithstanding, it remains true that the use of mechanical modds to represent living organisms implied that tho~e organisms were conceived as necessary and invariant structures of their component parts. The implicit idea of order was that of the workshop. In part five of the Discourse on the Method Dl'scartes discusses a work that he never published. Le Monde (""The World," though it was ,lCtually about man): "I showed there what kind of workshop the nerves and muscles of the human body must constitute in order that the animal spirits have the strength to move the limb'i." Later, in discussing the behavior of animals, he says. "It is nature- that acts within them, according to the disposition of their orgam." Workshop. disposition: tlw~e were technological concepts before they became anatomical ones. From Andreas Vesalius, Descartes borrowed a concept that was actually in fairly wide use in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, that of the fabrica corporis humani. In a letter to Marin [\:\ersennc, a reference to Vcsalius fOllowed this statement of principle: "The number and the orderly arrangement of the nerves, veins, bones and other parts of an animal do not shovv that nature is insufficent to form them, provided you suppo5e that in everything nature acts exactly in accordance with the laws of ml'chanics, and that these laws have been impo~cd on it by God." II This invocation of God the mechanic, apparently intended only to rule out any vital teleology, fUlly merits Raymond Ruycr's acerbic remark that the more pl·oplc thought of organisms as automata, the more they thought of God as an Italian engineer.[ ... ] In short, both Aristotle and Descartes based thl· distinction between the organism and its parts on technologically conditioned perceptions of macroscopic animal structures. The technological model reduced physiology to a matter of deduction fi-om anatomy: an organ's function could he deduce-d from the way

f PROBLLMS

K'\JOWI ED(";E

AND

TfiE

LIV

NG

it was put together. Although the parts \\'ere seen, in dynamic

theorv of preformation. Development then became a simple mat-

terms, as subordinate to the whole, just as the parts of a machine

ter of:incn:asing

were subordinate to the whole machine, that functional subor-

Ilenri Gouhier once remarked about the concept of containment

dination led to a view of the static structure of the machine as

in Nicolas de Malebranch~:".

merely the sum of its parts. [Etudes, pp. 323-25]

sin~.

and biology became a kind of geometry, as

When Caspar Friedrich Wo\ffshowed (in 1759 and 1768) that the dcvclopment of an organism involved the emergence of a

The Social Model [118] The foregoing conception was not seriously challenged

series of non prefOrmed structures, however, it became nece.,sary

until the first half of the nineteenth century, \vhen two things

organism itself. That organism was not random or idiosyncratic,

to rc'itore responsibility f()r the organism's organization to the

happened. First, t\vO basic disciplines, embryology and physiol-

and anomalies were understood as failures to develop or to pro-

ogy, which had been struggling to define their own distinctive

gress beyond a normally intermediate stage. lienee there must be

methods and concepts, achieved the status of experimental sci-

some fCJrmative tendency, what Wolff called a nisus formalil'US and

ences. Second, there was a change in the scale of the structures

Johan Friedrich Blumenbach called a Rildun,qstrieh. In other words,

studied by morphologists; or, to put it another \vay, cell theory

it was necessarv to assume an immanent plan of organogenesis.

was introduced into general anatomy.

These

Leaving aside the regeneration and reproduction of Abraham

fact~

underlie Kant's theory of organic finality and

totality as set forth in the Critique of ]udnment. A machine, Kant

i~ a whole whose parts exist for one another but not by one

Trembley's famous plant-animals and Charles Bonnet's observa-

savs,

tion of partheno.g.ene.sis in plant lice, no biological phenomenon

ar;oth~r.

\vas more difficult fOr eighteenth-century theorists to interpret in

of things of the same type as itself. No machine possesses its own

terms oftechnological models than that of morphological develop-

f()rmative energy.

No part is made from any other; in fact, nothing is made

ment, or the growth from seed to adult fOrm. llistorians of biol-

A little more than a hundred yean ago, Claude Bernard devel-

ogy frequently associate the epigenetic view of development with

oped an identical theory in his Introduction 0 l'itudc de Ia mtidecinc

I

mechanist biology; in so doing, they neglect the close and all but obligatory association of mechanism with prcformationism. Since

I

machines do not assemble themselves, and since there arc no machines for creating (in the absolute sense) other machines, the living machine mmt in one way or another be associated with what eighteenth-century thinkers liked to call a machiniste, an inventor or builder of machines. If no such builder was percep-

tI

tion: the theorv of a seed \Vithin a seed and so on, ad infinitum,

logi~al

nature of its physicochemical properties, complex though they may be, but the creation of that machine, v.·hich develops befOre our eyes under conditions peculiar to ito;;elf and in accordance \vith a definite idea, which expresses the nature of the living thing and the essence ofliti: itself." I? Like Kant, Bernard gave the name "idea" to the morphological a priori, as it were, that detcrmines

tible in the present, then there must have been one at the incepwas thus a

cxptirimcntolc: "\Vhat characterizes the living machine is not the

response to the problem that gave rise to the

l.

.

j .

I

the formation and shape of each part in relation to all the rest through a sort ofreciprocal causation. And again like Kant, Rernard taught that natural organization cannot be thought of as being in

PRORLEMS

any way akin to human agency. Stranger still, after ruling out, on explicit grounds, any possibility of a technological model of organic unity, Kant hastened to suggest organic unity as a possible model for social organization.13 Bernard used the converse of the same analogy when he compared the unity of the multicellular organism to that of a human society. [Etudes, pp. 325-27] [!19] Claude Bernard accepted cell theory, as he had to in order to make experimentation in physiology possible. He elaborated the concept of the internal environment, and that, too, was a necessary condition for experimental physiology. The physiology of regulation (or homeostasis, as it has been called since Walter Bradford Cannon), together with cytologic.lllDrphologt. enabled Bernard to treat the organism as a whole and to develop an analytic science of organic functions without brushing aside the fact that a living thing is, in the true sense of the \vord, a synthesis. Bernard's most important remarks on the subject that concerns us here can be found in his Le(ons sur les pht!nomincs de Ia vie communs aux animaux et aux vt!,qt!taux, based on lectures he gave at the Museum in the final years of his life. The structure of the organism reflects the exigencies of life on a more basic level, that of the cell. The cell itself is an organism, either a distinct individual or a constituent of a larger "society" of cells forming an animal or plant. The term "society," which Rudolph Ludwig Karl Virchow and Ernst Heinrich I Jaeckel also seized upon at around the same time as Bernard, suggested a model for the organic functions very different from the technological model - namely, an economic and political one. Complex organisms were now thought of as totalities comprising virtually autonomous subordinate elements. "Like society, the organism is constructed in such a way that the conditions of elementary or individual life arc respected." 14 Division of labor was the law for organisms as ""·ell as for societies. Conceived in terms of a technological model,

KNOWLEDGE

ANLl

THE

LIVING

an organism was a set of strictly related basic mechanisms; conceived in terms of an economic and political model, though, an organism was a set of structures that grew increasingly complex and diverse as they assumed specialized responsibility for originally undifferentiated functions. Between the level of the elementary cell and that of man, Bernard explained, one finds every degree of complexity as organ combines with organ. The most highly developed animals possess multiple systems: circulatory, respiratory, nervous and so on. Physiology was thus the key to organic totalization, the key that anatomy had failed to provide. The organs and systems of a highly differentiated organism exist not for themselves or for other organs and systems but for cells, the countless anatomical radicals, for which they create an internal environment whose composition is maintained in a steady state by a kind of feedback mechanism. By joining in association and instituting a kind of society, the basic elements obtain the collective means to live their separate lives: "If one could at every moment create an environment identical to that which the actions of nearby parts constantly create for a given elementary organism, that organism would live in freedom exactly as it lives in society." 15 The part depends on a whole that exists solely in order to maintain it. By referring all functions to the cell level, general physiology provided an explanation for the fact that the structure of the whole organism is subordinate to the functions of each part. Made of cells, the organism is also made for cells, fOr parts that are themselves less complicated wholes. The use of an economic and political model enabled nineteenth-century biologists to understand \vhat the use of a technological model had prevented their predecessors from grasping. The relation of the parts to the whole is one of integration (a concept that later met with success in neurophysiology), with the 299

f >' 1·1 _] W LEI

(, E

AN C'

T

H f-

L. 1'/ I r.r G

survh·al of the parts being the ultimate end: th<..~ parts were seen

vidual cells were satisfied; Bernard had hypothesized that those

no longer as instrunwnts or pieces hut as incliriduals. At a time

conditions could also be -.atisficd when cells \\'l~n· taken out of

when what would later become cell theory was still at the stage

their association \vith other cells, provided that an appropriate

of philosophical speculation and preliminary microscopic explo-

artificial environment \vas created. But \vhat did it actually mean

ration. the term "monad'' was often used fOr the atomic compo-

for the cell to live in freedom, that is, liberated from the inhibi-

nent of an organism; it was only later that "monad" lost out to

tions and stimulations stemming from its integration into the

"cell.'' Auguste Comtc, in fact, rejected what he called the "the-

organi:;,m~ In order t()r life in freedom to n..'p!icate li~l· in society

ory of monads" and we now call cell theory.

The indirect but

exJ.ctly, the cell would have to be provided with an environment

real influence of I.cibniz on the early Romantic philosophers and

that aged as it did. But then the life nfthe cell would proceed in

1t>

biologists who dreamed up cell theory allmvs us to say of the cell

parallel with changes in the artificial environment; it would not

\vhat Lcibni:t· said of the monad, namely, that it i'l a pars totalis.

be independent. Furthermore, living in freedom rendered a cell

It is not an instrument or a tool but an individual, a subject in rela-

unfit

tion to its functions. Bernard frequently uses the term "harmony~~

character of being part of a whole. Ftienne \\'oltlremarks:

t0

return to ~ociety: the liberated p.lft itTevocclbly lost its

to convey what he mc<ms by "organic totality.'' It is not too diffi. cult to detect therein a faint echo of Lcibniz's philosophy. And

No

ctttL'iTipt

to create

an J~'>ociatinn ot pn'' iou~\y di-;<,ociatcd n·\\.,

so, ,..vith the recognition of the cell as the ba~ic morphological

has been able to reconstitute structural unity. Analysi~ hJ~ never been

ek·mcnt of all organitcd substJ.nces, the meaning of the concl·pt

succt.'{'
of organization changed: the \Yhole was no longer a structure of

applie~ the term "tis~uc culture" tP anarchic prolifcr.ltiom of n·lls

interrelated organs but a totalization of individuals. 17 Simul-

that do not reflect either the structure or cohesion of th~· tissue ti·om

taneouo,;\y, the dnelopment of st"t theory changed the traditional

which tht'v

afl'

t.l~cn. \!-\

mathematical meaning of the term "part," just as the development of cell theor;' changed its traditional anatomical meaning.

In other words, an organic element can be called an element only

\

[Etudes, pp. 329-31]

1

The Oryani.sm Is Its Own Model [120] Did the technique of in vitro culture of ex planted cells, ,.vhich was perfected by Akxis Carrd in 1910 but invented by J ..\1.]. Jolly in 1903, o!Ter experimental proof that the structure of the organism is an analogue of liberal society? Claude Bernard, who died thirty years t'clrlicr, h
JOO

we of indi-

in its undis<.;ociated state. The situation rcolls llcgl'l's obserYation in his f_o,qic that it is the whole which creates the relation among ih parts, -.o th,"\t without thl· wholt> there are no parts. Experimental embryology and cytology thus corrected the

f

l .,

concept of organic structure. Bernard had allowed himself to be unduly inlluenced by a social model, which all in a\! amountl'f1 to little more than a metaphor. In reaction against the usc of mechanical models in physiology. Bernard wrote: "The larynx

i<.;

the larynx. and the lens of the eye is the \en-; of the eye: in other \\'l)rds, the mechanical and rhysical condition<; neces:-.ary ftJr their

JOI

T

I

~ 'J0WLEQt3E

A~l'

I HE

Llv

l>JG

to assert an arbitrary predicate of a given object. The fixity of rep-

concepts either something more than human or else something

etition of beinv<- constrain.-:. thouaht to identitv' of Zhsertinn. The <-

natural hierarchy of cosmic forms requires the hierarchy of defi-

transcending Ii fe { ~upra \'ita/r ). A second difficulty, vvhich is in fact an instance of the first,

nitions in the realm of logic. The conclusion of a syllogism is nec-

concerns the impossibility of accounting for mathematical knowl-

essary by virtue of the hierarchy according to which a species

edgt· in term::. of a biological Function. A celehrated p
dominated by its genus becomes a dominating genus in relation

the A-1~caphysics states that mathematics has nothing to Un with

to an inferior species. Kno ...\'ledge is therefore the \vorld made

final causes,2° \vhich is equivalent to saying that there an: intel-

into thought in the soul, and not the soul thinking up the world. If the essence of a living thing is its natural form. it follm.vs that,

ligible things that are not forms in the proper sense of the word. and that knowledge of those things has nothing to do with knowl-

things being as they are, they are known as they are and for \vhat

edge of life. Hence, there is no mathematical model of the liv-

they are. The intl'llect is identical with those things that are intel-

ing. Although Aristotle describes nature as ingenious, cn:ative and

ligible. The '>Vorld is intt'lligible and, in particular, living things

inventive, it should not then be conilatcd ">vith the demiu_!:~ of

arc intelligible, because the intelligible is in the world.

the Timaem. Ont:' of the most a'ltonishing propositions of Aris-

relation between knowledgl:' and being, in particular between

totle's philosoph~· of bio\ogy is that it makes not the arti~Ml but the art responsible for \vhat is produced. Vv·'hat cures the patient

intelligence and life. If one treats intelligence as a function of con-

is not the physician but health. It is because the form "health" is

A first major difficulty in Aristotle's philosophy concerns the

templation and reproduction, if one gives it a p!J.ce among the

present in medical activity that medicine is, in ~~1Ct, the c.1use of

forms, however eminent, onl' thereby situates (that is, limits) the

the cure. By art, Aristotle means the unrd1ecti\'e purpose of a nat- I

thought of order at a particular place in the universal order. But

ural logos. 1\"ieditating on the example of the physician who heals

how can knowledge be at once mirror and object, refll:'ctor and

not because he i.'> a physician but because he is inhabited and ani-

rel1ection! If the df'finition of man as

or reasoning

mated by the frmn "health." one might say that the presence of

animal, io;; a naturalist's definition (in the same sense that Carolus

the concept in thought, in the form of an end represented as

Linnaeus defines the wolf as canis lupus or the maritime pine

a model. is an epiphenomenon. Aristotle's anti-Platonism was

as pinus maritima). then science, and in particular the scil'nce of

rdlected in his depreciation of mathematics: mathematics was

[wov AoyJKOV,

life, is an activity of life itsel[ One is then fl:lfced to ask what

denied access to the immanent actidty of life, which is God's

the organ of that activity is. And it fOllows that the Aristotelian

essential attribute. and it was only through knowledge (dut is,

theory of the acthe intellect, a pure form without organic basis,

imitation) oF that immanent ,\Ctivit~ that man could hope to form

has the dfect of separating intelligence from life; it lets some-

an idea ofGmL [Etudes, pp, l 36-38]

thing from outside (8upaEkv, in Aristotk's terms) enter the human embryo, as through

t\

doon\·a~. namely, the extranatural or tran-

scendent power to make sense of the essential forms that individual beings embody. The theory thus makes tlw conception of

Nominalism [122] A further difficulty of Aristotelianism concerns the ontological and gnoseological st,ltus of indi\'iduality in a science of life

PROBLEMS

KNOWLEDGE

based on concepts. If the individual is an ontological reality and not simply an imperfection in the rea1ization of a concept, what

AND

THE

LI\ING

served as a model for nineteenth-century physicians in developing their nosologies. "The rationality of what threatens life," he \\'rote, "is identical to" the rationality of life itself." But there is

is the significance of the order of beings represented in the classification by genus and species? If the concept of a living being ontologically presides over its conception, what mode of knowl-

rationality and rationality. The matter of universals was, of course, an important issue

edge is the individual capable of? A system of living forms, if grounded in being, has the ineffable individual as its correlatej but an ontological plurality of individuals, if such a thing exists, has a concept, a fiction, as its correlate. There are two possibilities. Is it the universal that makes the individual a living thing as well as this particular living thing? If so, singularity is to life as the exception is to the rule. The exception confirms the rule, in the sense of revealing its existence and content, fOr the rule, thl;:': violation of the rule, is \vhat makes the singularity apparent, indeed glaring. Or is it the individual that lends its color, weight and flesh to that ghostly abstraction, the universal? Without such a gift, "universal" would ha\·e no meaning in "life," and would he an empty word. The conflict between the individual and the universal as to their respective claims on "being" bears on life in all its forms: the vegetable as wdl as the animal, function as \veil as form. illneo;s a-. well as "temperament." All approaches to life must be homogeneou'i. If living species exist, then the diseases of living thing<; must also form species. If only individuals exist, then there arc no species of disease, only sick individuals. If life has an immanent logic, then any science of life and its manifes-

in medieval philosophy, theology and politics. Here, hov... ever, I shall approach this question only indirectly, by way of a few brief remarks on nominalism in the philosophy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Nominalists over the ages have relied on a varied but unchanging arsenal of arguments. Because they were not ahvays engaged in the same struggle, hmvcvcr, different nominalists chose different weapons fi-om that arsenal. Yet all of them,

to heal. In The History of Madness and Birth of the Clinic, Michel Foucault brilliantlv demonstrated how the methods of botany

h·nm Ockham to Hume by way of Duns Scotus, Hob be~. Locke and Condillac, shared one common purpo:-,c- to show that universals are merely a way of using singular things and not in the narurc of things themselves. Ockham called universal:'~ "suppositions" {that is, po.o;itions of \Ubstitution); Hobbes called them "arbitrary impositions"; Locke callt:>d them "representations instituted a'ii 'iiigns." Yet all agreed that conct:>pts \\Tfl' a human. which is to 'iiay, factitious and tendentious, processing of experience. We ~ay "human" because we do not know if we have tht:> right to say "intellectual." llolding that the mind is a tabula rasa docs not give one the right to say that a tabula rasa is a mind. Nominalists look upon shared properties of individual things as an authentic equivalent to universals, but isn't doing so tantamount to donning a mask of false simplicity? A trap awaits those who take this path, the trap of similarity. A general idea, Locke says, is a general name signifying a similar quality perceived under a variety of circumstances; that quality is weighed by abstraction, that is, by "consideration of the common as distinct from the particular." It can then serve as a valid representation for all particular ideas belonging to the same type. Unlike Locke, Hume ascribes to the f~K-

J06

J07

tations, whether normal or pathological, must set itself the task of discovering that logic. Nature then becomes an enduring set of latent relations that must be brought to light. Once uncovered, however, those relations offer a reassuring guarantee of validity to the naturalist's efforts to classify and to the physician's efforts

I

T PPORI_EMS

ulty of grnerali:t.ation not only a power to rt.'producc sensations

K'JOWLEDGL

I

AND

I Hl-

I_IVI~JG

than exprCS'iing the order of nature. lienee, in Locke and I Iume

in memory but also to transpose the order in \vhich impressions

as in Aristotle, the problem of how concepts arc conceived is

are received; this power belongs to the imagination. which may

solved in a way that disrupt'> the pro jeer of naturali:ting knowledge of nature. [Etudes, pp. 339-42]

be unfaithful to the lessons of experience. Nevertheless, he argues that similarity of ideas guides the imagination toward certain habits, or unif(xmitie~. in dealing with the environment. llabit tele-

scopes together a whole host of individual cxperie11CCS. If any one of these experiences is evoked by a name, the individual idea of that experience conjures up others, and we yield to the illusion of generality. {t

is easy to see that thne can be no comfort
Transcendental Loyic [113] Philosophy is better than the history of science at revealing the significance of the disparities l)f'twccn the scientific techniques of naturalists and their implicit or explicit underlying philosophy. This can be seen in a masterful text by Kant on "the regulatiq· use of the ideas of pure reason .''-' 1 !!ere Kant introduced

position on thr relation of concepts to life. For the nominalist,

the image of..1 "logical horizon" to account fOr the regulatiw, but

diverse things must exhibit some minimal degree of similarity

not con<;titurive, charactn of the rational principles of homoge-

witl~in

before one can con'itruct the concept of that similar property

neity (diversity grouped by genus) and variety (species

which is supposed to take the place of universal e:-.sences. lienee,

genera). A logical horizon, according to Kant, is a conceptual

what those eighteenth-century ,wthors who vvcre empiricists as

dewpoint that encompasses a certain region; within that hori-

to the content of their knowledge and sensualists a~ to the ori-

t.on, there arc multiple vievvpoint.r.,, c.·ach detcm1ining further hori-

gin of its klrms really give us is a mirror image of Aristotelianism,

:tons of ">mailer ambit. A horizon can be decomposed only into

; because they sought to find the knmving [/e connai'tre J among the

othl'r horizons, just as a concept can be analvzcd onlv in terms

known, to learn about

life within the order of lifC. Human beings,

of other concepts. To say that a horizon can

b~

decorni)oscJ onlv

~ay

they say. an: endowed v•ith a power (which might equally well

into other horizons and not into discrete points is to

be taken for a ml~asure of impotence) to invent cla~ses and, thus,

cies can be decomposed into subspecies but m·vn into incli\'idu-

that sp;-

to arrange other living beings in an orderly f:1shion, but only on

dis. This is because to know something is to know it in terms of

condition that those beings exhibit certain common characters or

conccpt5., and the understanding knm\'s nothing by intuition alone.

repeated traits. I !ow can a nominalist speak of nature or natures?

Kant's image of a logical hori:ton and his definition of a con-

He can do what Hunw did and invoke a human nature, which is

cept as a viewpoint encompas ..-.in~ a rc~ion do not mark a rt>turn

to concede at least that there is uniformity among humans, even

to nominalism, nor do they constitute an attempt to justi(\ con-

though l Iume held that human nature \vas inventive and, more

cepts on the basis ofrheir pragmatic value in achieving economv

t~

~pecifically, capable of adopting deliberate conventions. VVhat

(:fthought. Reason itself prescribes such economy, according

does this accomplish? It introduces a cleavage in the system of

Kant, and in m doing pmscribes the idea of nature according ro

living beings. because the nature of one of those being') is defined

which there is no such thing as similarity, f()r in that case the logical law uf species as wt.·ll as the underst(lnding it<;e]f would

by an artifice, by the possibility of establishing a convention rather

\;p

KNOWLEDGE

PROBLEMS

simultaneous!; abolished. [ ... J Reason thus assumes the role of interpreting the requirements of the understanding in that realm where the science of life pursues the heuristic task of identifying and clas~,;ifying species. Those requirements define a transcendental structure of knowledge. It might therefore appear that Kant's analysis finally manages to break out of the circle within \'l'hich all previous naturalist theories of knowledge had remained confined. The conception of concepts cannot be merely one concept among others. The dichotomy that neither Aristotle nor the empiricist nominalists had been able to avoid was grounded, justified and exalted by Kant. If~ however, we have gained the legitimation of a possibilitythat ofknowl~.~dge through concepts- haYe we not perhaps lost the certainty that, among the objects of knowledge, there arc some, at least, whose existence is a necessary manifestation of the reality of concretely active concepts? Put differently, have we not lost the certainty that living being.;; do in t~1ct number ,1mong the objects of knowledge? In Aristotelian logic, the k)rms of reasoning mimic the hierarchy of living forms, hence there is a guaranteed correspondence between logic and life. Transcendental logic, which constitutes nature a priori as a system of physicallavvs, does not in fact succeed in constituting nature as the theater of living organisms. We gain a better understanding of the naturalist's research, but ""'e do not arrive at an understanding of nature's wavs; '\VC gain a better understanding of the concept of causality,

.,,

AND

THF: LIVING

whole, exemplifies a nonmt:>chanical causality of the concept. We have no a priori knowledgt:' of this type of causality. Forces th.n are also forms and forms that arc also forces are indeed part of nature and in nature, but we do not knm"· this through the underst.mding; we pnceive it, rather. in experience. That is why the idea of a "natural end," which is essentially the idea of a selfconstructing organism, is not a category in Kant but a regulative idea, which can be applied only in the form of maxims. To be sure, art provides an analogy whereby nature's mode of production can be judged. But we cannot hope to adopt the viewpoint of an archetypal intellect fOr which concept and intuition would he identical, an intellect capable of creating its own objects, for which concepts would be not only objects of knowledge but also, tn use Lcibniz's term, original roots of being. Kant holds that the fine arts arc arts of genius, and he regards genius as nature dictating its law· tn art. Yet he refuses to permit himsdf to assume, in dogmatic fashion, a similar viewpoint, that ofgenius. in order ro grasp the secn:t of nature's operari. Kant, in other \vords, refi.1ses ro identify the I(Jgical horizon of the naturalists \vith what one might call the poetic horizon of natura naturans. [Etudes, pp. 343-45]

The Bernard ian Conception [124] Claude Bernard described his reflections as a scientific theory of general physiology. They are interesting, however, preci':iely bccau':ie Bernard did not divorce the study of fimctions ffom that of structures. In Berrurd's day, moreover, the only structure known to be common to both animals and plants, hence the structure on which the study of life must henceforth focus, was the

but we do not understand the causality of the concept. The Critique of judgment attempts to give meaning to this limitation, which the understanding experiences as a fact. An organized being is one that is both its own cause and its own effect; it organizes itself and reproduces its organization; it forms itself and creates its mvn replica in accordance with a type. Its teleological structure, in which the interrelation of the parts is regul.1ted by the

cell. Bernard also did not di"·orce tht" sttuh of structures from rhe study of the origin of those structures. Thus, his gerwral physiology is full of references to cmbrvologv, which ever since the '\vork of Karl Ernst von Baer had se:ve-d ;s a beacon for nineteenth-

J!O

Jil

0'('\JQI,';LEDGE

AND

THF:

LIVI~G

PROBLFMS

t \\'O

cf'ntury biologists, a source of concept<> and methods fOr use by

other disciplines.[ ... ] Bernard's general physiology \vas, first of all, a theory of the development of organs, and his basic conception of life would resolve, or at any rate recast in more meaningful terms, a problem that po'\itivist biology had avoided and that mechanist biology had resolved through conflation of concepts: to \vit, ~in what sense is an organism organized? The naturalists of thl' eighteenth century had been obsessed with the question. Indeed, it was not a question that lent itsdf to easy solution in terms of mechanical models. Pn.·k)rmationism, the theory that the growth of the adult organism from the original sl·ed is simply a matter of enlargement of structures already containl'd in miniature in the seed- along with the logicall) derivativc theory that seeds contain smaller seeds containing still smaller sel'ds and so on. ad infinitumreferred the \\'hole issue of organization back to Creation. The rise of t:mhryology ,\sa basic science in the nint'tcenth century made it possible to rdOrmu],He the question. For Bernard, the question of organization and the obstacle it posl~d to explaining life in phy\ical and chcmicJI terms w.1~ what mad~.· general physiology a distinct science. [ ... J Bernard wa~ po:=:sessed by one idea: that the organized living thing is the temporary manHe"tation of an idie Jirectricc, a guiding idea. The laws of physics and chemistry do not in themselves explain how they are brought to bear on the composition of a particular organism. Thi-. argument is developed at length in the

Leqons sur lcs phinomCncs de Ia l·ic: .".1y experience ha~ led nw to a certain conception of thingo; ....

There are, I bclie\'e, of necessity, two orders of phenomena in living things: phenomena of vital creation or organil· ')ynthesis, and phenomena of death ur organic dt'-;tructirm .... Only the first of these

classe~ of phenomena is v•. - ithout direct analogue clse\vhcre; it

i~ peculiar, specific, j..:;

to living things.

Thi~ t.•volutive synthesis is

what

truly vital.

lienee, fOr Bernard, a functioning organism \vas an organism cngJged in dntroying it-;clf. The functioning of an organ was a physicochemical phenomenon, that is, de.1th. We can grasp such phenomena, we can understand and characterize them, and so \\T

are inclined, misleadingly, to apply the name "life" tu what

is in titct a form of death. Conversely, organic creation and organi/.ation are plastic acts of synthetic reconstitution of the substances that the fundioning organism requires. This organic creation, this constitution of protoplasm, is a form of chemical synthesis, and it is also a fOrm of morphological -,ynthesis, which brirws . the "immediate principles" of living m.1trer together in a par~

~

ticular kind of mold. The existence of an "internal mold" (le

moulc intiricur) \vas in L1ct Buffon's way of explaining how an innriant form persists in the midst of that incessant turbulence which is life. At first sight, one might think that Bern<1rd is here separating two form ':I of '>ynthesis that modern biochemistrv has reunited,

and that he has failed to recognize thl' fact that . . the cytoplasm itst:lf is structurerl. Indeed, it i\ no longer possible to agree with Bernard that "at its simplest level, shorn __of all the ancillary ph('nomena that mask it in most beings, life, contrarv to what Aristotl(· lwlicved, is indt'pen(knt ot ;ny spnific

for~.

It resides in

a. sub':ltancc defined by its compo'lition and not by its configuratiOn: protopia'im."

On the contrary, modern biochemistrY is based on the princi PIe t I1at con 1·iguration and structun· are . relevant even at the most basic level of chemical composition. Perhaps Rnnard's error, though, was not as total

J'>

it may seem, for lw qys later that "pro]I j

PROBLEMS

toplasm, hmvever basic, is .still not a purely chemical substance, a simple immediate principle of chemistry. It has an origin that eludes us. It is the continuation of the protoplasm of an ancestor." In other words, protoplasm has a structure, and that structure is heredit.lry. "Protoplasm itself is an atavistic substance. We do not see its birth, only its continuation.'' Now, recall that by evolution Bernard means the law that determines the fixed direction of constant change; this law governs the manifestations of life both in its inception and in its perpetuation. For Bernard, moreover, nutrition was identical with evolution in this sense. Thus, it can be argued that Bernard did not make absolute the distinction between matter and form, between chemical and morphological synthesis. He had at least an inkling that the chemical interchanges occurring within the protoplasm obey a structural imperative. He also saw the structure of the protoplasm as some~ thing whose reproduction required something beyond the known Ja,vs of physics and chl'mistry. It was a product of heredity which could not be duplicated in the laboratory. In his mvn words, this structure was "the manifestation here and no''' of a primitive impuhe. a primitive action and message, ,vhich nature repeats

KNOWLEDGE

AND

THE

LIVING

with today's theory of heredity can be imputed to Bernard, because the concept of heredity itself was totally new and unlike any ideas Bernard might have had about generation and evolution. We must be cart>tUl, therefore, not to see analogies in tt>rms taken out of context. Nevertheless, one can still argue that the Bernard ian "message" has a functional affinity with today's genetic code. That affinity is based on their common relation to the concept of information. Consider Bernard's repeated use of certain tenns and phrases: message, guiding idea, vital design, vital preordainment, vital plan, directed process. If genetic information is

would never in his lifetime experience anything like the celebritv that was lavished on Claude Bernard, published his Versuche iib~r Pflanzenh,vbriden. No concept analogous to those associated

a coded program for protein synthesis, then Bt>rnard's repeated usc of such conn~rging metaphors would appear tn rc·flect an .tttt·mpt to pinpoint a biological reality fOr which no adequate concept had yet been formulated. To put it in slightly different terms, Bernard used concepts associated with a p~ychological concept of information to account for phenomena that we now interpret in terms of a physical concept of infOrmation. [ ... J Construction, grmvth, restoration and the self-regeneration of the living machine- it is no accident that the~c terms occur in combination. Evolution in the Bernardian sense, the fundamental characteristic of life, is the inverse of evolution in the physicist's sense, namely, the series of states assumed by an isolated system governed by the second la\v of thermodynamics. Biochemi5ts today say that organic individuality, or the constancy of a system in dynamic equilibrium, reflects life's gen· eral tendency to slow the increase of entropy, to resist evolution toward the more probable statt~ of unifOrmity in disorder. "Tht• law of order a.nd succession that hestows meaning and order on phenomena": the formulation is rather surprising for a biologist 'vhom no one would accuse of indulgence toward the usc of mathematical concepts and models in biology. The fOnnula is actually quite close to Leibniz\ definition of individual sub·

J14

Jl I)

according to a pattern determined in advance." Clearly, Bernard seems to have sensed that biological heredity consi~ts in the transmission of something that vte now think of as coded infonnation. "Message" is, semantically speaking, not far from ''code." Nevertheless, it would be incorrect to conclude that this semantic analogy points to a genuine conceptual kinship. The reason has to do with a simultaneous di.;;covery. ln 1865, the same vear that Bernard's Introduction Q J'itude de Ia me'decine

npirimcn;alc appeared, Gregor Mendel, an obscure monk who

~

I

PROBI ErflS

KNOWL

E-IJ'""~FO

AND

THE

l :.;

'JG

stance: I ex scrici sua rum opcrationum, the la"v of the series in the

,Kknowkdge that there is a lonos inscribed. p~eserved and trans-

mathematical sense of the term, a series of operations. This almost

mitted in living things. Life has ahvays done- without writing,·

f(-,rmal (logical) definition of (biological) heredity can now be

long before writing even existed -what humans have sought to

intnpretcd in the I ight of the fundamental discovery of molecu-

do with engraving, writing and printing, namely, to transmit mcs-

lar biology, the structure of DNA, the key constituent of chro-

sJgcs. :--_rhe science of life no longer resembles a portrait of life,

mosomes, the carriers of heredity, ·whose very number is itself a

as it could when it consisted in the description and classification

specific hereditary characteristic. [Etudes, pp. 354-60]

of species; and it no longer resembles architecture or mechanics, as it could when it was simply anatomy and macroscopic physi-

ology. But it does resemble grammar, Sl."rnantics and the theory of

Information Theor.x [125] In 1954, James D. Watson and Francis Crick, who eight

syntax. If we are to understand lite, its message must be decoded

years later received the Nobel Prize for their \vork, shmved that

bef(xe it can be read.

it was the ordering of a finite number of bases along a double.

This \Viii no doubt have a number of rt'volutionary conse-

helix joined by phosphates of sugar which comtiturc-. the genetic

quences, and it would take many chapters to Pxplain not what

information or program code determining hmN the cell synthe·

they arc but what they are in the process of becoming. To define

sizes the building blocks of protein for new cells. It has since been

life as a meaning inscribed in matter is to acknO\vledge the exis-

shown that this synthesis takes place on demand. that is, as a fUnc-

tence of an o priNi object in· that is inhen·ntlv material <1nd not

tion of information ~tcmming from the environment- meaning,

merely fOrma~~ In this connection, it sei..'ms to me that tht· ..,rudy nf

of course, the cellular environment. In 1965, another Nobel Pri1.e

instinct in the manner ofNikolaao:.; Tinbergen and Konrad Lorentz,

was aw,wded for this further discovery. In changing the scale on

that is, through the demonstration of the existence of innate pat-

which the characteristic phenomena of life- which is to say, the

terns of behavior, is a way of demonstrating the reality of such a

structuration of matter and the rcgubtion of functions, including

prior is. To define life as meaning is to f(Jrce oneself to look for

the structuration fUnction -are studied, contemporary biology -has alsu adopted a ne\\' language. It has dropped the vocabulary

new discoveries. I I ere, the l'xperimental in\'enlion consists only

mea~­

in the search f(x a key, but once that key is discovered, the

and concepts of classical mechanics, physics and chemistry, all

ing is found, not constructed. The models used in seeking organic

:more or l~o·ss directly based on geometrical modcb, in favor of the

meanings require a mathematic<.; different from that known to the

vocabulary of linguistics and communications theory. Messages,

Greek..,. In nrdn to understand li\'ing thingo.; unc needs

infom1ation, programs, code, instructions, decoding: these are the

metric theory of space, a science of order, a topology; one needs

. nc\v concepts of the life sciences.[ .. ·l When we say that biological hl·n·dity is the cnmmunication

ery. In this respect too there has been, in a seno.;e, a return to Ari'i-

J

non--

a nonnumerical calculus, a combinatorics, a statistical machin-

Aristotelian philosophy with which \ve began. [ ... ] 10 say that

totle, He hdit~ved that mathematics was of' no usc in hiolouv beca use · It · recogmze( · 1 no theory of· space other than tlw geome~-

heredity is the communication of information is, in a sense, to

try to which Euclid gave his name. A biological f("Jrm, Aristotle

of a n·rtain kind of information, we hJrk back in a way to the

l'7

I
PROBLEMS

AND

THE

LIVING

argued, is not a pattern, not a geometrical form. He was correct.

the activity of knmving? Earlier, I alluded to the study of instinc-

Within an organism there arc no distances: the \vhole is imme-

tive behavior, of behavior structured by innate patterns. An ani-

diately present to all the (pseudo- )parts. The essence of the liv-

mal is formed by heredity so as to receive and transmit certain

ing thing is that, insofar as it is living, it is immediately present

kinds of information. lnl<.1rmation that an animal is not struc-

to itself. Its "parts" (the very tennis misleading) are immediately

turally equipped to receive might as well not cxist as far as that

present to one another. Its regulatory mechanisms, its "internal

animal is concerned. In what we take to be the universal environ-

environment," make the whole immediately present to each of

ment, each spt:>cies' structure determines its own particular envi-

I

a certain kind of mathematics, the only mathematics he knew

ronment, as Alex von Uexkiill has shm\'n. If man i<.; also formed b) heredity, how docs one explain the history of knowledge, which is the history of error and of triumph over error? !vtust we·-·

about, was of no use in understanding biological forms, forms

conclude thai- man bccamc what he is by mutation, by an error

dett:rmined by a final cause or totality, nondccomposable forms

of heredity! In that case, life 'vould hy error have produced a

in which beginning and end coincide and actuality out\veighs

living thing capable of making errors. In fact, human error is

its parts. I {ence, in a certain sense Aristotle \Vas not wrong to s.ay that

probably one with human errancy. Man makes mistakes because

potentiality.[ ... ] If life is the production, transmission and reception of infor-

he does not know \vhcrc to settle. He makes mistakes when he

mation , then clearlv. the histon. of life involves both conservation

chooses the \\Tong spot fOr r<.>rciving the kind of infOrmation he

and innovation. Ho"\' is evolution to be explained in terms of

is after. But he also gathers in!Ormation hy moving around, and

genetics? The answer, of course, involves the mechanism of muta-

by moving objects around. with the aid of various kinds of tech-

tions. One objection that has often been raised against this the-

nology.];iost scientific techniques, it can be argued, are in fact_,

ory is that many mutations are subpathological, and a fair number

nothing more than methods fOr moving things around and chang-

lethal. so the mutant is less viable than the original organism. To

ing the relations among nbject~JE.nowledge, then, is an anxious

be sure, many mutations are "monstrous"- but from rhe stand-

que~t

point of life as a whole, what does "monstrous" mean? Many of

tiori]lf the o priori is in things, if the concept is in lite, then to

tOr the greatest possibk quantiry and variety of ink,rma-

today's life forms are nothing other than "normalized monsters,"

be a subject nf knowledge is simply to be dissatisfied with the

to b~rrow an expression from the French biologist Louis Roule.

meaning one finds ready at hand. Subjectivity is therefore noth-

must accept the possibility of a loss

ing other than dissatisfaction. Perhaps that is what life is. Inter-

of that meaning, of distortion, of misconstruction. Life over-

preted in a certain way, contemporary biology is, somehmv, a

comes error through further trials (and by "error" I mean simply

philosophy of life. [Etudes, pp. 360-64]

Thus, if life has ml:'aning,

\Vt'

a dead end). \Vhat, then, is knowledge! If life is concept, does recognil'.ing that fact give the intelligence access to life? What, then, is knowledge? If lite is meaning and concept. how do

\VC

conceive of

T CHAPTfH

I:(JUHIFE:'\J

The Normal and the Pathological Introduction to the Problem

[l26) To <~ct. it is nece.;;.,,uy a.t lt·ast to localize. ror e'\;\mpk, how

do

\\'t'

take action against an carthquakt' or hurricant·? The impe-

tu-> behind every ontological theory of disease undoubtedly derives from therapeutic nt.'cd. \Vhen we see in every sick man someone

...vhose being has he<:n augmented or diminished, .I

\\'e

are somewhat

reassured, fi:H what .1 man has lo.<.,t <:an be restored tn him, and

\\hat has entered him can also ka\'l'. Vl/e can hope to conquer disease even if doing so is the result of a spell, or magic. or posses-

sion;

Wl'

have only to remember that disease happens to man in

order not to lose all hope. Magic brings to drugs and incantation rites innumerahl<.~ resources stemming from a prokJundly intense desire f(Jr cure. Henry Ernst Sigerist ha-. noted that Egyptian medicine probably uniH·r-.ali7,ed the Eastern experience nl parasitic diseases by combining it "vith the idea of disease-possession: thrmving up \\'orms means being restored to health. l ' Di'lLWle enters and leaves man .ts through a door. A vulgar hierarchy of diseases stillcxi'lts today. based on the extent to which syn1ptoms can - or cannot - be re.Hiily localized, hence Parkinson's disease is more of a disease than thoracic shingles, which is, in turn, more so than boils. Without \vishing to detr.tct ffom th<.' grandeur of I ouis Pa..,tcur's ten<'t'i, we can say ]21

PROBLEMS

THE

NORMAL

A~JD

THE

PATHOLOGICAL

without hc-.itatinn that the germ theory of contagious disease has

i1ed reaction designed to bring about a cure: the organism devel-

certainly O\ved much of its success to the fact that it embodies

ops a disease in order to get well. Therapy must first tolerate and,

an ontological representation of sickness. After all, a germ can

if necessary, reinfOrce these hedonic and spontaneously therapeu-

be seen, even if this requires the complicated mediation of a

tic reactions. Medical technique imitatt's natural medicinal action

microscope, stains and cultures, while we would never be able

(l·is medicatrix naturae). To imitate is not merely to copy an appear-

to see a miasma or an influence. To see an entity is already to fore-

ance but, also, to mimic a tendency and to extend an intimate

see an action. No one \viii object to the optimistic character of

movement. Of course, such a conception is also optimistic, but

the theories of infection insofar as their therapeutic application

here the optimism concerns the way of nature and not the dkct

is concerned. But the discovery of toxins and the recognition

of human technique.

of the specific and individual pathogenic role of terrains have

Medical thought has never stopped alternating between these

destroyed the beautiful simplicity of a doctrine whose scientific

nvo representations of disease, between these two kinds of opti-

veneer for a long time hid the persistence of a reaction to dis-

mism, always finding some good reao;on for one or the other attitude in a ne\vly explained pathogenesis. Deficiency diseases and

ease as old as man himself.

If we feel the need to reassure ourselves, it is because one

all infectious or parasitic diseases favor the ontological theory,

anguish con~tantly haunts our thoughts; if we delegate the task

while endocrine disturbances and all diseases beginning with

of restoring the diseased organism to the desired nonn to techni-

drs- support the dynamic or functional theory. Jlo'"vever, these

cal means, either magical or matter of f.:~ct [positi~·e ], it is because

t\vo conceptions do have one point in common: in disease, or

we expect nothing good from nature itself.

bettn, in the experience of being sick, both envision a polt'micaJ

By contrast, Gf(·ek medicine, in the Hippocratic writings and

'>ituation- t'ither a battle bctwcc.'n the organism and a kJreign sub-

practices, offers a conception of disease which is no longer onto-

stance, or an internal struggle between opposing forces. Disease

logical, but dynamic, no longer localizationist, but totalizing.

differs from a state of health, tht· p,Hhologic.al from the normal,

Nature (ph,vsis), \vithin man as well as without, is harmony and

as one quality differs from another, either by the presence or

equilibrium. The disturbance of this harmony, of this equilibrium,

absence of a definite principle, or by an alteration of the total

is called "disease." In this case, disease is not somnvhere in man,

organism. This heterogeneity of normal and pathological states

it is everywhere in him; it is the whole man. External circum-

persists today in the naturalist conception, '\vhich expects little

stances are the occasion but not the causes. Man's equilibrium

fl-om human efforts to restore the norm, and in which nature will

consists of four humors, \\·hose fluidity is perfectly suited to sus-

find the ways toward cure. But it proved difficult to maintain the

tain variations and oscillations and ·whose qualities are paired by

qualitative modification separating the normal fl-om the patho-

opposites (hot/cold, wet.'dry); the disturbance of these humors

logical in a conception that allows, indet'd expects, man to be

causes disease. But di'\east' is not simply disequilibrium or discor-

able to compel nature and bend it to his nom1ative desires. Wasn't

dance; it is, perhap'\ most important, ,m effort on the part of

it said repeatedly after Bacon's time that one governs nature only

nature tn effect a new equilibrium in man. Disease is a general-

by obPying it? ·To govern disease means to become acquainted

]22

PROBLEMS

vvith its relations \vith the normal state, which the lidng manloving life- \vants to regain. Hence, the theoretical need, delayed

I I .·

·,I 'I

I

THE

I·.CIRMAL_

A~i['

Thb

I"ATHOLOGICAL

effective action is such that the concept of disease would final!) vanish. The conviction that one can scientifically restore thr:-

by an absence of technology, to establish a scientific pathology by linking ir tn physiology. Thomas Sydenham (1624-16R9) thought

is nl) longer the object of angui:-,h for tht' healthy man; it ha~ be-

that in order to help a sick man, his sickness had to be delimited

come instead the object of study for the theorist of health. It is

and determined. There are disease species just as there are animal or plant species. According to Sydenham, there is an order among

in pathology, writ large, that \Ve can unravel the teachings of health, rather as Plato sought in the institutions of the State

diseases similar to the regularity Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire

the larger and more easily readable equivalent of tht.• virtues and

found among anomalies. Philippe Pinel justified all these attempts

vices of the individual soul. [The Normal and the Pathological ( NP),

at classification of disease (nosology) by perfecting the genre in

pp. 11-ll]

his Nosogmphie philosoph1que ( 1797 ), which Charles Victor !)a remberg described as more the \Vork of a naturJiist than a clinician. Meanwhile, Giovanni Battista fv1orgagni\ (1682-1771) creation

of a systt'm of pathological anatomy made it possible to link the lesions of certain organs to groups of stable symptoms, such that nosographical classification found a substratum in anatomical analysi~. Rut just a~ the followers of\Villiam Harvey and Albrecht

von Haller "breathed life" into lnatomy by turning it into physiology, so pathology became a natural extension of physiology. (Sigerist provides a masterfUl summary of thiS evolution of medical ideas) l) The end r<.~sult of this cvolutiorury process i~ the formation of a theory of the relations between the normal and the pathological, according to \vhich the pathological phenomena found in living organisms arc nothing more than quantitatin· variations, greater or les~er according to corrnponding physiological phenomena. Semantically, the pathological is designated as departing from the normal not <;o much by a- or ~vs- a~ by hyperor h}lpo-. \Vhile retaining the ontological th<.·ory's soothing confidence in the possibility of technical conquest of disease, this approach is far from considering health and sickness as qualitath·ely opposed, or as f(,rces joined in battle. The need to reestablish continuity in order tn gain more knO\vledge for more

norm is such that, in the end, it annuls the pathological. Disease

The Identity of the Two States

Aunuste Comte and the "Broussais Principle" [127] It was in 1828 that Auguste Comte took notice ofFranc;:oisJoseph Victor Broussais's treatise De 1'/rritation et de Ia folie and adoptt'd the principle for his own use. Comte credits Broussais,

rathn than Xavier Bichat, and before him, Philippe Pinel, with having declared that all diseases acknowlcclged as such are only symptoms and that disturbances of vital functions could not take

place without lesions in organs, or rather, tissues. But abovt: all, adds Comte, "never before had anyone conceived the fundamen-

tal relation between pathology and physiology in so direct .md satisf)'ing a manner." Broussais described all diseases as consisting essentially "in the excess or lack of excitation in the various tissues above or below the degree established as the norm." Thus, disea~t·s are merely the effects of simple changes in intensity in

the action nf the stimulants ·which are indispensable fi)r main-

taining health. [NP, pp. 47-48] [128] The fortieth lecture of the Cours de philosophic positi1·cphilosophical reflections on the \vhole of biology - contains Comte's most complete text on the problem nmv befOre us. It is concerned with showing the difficulties inherent in the ~imple extension of ('X(Wrimental methods, which have proved their

F7

PROI-JLEMS

THE

usefulness in the physicochemical sphere, to the particular characteristics of the living: Any experiment whatever is

i'>OR-V1!\L

AND

fHE:

PATHO

OGICAL

lower limits of variation proper to each phenomenon of the normal organism, without ever being able to produce really new phenom-

alway~

designed to uncover the la\VS by

ena which would have to a certain degree any purely phy"iiological analogues. 25

which each determining or modifYing influence of a phenomenon affects its performance, and it generally consists in introducing a

Consequently every conception of pathology must be based on

clear-cut change into each designated condition in order to mea-

prior kntnvledge of the corresponding normal state, but con-

sure directly the corresponding variation of the phenome-non itselP 4

versely the scientific study of pathological cases becomes an indispemablc phase in the overall search for thE' laws of the normal

Now, in biology the variation imposed on one or several of a phe-

state. The observation of pathological cases offers numerous, gen-

nomenon's conditions of existence cannot be random but must

uine advantages f(Jr actual experimental investigation. The tran-

be contained 'vi thin certain limits compatible with the phenom-

sition from the normal to the abnormal is slovver and more natural

enon's existence. Furthermore, the fact of functional comensus

in the case of illness, and the return to normal, when it take.-.

proper to the organism precludes monitoring the relation, which

place, .-.pontancously furnishes a vcrif)'ing counterproof. In addi-

links a determined disturbance to its suppmedly exclusive effects,

tion, as far as man is concerned, pathological investigation is more

with 5ufficicnt analytical precision. But, thinks Comte, if we

fruitfld than the necessarily limited experimental exploration. The

readily admit that the essence of experimentation lies not in the

-;tudv" of morbid states is essentially .scientific . valid for all organ'

researcher's artificial intervention in the system of a phenome-

ism.-., even plant life, and is particularly suited to the most com-

non which he intentionally tends to disturb, but rather in the

plex and therefore the most delicate and fragile phe-nomena which

comparison between a control phenomenon and one altered vvith

direct experimentation, being too brusque a disturbance, would

respect to any one of its conditiom of existence, it follows that

tend to distort. Here Comtc was thinking of vital phenomena

diseases must be able to function for the scientists as spontane-

related to the higher animals and m,1n, of the nervous and psy-

ous experiment-; which allow a comparison to be made between

chic functions. Finally, the study of anomalies and monstrosities

an organism's various abnormal states and its normal state.

conceived as both older and less curable illnes~es than the functional disturbances of various plant or neuromotor apparatuses

Accorrling to the eminently philosophical principle which will serve

completes the study of diseases: the "teratological approach" (the

from nrw.: on as a direct, general basis f(>r positive pathology and

study of monsters) is added to the "pathological approach" in bio-

who~e

definitive

e~tablishment

we owe to the bold ,mel persevering

genius of our famou<; fellow citizen,

Rrous_~ais,

logical investigation.2h

the pathological <;tate

It is appropriate to note, first, the particularly abstract quality

is not ,)(all radic.1lly different from the physiological state, with

of this thesis and the absence throughout of any precise example

regard to which- no matter how one looks at it- it can only con-

of a medical nature to suitably illustrate his literal exposition.

stitute a simple cxtcn-;ion going more or less beyond the higher or

Since \Ve cannot relate these general propositions to any example,

PROBLEMS

THE

NORMAL

AND

THE

PAT HOI OGICAL

we do not know from what vantage point Comte states that the

as \\Til as interior"~g - with the result that the concl'pt of the

pathological phenomenon always has its analogue in a physio-

normal or physiological, finally clarifiecl by this concept of har-

logical phenomenon, and that it i~ nothing radically nt·w. Hmv

mony, amounts to a qualitative and polyvalent concept, still more

is a sclerotic artery analogous to a normal one, or an asystolic

aesthetic and moral than scientific.

heart identical to that of an athlete at the height of his powers?

As far as the as'iiertion of identity of the normal phenomenon

Undoubtedly. we are meant to understand that the laws of vital

and the corresponding pathological phenomenon is concerned,

phenomena are the same for both disease ancl health. But then

it is ecjU.tlly clear that Comte's intention is to deny the gualita-

why not say so and give examples? And even then, does this not

tive diiTerencc between these two admitted by the vitalists. Logi-

imply that analogous effects arc determined in health and disease

cally to deny a qualitative difference must lead to asserting a

by analogous mechanisms? We should think about this example

homogeneity capable of expression in quantitativt' terms. Comte

given by Sigerist: "During digestion the number of 'vhite blood

is undoubtedly heading toward this when he defines pathology

cells increases. The same is true at the onset of infection. Con-

as a "simple extension going more or less beyond the higher or

se'luently this phenomenon is somctimes physiological. some-

lower limits of variation proper to each phenomenon of the nor-

times pathological, dt>pending on what causes it." 27

mal organism." But in the end it must be recognized that the

Second, it should be pointed out that despite the reciprocal nature of the clarification achieved through the comparison of the

terms U':>cd here, although only vaguely and loosdy quantitative,

still ha,·e a qualitative ring to them. [NP, pp. 19-21]

norn1al with the pathological anc-1 the assimiliation of the pathosity of determining the normal and its true limits of variation

Claude Bernard and Experimental Pathology [129] ln Bernard's work, the real identity- should one say in

first, before methodically investigating pathological ca~es. Strictly

mechanisms or symptoms or both?- and continuity of pathologi-

logical and the normal, Comte insists repeatedly on the neces-

speaking, knowledge of normal phenomena, based solely on ob-

cal phenomena and the corresponding physiological phenomena

servation, is both possible and necessary without knowledge of

are more a monotonous repetition than a theme. This assertion

disease, particularly based on experimentation. But we are pre-

is to lw fOund in the Le(om de physioloHic expirimcntale appliquee

st:>nted with a .;;erious g.1p in that Comtc provides no criterion

aIa mt?decine ( 185 5 ), especially in the second and twenty-second

\\'hich would allow us to knmv \vhat a normal phenomenon is.

lectures of Volume Two, and in the Le(ons sur Ia chaleur ani male

We are left to concludt· that on this point he is referring to the usual corresponding concept, given the fact that he u'iies the

(1876). We prekr to choosl' the le\ons sur le diabcte et Ia glrcoBenCse onimale ( 1877) as the basic tt'xt, which, of all Bernard\

notions of normal state, physiological state and natural state

works, can be con~idered the one especially devoted to illustrat-

intL'rchangeably.n Better still, when it comes to defining the

ing the theory, the one where clinical and experimental facts are

limits of pathological or experimental disturbance~ c·ompati.ble

pre~ent('d at least as muc·h for tht' "moral" of a methodological

with the existence of organisms, Comte identifies these limits with those of" a "harmony of distinct influenCl'S, those exterior

and philosophical order which can be drawn from it as for their intrinsic physiological meaning.

lJO

ll'

f lf-'Eo

PROBLEMS

NORMAL

AND

-1 HF

PATf'OLOG

CAl

Bernard considered medicine as the 5cience of diseases, phys-

plant world through its feeding; that blood normally contains

iology as the science of life. In the sciences it is theory \vhich

sugar, and that urinary sugar is a product generally eliminated h~/

illuminates and dominates practice. Rational therapeutics can be

the kidneys when the rate of glycemia reacht:"s a certain thresh-

sustained only by a scientific pathology, and a scientific pathol-

old. In other words, glycemia is a constant phenomenon inde-

ogy must be based on physiological science. Diabetes is one dis-

pendent of fOod intake to such an extent that it is the absence of

case vvhich poses problems whose solution proves the preceding

blood sugar that is abnormal, and glycosuria is the consequence

thesis. "Common 'lcnse shows that if \ve are thoroughly acquainted

of glycemia which has risen above a certain quantity, serving as a

with a physiological phenomenon, we should be in a position to

threshold. In a diabetic, glycemia is not in itself a pathological phe-

JLTnunt fOr all the disturbances to which it is susceptible in the

nomenon- it is so only in terms of its quantity; in itself; glycemi,1

pathological state: physiology and pathology are intermingled and

is a "normal and constant phenomenon in a healthy organism."n

are essentially one and the same thing."~O Diabetes is a disease that consists solely and entirely in the disorder of a normal function.

There is only one glycemia, it i'l constant, penn.uwnt, both dt~ring

"Fvny disease has a corresponding normal function of which it

diabetes and outside that morbid -;tate. Onl~- it has dt·grcK: glyCL·-

is only the dbturbed. exaggerated, diminished or obliterated

mia bdnw 3 to 4 percent docs not lead to glycosuria; hur aho\'l' that

expression. If we are unable to explain all manifcstatiom of dis-

k\'cl ~J_,cosuria results .... It is impossible to pt·rceivL· the tr,1thition

today. it is because physiology is not yet sufficiently advanced

lnm1 the nnrmJI tn tht:' pathological state, .1nd no problem dHJW~ IH'r-

l'olSl"

and therL" arL" still many normal hmctions unknown to us."'~ 1 In

tn th.m diabetl'~ tht' intimate fusion ol rhy~;iology .:md pathology. q

this, Rnnard was oppo~L·d to many physiologists of his day, acimpo-.ed on the organism. The study of diabetes no longer allowed

[NP, pp. 30-32] [130] Claude Bernard, unlike Broussais and

such .1n opinion.

hi-. gem·ral principle of pathology with verifiable ,1fgumcnts,

<.:ording to whom di~casc was an extraphysiological entity. supcr-

Comt~..·, o.,upported

protqcols of experiments and, above all, methods l()r qu.1ntit~·­ chJ.ractcri1.ed by the following symptoms:

ing physiological concepts. Glycogenesis, glycemia, glycosuria,

polyuria, polydipsiJ., polyphagia, autophagia and glycosuria. Strictly

combustion of hwd, heat from vasodilatation arc not qu
In effect, diabetes

i~

-;peaking, none of thc-;e -;ymptoms represents ,1 new phenomenon,

concepts but the summaries of results obtained in terms of mea-

unknown to the normal state, nor is any a spontaneous production

surement. From here on we knmY exactlv \\'hat is meant when it

of nature. On the contrary, all of them

prt't>xi~t,

SJ.\T fOr their inten-

is claimed that disease is the exaggerated or diminished expres-

sity, which varie~ in the normal state and in the diseased state. 32

sion of a normal function. Or at least we have the means to know

Briefly, we know that Bernard's genius lies in the fact that he

sion, his thought is not entirely free fi·om ambiguity.

it, for in spitt:' of Bernard's undeniable progrc..;s in logical precishowed that the 'lugar fOund in an animal organism is a product of

First of all, with Bernard as with Hie hat, Broussais and Comte,

this same organism and not just something introduced from the

there is a deceptive mingling of quantitative and qualitative conlll

THE

PROE3LEMS

NORMAL

AND

THE

F'ATHOL OGiCAL

cepts in the given definition of pathological phenomena. Some-

that it learns nothing in disease and through it? The science of

times the pathological stare is "the disturbance of a normal

opposites is one, said Aristotle. Mu~t it be concluded from this

mechanism consisting in a quantitative variation, an exaggera-

that opposites are not opposites? That the science of life should

sometimes the

tal-e so-called normal and so-called pathological phenomena as

diseased state is made up of "the exaggeration, disproportion,

objects of the same theoretical importance, susceptible of recip-

tion or attenuation of normal phenomena, H

35

discordance of normal phenomena."3 6 Who doesn't see that the

roecll clarification in order to make itself fit to meet the totality

tenn "exagger.ltion" has a distinctly quantitative sense in thC' first

ol the vicissitude.s ot' lite in all its aspects, is more urgent than

definition and a rather qthllitative one in the second. Did Bernard

legitimate. This does not mean that pathology is nothing other

believe that he was eradicating the qualitative value of the term

than physiology, and still less that disease, as it relates to the nor-

"pathological" by substituting for it the terms disturbance, dis-

mal state, represents only an increase or a reduction. It is under-

proportion, discordance?

~tood that medicine needs an objective pathology, but research

This ambiguity is cntainly instructivt· in that it revt'als that the

\vhich causes its object to vani~h is nor objective. One can deny

problem itself persists at the heart of tht: solution presumably

that di'iease is a kind of violation of the organism and conr.;ider it

given to it. And the problem is the following: Is the concept of

as an event that the organism creates through some trick of its

disease a concept of an objective reality accessible to quantitative

permanent functions, without denying that the trick is new. An

scientific knmvledge? Is the difference in value, which the living

organism's behavior can be in continuity "'.:ith previous behaviors

being e~tabli.shcs between hi_~ normal life and his pathological life,

and still be another behavior. The progrt•ssiveness of an advent

an illusor)' appearance that the <;cientist has the legitimate obliga-

dnes not excludt' the originality of an event. The

tion to deny? If this annulling of a qualitative contrast is theoreti-

ological symptom. considered by itself, expresses the hyperac-

cally possible, it is clear that it is legitimate; if it is not possible,

tivity of a fUnction whose product is exactly identical vvith the

the question of its legitimacv is superfluous. [NP, pp. 35-36] [t 31] B.Y way of summary, in the medical domain, Claude Ber-

product of the same function in so-called normal conditions, does not mean that an organic disturbance, conceived as anuther aspect

nard, with the authority of l'very innovator who proves movement

ofthl' whole of functional totality and not as a summary ofsymp·

by marching, formulated the profound need of an era that believed

tonv.;, is not a new mode of behavior for the organism relative to its environment.

in the omnipotence of a technology founded on science, and

t:Kt

that a path-

which felt comfortable in life in spite, or perhaps because of,

In the final analysis, would it not be appropriatC' to say that

romantic Lmwntations. An art of living - as medicine is in the

tht• pathological can be distinguhhed as such, that i'i, as an alter-

full sense of the word- implies a science oflife. Efficient thera-

ation of the normal state, only at the lew· I of organic totality, and

peutics assumes experimental pathology, which in turn cannot be

when it concerns man, at the level of conscious individual total-

separated from physiology. "Physiology and pathology are iden-

it)', where disease becomes a kind of evil? To be sick means that

tical, one and the same thing." But must it be deduced from this,

a man really lives another life, cv<..:n in the biological <:.cnse of the

with brutal simplicity. that

we is the same in health and disease, ll4

word. [NP, pp. 86-88] lll

Implications and Countcrpositions

Life as a Normative Activity

p32] first of all there emerges from this theory the conviction of rationalist optimism that evil has no reality. Vv'hat distinguishes nineteenth-century medicine (particularly befOre the era of Louis Pasteur) in relation to the medicine of earlier centuries is its re~olutely monist character. Eighteenth-century medicine, de~pitc

the efforts of the iatromcchanists and iatrochcmists, and under the influence ofthe animists and vitalists, rf'mained a dualist medicine, a medical Manichaeanism. llealth and Disease f(Jught over .r-..hn the way Good and Evil fOught over the \Vorld. It i:-, \\'ith a great deal of intellectual satisfaction that we take up the fiJilO\ving passagC' in a history of medicine: P.n,1cel~us \\aS a visionary. [Jean Kaptistel van llelmont, ,1 mystic,

[Georg Frnst] Stahl, a pietist. All three were innovative geniuses but were inlluenced by their environment and by inherited trJ.ditiom. \Vhat makes appreciJ.tinn of the rclOrm doctrines of these three great men very hJ.nl is the extreme difficulty one experiences in trying to ~cparatc their ~cit·ntific from tht·ir religiom beliefs .... It i~ not at all certain that

Paracel~m

did not believe that he had found thL·

elixir of life; it is certain that van I !elmont identified health with

ll7

THE

PROS I_ EM 5

NORMAL

AND

lHE

PATHOLOGICAL

salvation and sickness with sin; and in his account of Theoria mcdiw

human being, in a more or less lucid way, extends a spontaneous

vera Stahl himself, despite his intellectual vigor, availed himself more

effort, peculiar to life, to struggle against that which obstructs

than he needed to of the belief in original sin and the fall of man. n

its preservation and development taken as norms. The entry in the Vocabulaire philosophique seems to assume that value can be

More than he needed to! says the author, quite the admirer of

attributed to a biological fact only by "him who ~peaks," obvi-

Rroussais, sworn enemy at the dawn of the nineteenth century

ou~ly

of all medical ontology. The denial of an ontological conception

living man reacts to a lesion, infection, functional anarchy by

of disease, a negative corollary of the assertion of a quantitative

means of a disease expresses the fundamental fact that life is not

identitv betvveen the normal and the pathological, is first, per-

indifferent to the conditions in which it is possible, that life is

a man. We, on the other hand, think that the fact that

J

haps, the deeper refusal to confirm evil. It certainly cannot be

polarity and thereby even an unconscious position of value; in

denied that a scientific therapeutics is superior to a magical or

_::hort, life is in fact a normative activity. Normath'e, in philoso-

mystical one. It is certain that knowledge is better than ignorance

phy, means every judgment which evaluates or qualifies a fact in

when action is required, and in this sense the value of the phi-

relation to a norm, but this mode of judgment is essentially sub-

losophy of the Enlightenment and of positivism, even scientistic,

ordinate to that which establishes norms. Normative, in the fUllest

is indisputable. It would not be a question of exempting doctors

sense of the word, is that which establishes norms. And it is in

from the study of physiology and pharmacology. It is very impor-

this sense that \ve plan to talk about biological normativity. \Nc

tant not to identify disease with either sin or the devil. But it does

think that \ve are as carefUl as anyone as far as the tendency to

not fOllow from the fact that evil is not a being that it is a con-

fall into anthropomorphism is concerned. We do not ascribe a

cept devoid of meaning; it does not follow that there are no neg-

human content to vital norms but \Ve do ask ourselves how nor-

ative values, even among vital values; it does not fOllow that the

mativity essential to human consciousness \vould be explained if

pathological state is essentially nothing other than the normal

it did not in some way exist in embryo in lite. We ask ourselves

state. [NP, pp. 103-104]

hO\v a human need for therapeutics would have engendered a

[133] It is true that in medicine the normal state ofthe human

medicine \vhich is increasingly clairvoyant with regard to the

body is the state one \\'ants to reestablish. Rut is it because ther-

conditions of disease if life's struggle against the innumerable

apeutics aims at this state as a good goal to obtain that it is called

dangers threatening it were not a permanent and essential vital

normal, or is it because the interested party, that is, the sick man,

nee,d. From the sociological point of view, it can be shown that

considers it normal that therapeutics aims at it? We hold the sec-

therapeutics was first a religious, magical activity, but this does

ond statement to be true. We think that medicine exists as the

not negate the fact that therapeutic need is a vital need, which,

art of life because the living human being himself calls certain

even in lower living organisms (\vith respect to vertebrate struc·

dreaded states or behaviors pathological (hence requiring avoid-

turc) arouses reactions of hedonic value or self-healing or self-

ance or correction) relative to the dynamic polarity of life, in the

restoring behaviors. [NP, pp. 126-27]

form of a negative value. We think that in doing this the living

PRORI EMS

Pathology as the Basis of Physiology

rewarded by the Socil·rl· de Mt>decine- du Gardin 1821 hlr a report

[l34 J Convcr~C"ly, the theory in question convey~ the hununbt

entered in a competition whose object was dw precis(· defini-

convicti(m that man's action on his environment and on him~(: if

tion of the terms "phlegmasia" and "irritation" and their impor-

can and must become completely one with his knmvlcdge of the

tance for practical medicine. After having challenged th(· idea that

environment and man; it must be normally only the application

physiology by itself fonns the natural f()undation of medicine; that

of a previously instituted 'iciencc. Looking at the Lc~om mr lc

it alone can ever establish the knowledge of symptom-;, their rela-

diabhc it is obvious thJ.t if one asserts the real llomogeneiry and

tiomhips and their value; that patho!ngka! anatomy can ever be

continuity of the normL1l and the pathological it is in order to

deduced from the knO\vlcdge of normal phenomena; that the

establish a physiological science that \vould govern therapeutic

.

activitv. bv. means of the intermediary of pathology. Here the f:Kt

prognosis of diseases derives from the knmvlcdgc of physiological laws, the author adds:

that human consciousnc'l<.; t':xperiences occasions of new growth and lhcon.:tical progn."ss in it~ domJin of nontheorctical, prag-

l( we \\alH to exhaust thl' qut:'-~tion dt:alt with

in this ,uti( !t· we

matic and technical activity i~ not appn:ci,Hcd. To deny technol-

'mu1d h,we to show that physio/of/1; {m from bcwg th.._· foundation of

ogy a value all its ovvn out~idc of the knowledge it succeed~ in

patholof[f', wuld onlv arise in opposition to it. It i~ through the changes

incorporating is to render unintelligible the irregular way of the

which the disea~t' of an organ and sometime~ the complete -;us pen-

progress of knowledge and to miss that overtaking of science by

sion of its acti\'it~· transmit to its li.mnions that we learn the organ\

the power that the positivists have so often stated while they

ll"t'

deplored it. If technology's rashness, unmindful of the obstacle~

al~·ring

and importance .... ] knee .:~n t•xo.~tmi~. by compre..,~ing ..md parthe optic nerv.._•, the brachi,ll nerve~, and the ~pinal cord,

to be encountered, did not constantly anticipate the prudence

'>hows us their usu,1! destination. Brousmnnct lmt his mt'hlory of sub-

of codified knowledge, the number of scientific problems to

stantin· words; at his death an

re~olve, which are surpri~l'' after having been setbacks, \\'Otdd

of hi~ brain and one wa~ led to believe that that is the (TJHt·r for the

be f;u fewer. Here is the truth that remains in empiricism, the

memory of namt'<.,, ... l'hus pathology .•1ided hy p.Hholo)!iul anat-

philo~ophy nf intellcctucll adventure, which an experinl('ntal

()my, has created phy'>iology:

method, rather too tempted (by reaction) to rationalize itself,

ogy\ former errors and aids it~ progrn'>. }K

failed to recognize. [ ... ] 1Jere again, we owe to the chance of bibliographical resenrch the intell:·crual pleamre of stating once mon· thnt the most appnrently paradoxical thc..,cs also have their tradition which un-

abn·s~

wa-; found in the anterior part

ever~ d<~y

pathology clt•ar~ up physiol-

[NP, pp. 104-107]

113)] There are them to reject

l'\Til

')O!lH:

thinkers \\·hose horror ut'finali~mlcads

the Darwinian idea of selection by the L'm·i-

doubtedly expresses their pt:'rmanent logiccll necessity. Just when

ronmcnt and struggle for existence be-cause of both the term

Hroussais was lending his authority to the theory which estab-

"selection," obviously of human and technological import, and

lished phy~iological medicine, this 'iame theory \Vas provoking the-

the idea of advantage, which come.:.; into the explanation of the

objectiom of an obscure physician, one Dr. Victor Prus, who was

mechanism of natural S('ltTtion. They point out that moq living

THE

PROBLEMS

beings an.· killed by the e-m'ironment long before the inequalities they can produce even have a chance to be of use to them because it kills above all sprouts, embryos or the young. But as Georges leissier has observed, the fact that many organisms die before their inequalities serve them does not mean that the presentation indifferent. 39

of inequalities is biologically This is precisely the one fact we ask to be granted. There is no biological indiflerence, and consequently \\'C can speal of biological normativity. There are healthy biological norms and there are pathological norms, and the second are not the same as the first. We did not refer to the theory of natural selection unintentionally. We vvant to dra\\' attention to the fact that what is true of the expression "natural selection" is also tme of the old expression vis medicatrix naturae. Selection and medicine are biological techniques practiced deliberately and more or less rationally by man. \Vhen we speak of natural selection or natural medicinal activity we are victims of what Henri Bergson calls the "illusion of retroactivity" if we imagine that vital prehuman activity pursues goals and utili1es means comparable to those of men. But it is one thing to think that natural selection would utilize anything that resembles pedigrees, and vis medicatrix, cupping glasses and another to think that human technique extends vital impulses, at whose service it tries to place systematic knowledgt· which would deliver them from much of life's costly trial and error. The expressions "natural selection" and "natural medicinal activitv" have one dra\·vback in that thev seem to set vital tech'

'

niques within the framework of human techniques when it is the opposite that seems true. All human technique, including that of life, is set within life, that is, within an activity of information and assimilation of material. It is not because human technique is normative that vital technique is judged 5uch by comparison.

NORMAL

AND

THE

PATHOLOGICAL

Becau<;e life is activity of information ami assimilation, it is tht> root of<1ll tC'chnical activity. In short, we speak of natural medicine in CJUite a retroactive and, in Oil(' ~cnse, mistaken \vay, but even if we were to assume that we h.we no right to speak of it, we arc still free to think that no living being would have ever developed medical technique if the life \vi thin him -as \vi thin t>very living thing- were indifferent to the conditions it met with. if lift> were not a form of reactivity polarited to the variations of the em ironment in which it develops. This was seen very well

by Emile Guyenot: lt is a hn that the organism has an aggregate of properties which belong to it alone, thanks to which it with-;tands multiple destructive fOrn·~. \Vithout the'ie defensive reactions, life would be rapid!~ extingui'\hcd .... The living being i" able

to

find instantaneotl'ily tht'

n·action which is useful vis-.1-vi'\ '\Uhr..tance~ with which nt'ither it nor it~ kind ha" l~H"I" had contact. The organi-.m i~ an incomrtnabk chemi.~r. lt i-, tht:

first among phy~iciam. The flut:tuations ofthc cnvi-

ronnl('nt an· almost always a menJ.cc to ib existence.[ ... ] The living being could not survive if it did not possess certain essential propcrtif"~.

Fvery injury would be fat.d if tissues were incapable of

forming ~cars and blood incapable ofclotting.-to

By way of summary, we think it very instructive to consider the meaning that the word "normal" a'isumes in medicine, and tlw fact that th{' concept's ambiguity. pointed out by Andre L1lande, is greatly clarified by this, with J quite gencral significance for the problem of the normal. It is \if{_· ir.-.clfand not medical judgment that makes the biological normal a concept of value and not a concept of statistical reality. For the physician, life is not an object but, rather, a polarized activity whose spontaneous efli)rt of defense and struggle against 11ll that is of negative value- is ex!4!

PRCJBLEt..~S

tended by medicine by bringing to bear the relative but indispcn-

sablr light of human science. [NP, pp. 129-31]

Nature Is the End Point of a Teleolonical Process [136l In writing tlw Introduction d l'Ctudc de Ia mCdecinc expCrimentale, Claude Hernard set out to assert not only that efficacious

action is the same as science, but also, and analogously, that science i') identical with the discovery of the laws of phenomena. On this point his agreement with Comte is total. VV'hat Comte in hh philosophical biology calls the doctrine of the conditions of existence, Bernard cL11ls "determinism." I k flatters himself with having been the first to introduce that term into scientific french. "I bdicve I .un rhc first to have introduced this word to science, hut it ha~ bct'n used by philosophers in another sense. It \viii be useful to determine the meaning of this word in a book \\·hich l plan to write: Du dt.;tcrminismc dons les sciences. Thi'l \viii amount to a second t•dition of my lnrroJuaiun d Ia rnCdccine c.x-

of the two- physiology and patholng~ - only the fir-a involved laws and postulated the determinism ofib object, it \\'a" not necessary to conclude that, given the legitimate desire for a rational pathology, the laws and determinism of pathological facts are the same laws and determinism of physiological facts. VVe knmv the antecedents of this point of doctrine h·om Bernard himsel[ In the lecture devoted to the lifC and works of Fr.wc;:oh Magcnclie at the beginning of the Le~ons sur les substances toxiques et midicamcnteuscs ( 1857), Bernard tells us that the teacher vdwse chair he occupies and whose teaching he continues "drew rhc feeling of real science" from the illustrious Pierre-Simon Lapl.Ke. We know that Laplace had been Antoine-Laurent Lavoisit·r's colbborator in the research on animal respiration and J.nimal hear, rhc first brilliant success in research on the law~ of biological phenonwna. f(Jilowing the experimental and mea~uring methods endorsed by physic., and chemistr:v. As a r<.·~ult of this work, I a plan_· had retL1ined a distinct taste f(-,r phy~iolo!;y and ht' supportt'd r-..tagcndic. lf

pt~rimentalc."J,I It is bith in the universal validity of the determin-

Laplace m:ver used the term "determinism," he is one of it... <;pi r-

i~t postulate which is asscrtcd by the principle "physiology and

itual fathers and, at least in France, an authoritative and author-

pathology are one ,1nd the same thing." At the very time thJt pathology \\as s,1ddkd with pre-scientific concepts, there was a physical chemical physiology which met the demands of scientific knowledge, that is, a physiology of quantitative laws verified by experimentation. Undn.;;tandably. early-nineteenth-century physicians, justifiably eager for an effective, rational pathology, sa\v in physiology the_ prospective model which came closest to their ideal. "Science rejects the indeterminate, and in medicine, when opinions arc based on medical palpation, inspiration, or a more or less vague intuition about things, we are outside of ~cience and arc given the example of this medicine of fantasy, capable of presPnting the grav<.·~t perils as it delivers the health and lives of sick men to tlw whims of an impired ignoramus." 4 1 But just becaus<.·, lH

it.ed father of the doctrine designated by the term. for Laplace, determinism is not a methodological requirement, a normative research postulate sufficiently flexible to prejudice in any way the f()rm of the results to which it leads: it is rc.tlity itself~ complete, cast nc varietur in the framework of Ne\'-·tonian and Laplacian mechanics. Determinism can be conceived a.;;; being open to incessant corrections of the formulae of laws and the concepts they link together, or as being closed on its own assumed

definitiv~·

content. Laplace comtructed the theorv of dosed determinism.

Claude Bernard did not conceive of it i~ anv other \vav, and this is undoubtedly why he did not believe that- the collab-oration of P~thology and physiology could lead to a progressive rectification

of physiological concepts. It is appropriate here ro recall Alfred l41

THE

PROBLEMS

North Whitehead's dictum: "Every special science has to assume results from other sciences. For example, biology presupposes physics. It will usually be the case that these loans really belong to the state of science thirty or forty years earlier. The presuppositions of the physics of my boyhood are today powerful influences in the mentality ofphysiologists 43 [NP, pp. 107-!09} [!37] The dynamic polarity of life and the normativity it expresses account for an epistemological fact of whose important significance Xavier Bichat was fully aware. Biological pathology exists but there is no physical or chemical or mechanical pathology: There are two things in the phenomena oflife: (I) the "tate of health; ( 2) the state of di"ease, and fi·om these two distinct sciences derive: phy.,iology, which concerm itself with the phenomena of the fir<;t state, pathology, with those of the second. The history of phenom· ena in which viral forces have their natural form lead" us, come· quently, to rhe history of phenomen<'l where these klrccs are changed. Now, in rhe physical sciences only the first history exists, n~:ver the second. Physiology is to the movement of living bodies what astronomy, dynamics, hydraulics, hydrostatics and so forth are to inert ones: these bst have no science at all that corresponds to them as padwlogy corresponds to the first. For rhc s,1nw reason, the whole idea of medication is distasteful to the physical sciences. Any medication aims at restoring certain propcrtie~ to their r1.1tural type: .1s physical properties never lose this typ~._·, they do nor need to be re!';torcd to it. Nothing in the physic,1l sciences corresponds is therapeutics in the physiologic.Il sciences.

to

what

44

It is clear from this text that natural rvpt_• must be taken in the sense of normal type. For Bichat, the natural is not the effect of a determinism, but the term of a finality. And we kno\v \Veil everything that can be found wrong in such a text fi·om the view-

NORMAL

AND

THE

PAfHOLOGICAL

point of a mechanist or materialist biology. One might say that long ago Aristotle believed in a pathological mechanics, since he admitted two kinds of movements: natural movements, through which a bod:y regains its proper place where it thrives at rest, as a stone goes down to the ground. and fire, up to the sky; and ,·iolt"nt movements, by which a body is pushed from its proper place. as 'vhen a stone is thrown in the air. It can be said that, with Galileo and Descartes, progress in knowledge of the physical world consisted in considering all rnovt·ments as natural, that is. as conforming to the laws of nature, and that likewise progress in biological knowledge consisted in unif\ring the la\vS of natural life and pathological life. It is precisely this unification that Augustt~ Comte dreamed of and Claude Bernard flattered himself with having accomplished, as was set:>n abon·. To the resenations that I felt obliged to set forth at that time, let me add this. In e...rablishing the science of movement on the principle of inertia, modern mechanics in effect made the distinction betwt:>en natur,ll and violent movenx·nts absurd, as int:>rtia is precisely an indifference with respect to directions and variatiom. in mmernent. Life is far removed from such an indifft_.rence to the conditions \vhich are made for it; life is polarity. The simpk~t biological nutritive ~y~tem of assimilation and excretion expresses a polarity. When the wastes of digestion are no longer excreted by tht· organism and congest or poison the internal environment. this is all indeed according to law (physical, chemical and so on), but none of this follmvs the norm, which is the activity of the organbm itself. This i~ the simple fact that I want to point out \vhen we speak of biological normativity. [NP. pp. 127-28]

The Normal and the Patholonical as Qualitative Contrast [138] Finally, as a result of the determinist postulate, it is the reduction of quality to quantity \vhich is implied by the essential 147

T PRQBLE:\IIS

THEe

'\JURMAL

AND

fHE

PATHOLOCICAL

identity of physiology and pathology. Tn reducr the difference

ha'> no \'ita! quality, it cannot be called healthy or normJI or phys-

betv;Ci...'n rencc

iological. Normal and pathologic.1l han· no meaning on a scale

of thl' amount of' glucose within thl' body, to delegate the task

\Yhere the biological ohject is reduced to colloidal equilihria and

of distinguishing one ·who is diabetic from one who is not to a

ionized solutions. In studying a state that he describes as physio-

renal threshold conceived "Simply as a quantitative difference of

logical, the physiologist C)Ualifies it Js such, even unconsciously;

level, means oheying the spirit of the physical scil'nces which. in

he considers this state as positively qualified by and h>r the liv-

buttressing phl·nomena with law:,, can explain them only in teml-'i

ing lwing. Now this qualified physiological state is not, as ~uch,

of their reduction to a common measure. [n order to introduce

what is extended, identically to itself, to another sr
terms into the relationship~ of composition and dependence, the

of assuming, inexplicably, the quality of morbidity.

homogeneity of these terms should be obtained first. As Emile

Of course, this is not to say that an analysis of the conditions

Meyerson has sho\vn, the human spirit attained knowledge by

or products of pathological functions will not give thl· chemist

ide~tifying reality and quantity. But it should be remembf'red

or physiologist numericJI resolt.~ comp
that, though -,cientific knowledge invalidate::. qualities, which it

in a vvay consistent with the terms of tht same analyses concern-

makes appear illusory, fOr all that, it does not annul them. Quan-

ing the corresponding, so-called physiological hmctior:s. But it

tity is quality denied, but not quality suppressed. The qualitative

is arguable \vhe-ther the terms "more" and "less," once they enter

variety of simple lights, perceived as colors by thl' human eye. is

tlw definition of the pathological as a quantitative variation of the

reduced hy science to the quantitative difference of \vavelengths,

norm.1l. have a purely quantitative meaning. A.l'io arguable is the

but the qualitative variety still persists in the torm of quantitative

logical coherence of Bernard's principle: "The

differences in the calculation of wavelengths. Hegel maintains that

normal mechanism, consisting in a quantitative variation, an exag-

by its growth or diminution, quantity changes into quality. This

geration, or an attenuation, constitutes the pathological state."

di~turbance

of a

would be perfectly inconceivable if a relation to quality did not

A'i has been pointed out in connection with Fran\nis-Joseph

still pcr,.ist in the negated quality which i-. called quantity. 45

Victor Rroussai'i\ ideas, in the ordn of physiological functions

I-' rom thi~ point of view, it is completely illl'gitimate to main-

,md need.-,, one spt',lk-i of more and less in relation tn a norm. For

tain that the pathological state is really and simply a greati...'r or

example, the hydration of tissues is a tact that can be t'xpresscd

lesser variation of the physiological state. Either this physiologi-

in tt·rms of more and less; so is the percentage of calcium in

cal state io.; conceived as haYing one quality and value for the liv-

blood. These quantitatively different results would ha\'e no qual-

ing man, and so it is absurd to extend that \'Jiue. identical to itself

ity, no value in a laboratory. if the laboratory had no relationship

in its v,viatiom, to a state called pathological whosl~ value and

with a hospital or clinic where the rnults take on tht' value or

quantity are to be differentiated from and essentially contrasted

not of uremia, the value or not of tetanus. Because physiology

with the first. Or what is understood as the physiological state is

stan(h. at the crossroad;; of the hbor.Itory and the clinic, two

a 'limplf' '>ummary of quantities, \Vithout biological value, a sim-

points of view about biological phenomena are adopted tllf'rt', but

ple fact or system of physical and chemical t~Kts, but as this state

thir., doe-, not mean that thev can be intnchangcd. The suh..,titu149

T PROBLEMS

tion of quantitative progression for qualitative contrast in no way annuls this opposition. It always remains at the back of the mind of those who have chosen to adopt the theoretical and metric point of vie\v. When \ve say that health and disease are linked by all the intermediaries, and when this continuity is converted into homogeneity, we forget that the difference continues to manifCst itself at the extreme, without which the intermediaries could in no way play their mediating role; no doubt unconsciously, but wrongly, we confuse the abstract calculation of identities and the

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Normality and Normativity

concrete appreciation of differences. [NP, PP· 110-12]

The Value of Norms [139] The state of any living thing in a given situation is, in general, always normal. Henri Bergson says there is no such thing as disorder; rather, there are two orders, one of which is substituted for the other without our knowledge and to our dismay. Similarly, we ought to say that there is no such thing as abnormal, if by the term we mean merely the absence of a previous positive comlition or state. From the biological, social and psychological points of vie\v, a pathological state is never a state without norms- such a thing is impossible. Wherever there is life there are norms. Life is a polarized activity, a dynamic polarity, and that in itself is enough to establish norms. The normal is therefore a universal category of life. I lence, it is by no means nonsensical to call the pathological "normal." But that is not grounds for denying the distinctiveness of the pathological, or fOr arguing that in biology the normal and the pathological are, but fOr minor quantitative differences, identical. The normal should not be opposed to the pathological, because under certain cond_itions and in its own \vay, the pathological is normal. There is a necessary contra'it between health and disease. Health is more than normality; in simple terms, it is normativity. Behind all apparent normality, J)O

l\1

f-'ROBI EMS

NORMALITY

AND

NORMATIVITY

one must look to see- if it is capable of tolerating infractions of

reversibility, hence \Vithout flexibility, vvhich is e.,sentially a suc-

the norm, of overcoming contradictions, of dealing with con-

ccsshd adaptation. In certain industrial districts in Germany and

flicts. Any normality open to possible future correction is authen-

England the gradual disappearance of gray butterflies and the ap-

tic normativity. or health. Any normality limited to maintaining

pearance of black ones of the same species has been observed. It

itself hostile to anv variation in the themes that ~xprcss it, and

was possible to establish that in these butterflies the black colora-

incapable of adapting to ne\v situations is a normality devoid of

tion vvas accompanied by an unusual vigor. In captivity the blacks

normative intention. When confronted \vith any apparently nor-

eliminate the grays. Why isn't the same true in nature? Because

c

,

'

mal situation, it is theref()re important to ask whether the norms

their color stands out more against the bark oft he trees and attracts

that lt embodies are cre-ative norms, norms with a forward thrust,

the attention of birds. When the number of birds diminishes in

or , on the contrary, . conservative norms, norms whose thrust is

industrial regions, butterflies can be black \vith impunity.4h

tmvard the past. [MS ,"rormaliti et normativitC, f. lr]

In short, this butterfly species, in the form of varieties, oflers two combinations of opposing characteristics, and they balance

Normality and Species [140] In the biology of species, the problem of the normal and

each other: more vigor is balanced by less security and vice versa.

the pathological arises in connection \vith the problem of varia-

use a Hergsonian expression, a powerlessness has been overcome.

In each of the variations, an obstacle has been circumvented, to

tions. Is an anomalous individual, that is, an individual in some

To the extent that circumstances allmv one such morphological

respect at variance with a defined statistical type, a sick individ-

'iolution to operate in preference to another, the number of rep-

ual or a biological innovation? Is a fruit fly with no wings, or ves-

resentatives of each varietv varies, and a varietv tends more and more tmvard a species. [ ... J

tigial \Vings, sick? Biologists hostile to evolution or skeptical of

.

mutationist explanations insist that mutations are recessive, often

Hence, finally, \Ve see how an anomaly, particularly a muta-

subpathological, and sometimes I~:thai. If, however, one holds that

tion, that is, a directly hereditary anomaly, is not pathological

biological normality is determined by the interaction between

because it is an anomaly, that is, a divergence from a specific type,

structures and behaviors, on the one hand, and environmental

which is defined as a group of the most frequent characteristics

condition<;, on the other, the-re are \vays of distinguishing (if not

.

in their average dimension. Othenvise, it would have to be said

instantaneouslv. at least retroactivelv) between the pathological

that a mutant individual, as the point of departure for a nevr spe-

normal and the normative normal. Phillipe L'HE-.ritier and Georges

cies, is both pathological, because it is a divergence, and normal,

Teissier's experiments on wingless drosophila, fOr example, proved

because it maintains itself and reproduces. In biology, the nor-

the superiority of that variety in a drafty environment. [MS Nor-

mal is not so much the old as the new fOrm, ifit finds conditions

malitC et normativitC, f. 2r] [141 J Teissier reports another fact which shows that life, per-

of existence in which it will appear normative, that is, displacing

haps without looking for it, by using the variation of living forms,

No fact termed normal, because expressed as such, can usurp

obtains a kind of insurance against excessive specialization without

the prestige of the norm of which it is the expression, start-

all \vithercd, obsolete and perhaps soon to be extinct forms.

lll

I·J <)fi'M A 1

I\

AN

:.1

I·J•.>R

\~AT

1 v'l T Y

ing from the moment when the conditions in \\'hich it has been

Goldstein calls "preferred behavior" and "catastrophic reaction."

referred to the norm arc no long~.._'r given. There i~ no fact that is

ln responding to ,,,-(j~~ii ft·om the environment, an organism dnes

normal or pathological in itself. An anomaly or a mutation is not

not use every form of behavior it is capable of using but only

in itself pathological. The<>c two express othl'f po~iblc norms of

ct'Ttain preferred bchavioro; - preferred becausc they most fully

life. Jfthe~c norms are inferior to specific earlier norms in terms

express the nature of the organism and afknd it the maximum

of stability, fecundity, or variability of life, they will be cal!<;d

possible order and stability. A sick. individual is an individual

~1 ,uhologi~al. If these -norms in the same em·irnnment should turn out to be equivalent, or in another environment, superior, they

lucked in a ~truggle with its envirnnmenl to c~tablish a new onkr or stability. Recovt~ry establishes a new norm, different from the

will be called normal. Their normality \vill come to them from

old. During, the course of the illne~s. the -sick individual docs

their nonnativity. The pathological is not the absence of a bio-

evnything possible to avoid catastrophic reactions. A catastrophic

logical norm; it is ,mother norm, but one that is, comparatively

re,lCtion is one that prevents rapid adaptation to changing envi-

speaking. pmhed aside by life. [NP, PP· 81-82] [142] No environment is normal. An environment is as it may

ronmenral conditions. The concern with avoiding catastrophic

be. No structure is normal in itself. It is the relation het\veen the

vation. Sclf~preservation is not the most gennal characteristic of

cnvironn1t._'nt and the living thing that detnrnines what is normal

Ide; it

in both. A living thing is normal in the true sense when it reflects

A healthy person is a pcrson capable of confi·onting risk~. llealth

an eff{lrt on the part of life to maintain itself in forms and within

is creative -call it normative -in that it i-; capable of surviving

norms th.n allow for a margin of variation, a latitude of dt~via­

catastrophe and establishing a new ordn.

reactions therefore reflects the organism's instinct of selt~pre~er­ i~.

rather,

J

characteristic of a reduced, diminished life.

tion, such that a'> environmental conditions vary, one of those

Goldstf'in's views overlap neatly with Rene Leriche's vievo.'':> of

forms may prove ro he mort: advantagt'nus, hence more riable. An

conception. f fealth becomes perceptible only in relation to dis-

environment is normal .when it allows a species to multiply and

ease, which revcals its cssencC" by suggesting a possible transition

. as to tolerate, if necessary, changes

to new norms. A person who cannot survive at high altitudl's

diYersif\". in it in such a

\\'ay

because uf hypoten:-.ion may be able to live normally at altitudes

in the environment. If the relation between the environment and the living thing

up to fifteen hundred feet. No one is obliged to live at ,1ltitudes

b ~uch that neither can \'ary without compromising the viahility

abon· thn.·r thousand feet, but anyone may sorn<.'(Lly hE' forced to

of the living thing irreparably, the apparent normality of adapta-

do m. In that casc, anyone who cannot i~ "inferior." i\·\an is a crea-

tion is in fact pathological. To be sick is to he unable to tolerate

ture capable of changing ur adapting to ambient conditions in

change. [MS Normahte ct normatirite, f. 2r]

ordn to survive. [f\\S Normal1ti ct nMmotivitL:, f. 2r, 3r J

Normality and Individuals [143] hom the standpoint of the biology of individuals, the prob-

[144] Health is ,1 margin of tolerance f(-,r the inconstancies of the environment. But isn't it ab~tml to speJk of the inconstJilC\ of the em, ironment? This is true enough of the human social environment, where institutions arc fundamentally precarious, con-

lem of tlw nonnal and the pathological comes down to what Kurt J\4

PROBLEMS

NORMALITY

AND

"JORMATIVITY

ventions revocable and fashions as fleeting as lightning. But isn't the cosmic environment, the animal environment in general, a system of mechanical, physical and chemical constants, made of invariants? Certainly this environment, which scicytce defines, is made of Jaws, but rhesc laws an.~ theoretical abstractions. The li,·-

sumption, there is a biological assurance which is not excess, and which is health. Health is a regulatory flvwheel of the possibilities of reaction. Life often falls short of it~ possibilities, but when necessary can surpass expectations. [NP, pp. 197-98]

ing creature does not live among laws but among creatures and events that vary these laws. \Vhat holds up the bird is the branch and not the l.1ws of elasticity. If we reduce the branch to the laws of elasticity, \ve mu-;t no longer speak of a bird, but of colloidal solutions. At such a level of analytical abstraction, it is no longer a question of environment for a living being, nor of health nor of disease. Similarly, what the fox eats is the hen's egg and not the chemistry of .1lbuminoids or the laws of embryology. Because the qualified living being lives in a world of qualified objects, he lives in a \vorld of possible accidents. Nothing happens by chanct", everything happens in the form of events. Here is how the environmtnt is inconstant. Its inconstancy is simply its twcoming.

The Problem of Psychological Norms

its history. For the living being, life is not a monotonous deduction, a rectilinear movement; it ignorl·~ geometrical rigidity, it is discussion or explanation (what Goldstein calls Auseinanderset.~uns) with an environment "vhere there are leaks, holes, escapes and unexpected resistances. Let us say it once more. We do not profe_ss indeterminism, a position very \veil supported today. We maintain that the life of the living being, were it that of an amoeba, recognizes the categories of health and disease only on the level of experience, \vhich is primarily a test in the affective sense of the word, and not on the level of science. Science explains expcrienct' but it does not for all that annul it. Health is a set of securities and assurances (what the Germans call Sicherunaen), securities in the present, assurances for the fttture. As there is a psychological assurance which is not pre-

The Child and the adult [145] Childhood is a transitional state. It is normal for human beings to leave the state of childhood and abnormal to tall back into it. In childhood there is an intrinsic fonvard drive, a capacity fOr sclf~transcendence, that flourishes if the child is physically robust, intellectually perspicacious and allovved a certain freedom to pursue worthwhile goals. A child thinks constantly of imitating or rivaling what he sees adults doing: every day he thinks, "Tomorrow I \viii be a grown-up." Aristotle makes this magnificent observation: anthropos anthroprm genna, man engenders man. This is true in terms of the material cause: it is man who supplies the seed from "vhich the child is born. It is also true in terms of the f<)rmal cau~c: the embryo, the child and the adolescent develop tmvard adult human fOrm. And it is true in terms of the final came, an ideal of man and of the adult virtues that l'ducation instills in the child's mind. This last proposition should not bt· interpreted in too modnn a sense, however. For the Ancients, and h;r Ari~totle in particular, the essence of a thing \vas identical \vith its final form; the potential pointed toward the act, and movement t:>nded in rest. The theory of f()rm_~ telescoped the whole process of becoming into a typical privileged state. How a potential becomes an act, how a formal indeterminate becomes a form, would be unintelligible it fOrm were not in every sense prior to potential and matter. Thus, humanity is transmitted ffom man to man, just as knowledge is transmitted from intelligence 117

PROI-lLEMS

NORMALITY

AND

NORMAT·,VIlY

to intelligence. Childhood, being a state of transition, is with-

manner as Plato. Jean de Ia Fontaine is famous fOr having said that

out human value. Greek pedagogy \Vas therefOre based on the

he tonk pleasure in fairy tales, but hi'i fJb!t•s are hard on childrt·n.

idC'ntification of man \vith his typical finished form, his acme. In

A certain value attached to the childish taste fOr thl' marvelous and

the child, the Greek-. sa\V only the future soldier and fi1ture citi-

f(n fiction, but it \\'as a relative value; judged hy logical norms,

zen. Plato sho\\'s no indulgence for the typical predilections and

such things were considered absurd.

tendencies of childhood. Nothing was more alien to the ancient

Paradoxically, it \vas the nineteenth t"l'ntury, \vhich is often

mind than the idea that childhood is, in each instance, a nevv

wrongly maligned for its alleged blind faith in science, that once

beginning for mankind, a beginning . .vhose innocence and enthu-

again ascribed value not only to poetry but to childhood fantasy

siasm are worthy of respect because of thC' implicit possibility of

as well: witness Victor Hugo and Charles Baudelaire. (Every child

going further than man has ever gone befOre. Furthermore, the

is a genius in its way. and every genius is a child.[ ... ] Gl'nius is a

ancient t~1mily was based on strong paternal authority. and there

deliberate reversion to childhood.) It was poets, long before psy-

was often violent contlict het\veen fathers and sons mving to the

chologists. who proposed looking at the child's mentality as nor-

father\ domination of wife and children. Theodore de Saussure

mal ;md valid, hov.rever distinct from the positive and utilitarian

attached great importance to this fact in Le Miracle arec. 47 It can

mentality of the bourgt·ois adult (as Haudelaire remarh·d, "To be

be argued. moreover, that the longer one remains ignorant of

useful ha" always seemed to me a most hideous thing"). Charles

how children are made, the longer one remains a child; and one

Dickens did in England \Yhat Hugo and Baudelaire did in France,

remains ignorant a\ long as one fails to contrast one's idea'> \vith

especially in Hard Times. Artists. whose function is to dream ti)r

actual cxperiencl'. At the root of the child's mentality is anxiety at

mankind beyond what is known, to ~corn the real, to makl' the

not knmYing why one is a child. that is, weak, pmverJ . .~ss, depe-n-

nrcd for change imperative, found a trcasun.· trove in the thought

dent and attached to one's mother as a plant is attached to the

of children. \\-'hen Eugene DcJacroix said, "\Vhat is most real

nurturing soil. To remedy this anxiety the child dreams of va<;t

for me are the illusions I create," he

magical powers, of a compensatory omnipotence. But contact

of a child. Then, \vith respect to the rehabilitation of childhood

,,·ith reality, which takes the f!.>rm of conflict, cruelly demon-

and mJny other things a.~ well. contcrnporary p.;;ychology and phi-

strates that such dreams are vain illusions. In other words, for

losophy came to the rescue: they provided poetic intuition with a di'icnunc.

political. philosophical and, in a more prof!:mnd sense, rdigiou.s

\\"JS

formulating the ideJ

reasons, the Ancients devalued childhood in a \vay that only ac-

The study of the mentality of children began at roughly the

centuareJ those characteristics of childhood apt to provoke the

sam~._· time as the study of primitiH' mt·m.:dity. In French-speaking

contempt of adults. For the Ancients, the normal man was the

cou11tries, the t<)rmcr discipline is epitomized by the name of Jean

norm.uive man. J.nd that meant quintes~entially the adult. This

Piaget, tht• latter by I ucicn ll·vy-Hruhl. There c.1n be no doubt

is, moreover, a characteristic of all classical periods. The '>even-

that the methodological implications of Piaget's research wnl'

teenth-centurv French hM1 basically rhc Sdtnt.' idt..'d. Descartes

initially tht· .sJ.me as rhose of Lt?vy-Bruhf: Piagct compared the

spoke of childish credulity and nursery tales in much the same

thought of the child to that of a contemporary cultivated adult,

l\Y

PROBLEMS

an adult \Vhost: culture was of the sort that Piaget regarded as normative fOr his time, that is, for which scientific and rationalist \'alucs stood at the top of the hierarchy. Compared with the rational mentality, children's thinking could be characterized by adjectives beginning with the prefix a-, indicating some sort of lack or absence. Note, however, that Piagct's adult is what Max Weber and Karl Jaspers call an "ideal type." To be sure, it can he argued that this norm..1l type is not only normative but average and characteristic of the majority. But the "mentality" of an age is a social fact, determined by education. If, in fact, in surveys, the ideal type turns out to reflect the average, it is because compulsory education has established certain norm.;;. Here again, man engenders man, and if the norms imposed on many generations of children included a systematic devaluation of childhood, it should come as no surprise that, in comparing today'.s children to today's adults, it turns out that children lack many of the traits inculcated in adults. The problem of mentalities is inextricably interwined with that of education, and the problem of education is inextricably intntwined with that of generations. At any givt·n point in time, those who happen to be adults are fOrmer children who were raised by other adults. It takes a generation to test the Yalidity of educational ideas. And it takes fifty to sixty years (two generations) for philosophical values to become rooted as habits. Piaget's adults more or less unwittingly hetray superficial tokens of respect for the positivist values of the period 1860-90, which gained favor with the educational reformers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. [MS I.e Normal et le problemc des menta litis, II, f. lr, 2r, 3r] [146] There is a characteristic gap between a child's desires and his means of realizing those desires. The child therefore creates a world of representations in which desires have the ability immediately to create objects presumed capable of satisfying

NORMALITY

AN[)

NORMA'iiVITY

them. The child can experienn· pleasure only with permission or by delegation. lie is strictly dependent on adults to meet its Yital needs. Thus, to obey is to live. At first, thc..~rc is no difference between social obligation and physical necessity. Adults. then, ar(' both compensation lOr and incKapable rcmiJl(krs of the child's helplessness. Freudian p~ychology had the great merit of revealing the true essence of the child's thought. The child live.;; in illusion because he lives in desire, and because he feels desire long before gratification is physically possible. So long as it i<; impossible to an on the ,..-orld in certain \Vays, desire and reality fail to coincide. And so long as desire sees no possibility of satisfaction, there is also no possibility of exprt'ssion. The child cannot admit that he wants to grow up in order to subject his father to paternal law and the world to the law of the world, that is, to dominate men and domesticate things. He cannot admit this a~ long as he does not know, beyond vvhat he is told and what he is not told (which come'> to the '\Jme thing), h(m·· tn act on things and men. The cuntcnt of the child's thought is his ignorance of the biological reai1ty of childhood. That ignorance last<> as long ,\s the child rcmaim un,1warc of copulation as his inception and fate, and so long as he is forbidden, whether by organic immatu~ rity or social taboo, to engage in coplllation himself. In fairy tales and f:1ntasies, the child seeks to satisf~· a need for pleasure and to as"crt a po\\'l'r for '':hich he still lacks the means. The \Vcalth of imagination compensates fOr the poverty of rcalintion. \Vh,H vve Moderns call "adult" in man is his awareness of the gap between desire and rcality. The adult does not rely on myth for the gratification of desire. In the adult, responsibility lOr the gratification of desires that present-day rtality places out of reach can he delegated instead to play or art, that is, to illu<>ions con'i<:-ious of their practical value as well as their theoretical inealiry.

PROBLEMS

N () P

r;1 ::. ,

I Y

AN D

N 0 R

~AT

IV I I '\

The adult docs not necessarily believe in the inevitability of prog-

what docs not exist. Vv'e sec what is. The poet docs not so much

ress, of knowledge and industry. Adults know that there arc epis-

describe \vhat exists as point to values. The poetic consciouo;,ness

temological obstacles to progress and areas over which theory is

is a correlative of the scientific consciousness. but also its inverse.

pmverless, yet they do not feel compelled on that account to seek

Poetry is a poetic function, not a noetic one.

compensation by harking back to a mode of thought that believes totallv in the realitation of desire in a normatin~ reality. It .is normal to believe that there are possibilities other than

To hold out childhood as an ideal to adult humankind is to demonstrate that childhood is a promise and not a fact. Man must remJin a child in the ~emc that 111.~ desern's to bccornc the com-

those contained in ~cience and technology at a particular point

plete man of which children dream. [MS Lc ;\/om11..1let lc proh/Cmc

in time. It i~ normal for the child's generosity to persist into

dcsmentalitis, II, I. Sr,6r]

adulthood. But it is abnormal, because historically regressive, to suggest dldt the puerility of myth is superior to science and tech-

Primiti~'e menta/icy

nology. The modem adult has limits that must be overcome, but

[14 7] Thcodule Armand Ribot, following Auguste Comtc, criti·

thev cannot be m'ercomc bv rcturnin£1 to a m(Jde of thought v;hich

cited introspective psychology as the psychology of tht:' ch,ili/cd,

ign~res precisclr that

limits to desire in reality and obstacles

adult, healthy l\·hitc nwle. Psychology's contempt t("Jr modes of

to ralue in exi\-tcncc. To be sure. childhood deserves to be treated as a norm by

thought different from that of the respectable, culti,·atcd male

<1dults - or, rather, nnt a':i a norm, precisely, but as a normative

mail'\ mode of thought was somehow vJlid and normal. J\lon-

rcquirenwnt, something to be transcended. This normative super-

taigne \\'<._mdt:"red on what ba~i~ we judge-d the native.., nf the coun-

there

~rc

reflected a hidden assumption that thl' rt''\pt>ctable. cultivated

humanity of childhood is not to be confused with the responses

tries we coloni1ed to be savages, but his skepticism was widely

that a child itself may adopt to his temporary powcrlessn~:ss,

dismissed. Frasnws \vrote In Praise of Fol~r, but it wa~ regarded as

responses that the child wishes with all his might to replace

no less fantastic than the plays of Shakespeare in which madmen

vvith true solutions, that is, solutions that are both verifiable

were portrayed as wise. And Rousseau taught in Lmilc that the

and effective.[ ... ]

child is a complete human being, differl'nt from the adult not

In "hort. because the child is not a complete being, he exhib-

only in possessing less knowledge and experience but also in hav-

its a generosity that compensates for hi~ avidity: this generosity

ing an entirely different attitude tnward life. But ~inct:' Rousseau

can he proposed a':i normal because it is normuti1·c. that is, an affir-

was accused of ha\·ing abandoned his own children, his teaching

mation of value. Because the child is a helpless creature, hmvevcr, he i~ credu-

was deemed utopi.m.

lous. Credulitr is not normal in humans because it i~ not normative;

maturity, .1nd De-;carte~ held that ·~the prejudices of our child-

it consist:-. in taking f(Jr granted what has yet to be constructed.

hood are the first and principal cause of our errors." Since we

The seventeenth century identified nun with his a(mc, or

In dw <.·ml, the most perceptive rehJ.billtation of childhood

were "children lwli-,re becoming adults," our reason was not as

is that of the poet. The poet is a visionary, a se~:r, but he sees

pure as if we had never made usc of our seml'S. Bd(_,rl' Philippe

]62

PROBLEMS

NORMALITY

AND

NORMATIVITY

Pinel and Jean Etienne Dominique Esquirol, the insane 'vere subjected to punishment in lieu of treatment. Asylums were still more terrifying than prisons. To be sure, the eighteenth century witnessed the first glimmering.s of relativism. When Montesquieu asked "How can anyone be a Persian?" he encouraged his con-

ate what they deem to be valueless. The rrlativio;;m and tolerance of the eighteenth century were inseparable from the essentially

temporaries to recognize that such a thing was indeed perfectly po~sible. It became possible to submit Western society to the judgment of an Oriental and human psychology to the judgment of a mythical superman. But J\:lontesquieu's Persian Letters and

,vhich they were judged. That is why tolerance was the value in the name of which one became intolerant, and relativity the value in the name of which one became ab"iolute. [MS Le Normal et lc

Voltaire's Micromigas were mere philosophical entertainments. Strange as it may seem, the prejudice that established the civilized white man as the standard of reference for all mankind grew out of a philosophy famous for condemning all prejudice. But Enlightenment philosophy found fault more with the pre- of prejudice than with the illusory certainty of its judament: a prejudice was the judgment of a previous age. Yesterday's judgment was declared to be error because it survived only as a weapon of combat against the ne\V. Diderot's purpose in rehabilitating the primitive, in the Supplement to Bougainville's Voyage, was essentially to discredit Christianity. The Christian religion was hoist on its own petard: whatever prt>ceded the advent of tmth was doomed to disappear. Historical precedence established logical perspective. Tolerance raises a similar problem: tolerance is the recognition of a plurality of values, the refusal to erect any value as a norm; intolerance is normative imperialism. But try as one will, a plurality of nonns is compre-hensible only as a hier.uchy. Norms can coexist on a footing of equality only if drained of the normative intention that called them into existence as codified, normative decisions l'mbodied in institutions. customs, dogmas, rites and laws. A norm cannot be normative without being militant, that is, intolerant. In intolerance, in aggressive normativity, there is of course hatred, but in tolerance there is contempt. Values toler-

normative idea of progress. But progress \vas not conceived in tcnns of a relation of values; it was identified with the final valu<> in a series, the one that transcended the other.;; and in terms of

probleme des mwtalite<, 1, f. I r J [148] Positivism took the theories of Baron Turgot and Marquis de Condorcet on tht· progress of the human spirit and recast them in the form of a law, the law of three stages (theological. nwtaphysical and positive). In other words, it tried to fOrce psychological speculation into the Procruste-an bed of natural science. In formulating a law of progress, Comte was treating mind as if it were a natural object. At the same time he was declaring that sociology (or, as he saw it, the science of mind) ,vas independent of biology in terms of object and method. The positive spirit was declared to be the ultimate form of the human spirit; theology and metaphysics \Vere devalued, the- first as a primitive form of spirit, the second as a transitional fOrm. These forms impeded the development of spirit' .., full potential, so spirit rejected them. Dissatisfied 'vith fictions, spirit created science. Hence, scientific thought was the normal (that is, the nonnative nr ideal) state of thought. Positivism portrayed itself as the normal culmination of an ever closer and more:- faithful approximation to the intellectual nom1. for Comte, theological thinking \Vas like the thinking of childre-n. \\lith this simile, Comte ascribed positive value to maturity: that of the individual as well as that of the human race. And the maturation of the race, he implied, wa~ just as ine,·itable and necessary as the maturation of the child. Meanwhile, in Germany. Hegel's dialectic encouraged student">

PROBLEMS

'\JORMALITY

A'\JD

NORMAl

V' I Y

of philosophy to see llegelian philosophy as the culmination of

was really arguing was that primitive thought was not prelogical

the arduous advent of the Idea and the German bourgeois state

but heterogeneous, and sensing. too, that champions would soon

as the normal fOrm of all society. And in England, Spencer's evo-

come fonvard to defend the merits of forms of thought "differ-

lutionism, taking up ,.vhere Mill's positivism left off, further

ent" from modern science, sought to restore continuity: the prim-

accentuated the philosophical belief that superiority and poste-

itive, they argued, \vas not as alien to our logic as some claimed,

riority are one and the same. Anterior, less complex and inferior

nor was modern thought as fully logical as some believed. The

became synonymous.

transition from one form of mr.:ntality to another involved a cer-

Little by little a difftJse dogma took shape: namely, that the

tain loss of content (modern thought is not as rich as primitive

intellectually primitive and the intellectually puerile arc t\\'0

thought) as \veil as the consolidation of a certain disposition

fOrms of a single infirmity. At around the same time, moreover,

(modern thought is more methodical). We can easily understand

research in embryology sho\\red that certain anatomical anomalies

,vhat the primitive is: it is what we become when we abandon the

were the result of arrested development. A club fOot, a harelip, a

critical spirit, the precious prize of an always vulnerable conquest

testicular ectopia- each of these conditions is the perpetuation

(thesis of Belot and Parodi, discussion at the SociCtl~ Franyaio;c

after birth of a state through which every fetus or embryo passes

de Philosophie after publication of Uvy-Bruhl's books).

\vhile still in the uterus. What is abnormal is the halting of devel-

Nevertheless, both groups of philosophers preserved the essen-

opment at an intermediate stage. What is normal at one moment

tial rationalist and positivist norms: reason is superior to mysti-

in time becomes abnormal later. \Vhen Lucien LCvy-Hruhl published Fonclions mentales dans les

cism; noncontradiction is superior to participation; science is

sociCtCs infCrieurcs in 1910, his initial usc of the term "prelogical"

is superior to the progress of faith. [MS J.e ,'r>../ormal ct lc problimc

to characteriH' the "primitive" mode of thought suggested an

de1 mentalitcs, I, f. 2r, 3r]

implicit depreciation. Philosophical opinion \vas divided. Some

o;uperior to myth; industry is superior to magic; faith in progress

[149l Rationalism and positivism thus depreciated mythical

philosophers were delighted to discover that the theory of men-

thinking. Despite the rationalist attitudes implicit in Christianity,

tali tis provided arguments to justif)' a normative conception of the history of thought. At last, there were criteria for choosing sides in philosophical combat, for distinguishing bet\Yeen fruitful new ideas and survivals of the past, for separating the backv,. . anllooking from the fon.Yard-looking. Leon Hrunschvicg, for ex-

moreover, the theologians recognized that this depreciation of myth was all-encompassing. Phenomenological theologians therefore decided that only one reaction was possible: all mythological and religious systems would have to be rescued en bloc. ivtodern mythology portray~ it~elf a~ restoring the value of

ample, used both LCvy-Bruhl and Piaget to argue in favor of his

myth in the face of rationalist depreciation. To grant recognition

mvn doctrine concerning the Ages oflntelligence and to disparage

to other value systems is tantamount to restricting the value of

Aristotle's philosophy on the grounds that it remained confined

rationalism. In the end, normative tolerance provf's to lw a depre-

within the mental framework of a primitive or a child of six.

ciation of the positivist depreciation of myth. It is impossiblf' to

J\'1eanwhile, other philosophers, sensing that what l_f:vy-Bruhl

save the content of any religion without saving the content of all

NORMALiT'{

PRO E3 L fo.l\.1 S

A~JD

rJORMAliVIT'1

religions .... In order to saY~:" a religion that had, admittedly, aban-

that ha•.:e brought thosl' values to consciousness are n()rmative, and

doned the Inquisition and the stake, it was necessary to save other

a normative direction is normally worth pursuing. [~15 I.e ,1>.•./or-

religions with their whirling dervishes and human sacrifices: tOr

mal et /e probliime des menta lite'<. I, L 6r, 7r]

if it is true th
~"'lormatil'e

object that the modern mentality is not hostile to the bombing

invention [ISO] In the evolution of the individual, the mentality of adulthood comes after the mentality of childhood; in the evolution

of savagery in all its forms. The friend of primitive mentality will of civilian populations. Hut no one is saying that the modem men-

of mankind, the modern mentality follows the primitive mental-

tality or, fOr that matter, any constituted norm must he prekrred

ity. But when ""·e refer to adulthood or modernity as normal, \ve

over primitive mentality. The modern mentali~v is not a structure but

do not mean simply that they succeed earlier stages of existence.

a tendency. To prefer it is simply to prefer a tendency, a normative intention.[ ... ]

Each of these states is normal in the sense that it effectively devalues another state hobbled bv internal conflict: between desire and

The primitive and modern mentalities are not coexisting abso-

reality, or bet\vcen power and science. To be sure, just because

lutes but succeso:;ive relatives. Technology is clearly progress when

the modern recognizes these conflicts and to a limited degree

it demonstrates the failure of magic; science is clearly progress

resolves them, it does not thereby constitute the final stage of

when it grows out of the inadequacy of t~:"chnology. The modern

e\'olution. The expectation that today's understandings will be

mentality has certain ad\·antages over previous norms. advantages

transcended is a normal feature of the:· modern mentality. Hence

from which it derives rcl.nivc but not absolute value.

there is no rcmcdv•· f()r modernit\''s . ills in merelv" returning to old

Modernity is not normal in the sense of having achievec! a

norms. The only true rcmec!y lies in the invention of new norms.

definitive superior state. It h normatii'C, hmvcver, because it strives

Generosity of spirit is to be imitated, but belief in the efficacy

constantly to outdo itself. Henri Bergson got at least one thing

of immediate solutions must be rejected. Normativity is inher-

right: a true mechanics may not exist, but a true mysticism is a

ent in the kinds of change that brought modernity to conscious-

contradiction in terms. Despite Bergson's objective sympathy fOr

ness. It is this normativity that mu:,t in the normal course of

the primitive mentality, his philosophy is in no Sl'nse a reactionary revaluation of irrationality.[ ... J

things be perpetuated. To sum up, all normality must be judged with reference to

Modern man is exp(•riencing a crisis in the sense that domi-

the possibility of devaluation in a normative sense. Therein lies

nation and mastery of the environment elude his grasp. But the

the only method for detecting mystification.

resolution of that crisis does not lie in the past. It does not exist

Pathology can sometimes mimic health. If sickness is often a

in ready-made form but remains to be invented.

refuge for an individual in conflict \\.·ith himself, others or the

The modern i~ modern only: because it has found solutions to

environment, revolution is often a nwans of avoiding necessary

problems that the primitive stldom posed. Modernity poses dif-

innovation and reform. Time cannot settk thP question of what

f'erent problem.~,. Modern Yalues are provisional. But the changeo:;

a person's or a society's norms ought to be: neither ypsterday nor ~6y

j68 j

"JORMALITY

PROBLEMS

A"J[l

NORr-'AT'V'TY

ian~

tomorrow is an infallible oracle. Norms and values are tested by

ans of the same era undertook to fix the usage of the French

situations calling for normative invention. One can respond to a

guage, it was a question of norms. of determining the reference,

ingenu~

and of defining mistakes in terms of divergence, difference. The

ity; often the two responses seem deceptively similar. Yet there

reference is borrowed from usage. In the middle of the seven~

is one sure criterion for identifying creativity: a willingness to put

teenth century this is Claude Favre de Vaugelas's thesis: "Usage is

challenge either by seeking refuge or exercising creative

norms to the test, to ascertain their value fairly and without trying

that to \vhich we must subject ourselves entirely in our language." so

to make thl'm seem artificially normal. The normal is that vvhich

Vaugelas's ,,.:orks turn up in the wake of works of the AcadCmie

is normative under given conditions, but not everything that is

fran!;,~aise,

normal under given conditions is normative. It must ahvays be

In fact in the seventeenth century the grammatical norm \vas the

\Vhich was fOunded precisely to embellish the language.

permissible to test the normal by varying the ambient conditions.

usage of cultured, bourgeois Parisians, so that this norm reflects

It is in this sense that the historr of the world is the judgment of the ri/Orld. [MS .Normaliti et normatidtC, f. 4r 1

a political norm: administrative centralization for the benefit of royal power. In terms of normalization there is no differcncl' betwLTn the birth of grammar in France in the seventeenth cen-

The Problem of Social Norms [151] The Latin word norma, which, etymologically speaking,

tury and the establishment of the metric system at the end of the eighteenth. Cardinal Richelieu, the members of the National Convention and Napoleon Bonaparte arc the successive instru~

bears the weight of the initial meaning of thl' terms "norms" and "normal," is the equivalent of the Grel'k dp8o(. Orthography

,j

ments of the same collective demand. It began with grammatical

[French, orthographc, but long ago orthographic], orthodoxy, ortho-

norms and ended vvith morphological nonns of men and horses for

pedics, are normative concepts prematurely. If the concept of

national defcnse,ll passing through industrial and sanitary norms.

orthology is less familiar, at least it is not altogether useless to knmv that Plato guaranteed it4.S and the vmrd is found, without

'I

Defining industrial norms assumes a unity of plan, direction of work, stated purpose of material constructed. The article on

a reference citation, in Emile Littrl·'s Dictionnaire de fa langue

"Gun-carriage" in the FncyclopCdic of Didcrot and d'Alembcrt,

franc;aise. Orthology is grammar in the sense given it by Latin and medieval \\Titers, that is, the regulation of language usage. If it is true that the experience of normalization is a specifically anthropological or cultural experience, it can seem normal that language has proposed one of its prime fields for this experience. Grammar furnishes prime material fOr rcflc·ction on norms. When Francis I in the edict of Villers~CotterCt ordains that all judicial acts of the kingdom be dravvn up in French, we are deal~ ing with an imperative. 4l) But a norm is not an imper,ltive to do something under pain of juridical sanctions. \Vhcn the grammari~

revi'led by the Royal Artillery Corps, admirably sets forth the

370

motifs of the normalization of work in arsenals. In it Wl' see how the confusion of efforts, the detail of proportions, the difficulty and slowness of replacements, useless expense, arc remedied. The standardization of designs of pieces and dimension tables, the imposition of patterns and models have as their cnnsefjuence the precision of separate products and the regularity of assembly. The "Gun-carriage" article contains almost all the concepts used in a modern treatise on normalization except the term "norm." Hert' we have the thing without the word. 17'

T '

PROBI_EMS

The definition of sanitary norms assumes that, fi·om the

NORMALITY

polit~

ical puint of view, attention is paid to populatiuns' health considered statistically, to the hea1thiness of conditions of existence and to the uniform dissemination of preventive and curative treatments perf~~ctcd by medicine. In Austria Maria Theresa and Joseph II conferred legal status on public health institutions by creating an Imperial Health Commission (Sanitiits-Hojdeputation, 1753) and by promulgating a Haupt Medizinal Ordnung, replaced in 1770 by the Sanitiits-normativ, an act with forty regulations related to medicine, veterinary art, pharmacy, the training of surgeons, dcmographical and medical statistics. With respect to norm and normalization here, we have the \vord with the thing. In both of these examples, the norm is what determint:>s the normal starting fl-om a nom1ative decision. As we arc going to sec, such a decision regarding this or that norm is understood only within the context of other nonns. At a given moment, the experience of normalization cannot be broken down, at least not into projects. Pierre Guiraud clearly perceived this in the case of grammar when he wrote: "Richelieu's founding of thl' Academie franc;:aise in 1635 fit intiJ a general policy of centralization of which the Revolution, the Empire, and the Republic are the heirs .... It \\'Ot!ld not be absurd to think that the bourgeoisie annexed the language at the same time that it seizerl the instruments of prorluction."52 It could be said in another way by trying to substitute an equivalent for the Marxist concept of the ascending class. Between 1759, when the word "normal" appeared, and 1834, when the word "normalized,. appeared, a nonnative class had won

AND

NORMAriVITY

tions between technological and juridical norms. In the rigorous and present meaning of the term, technological normalization consists in the choice and determination of material, the form and dim(•nsions of an object whose characteristics from then on become necessary fOr con~istcnt manufacture. The division of labor con~ trains businessmen to a homogeneity of norms at the heart of a technical-economic complex whose dimensions are constantly evolving on a national or international scale. But tech:lology develops within a society's economy. A demand to simplif)' can appear urgent frum the technological point of view, but it can seem premature from the industrial and economic point of vil'w as far as the possibilities of the moment and the i.llmediate future arc concerned. The logic of technology and the interests nf the economy rnust come to terms. lvloreover. in another respect, technological normalization must beware of an excess of rigidity. What is manufactured must finally be consumed. Certainly, the logic of normalization can be pushed as far as the normalization of needs by means ofthe persuasion of advertising. For all that, 5hould the question he settled as to whether need is an object of possible normalization or the o;;ubject obliged to invent norms? Assuming that the first of these two propositions is true, normalization must provide for needs, as it docs fOr objects characterized by norms, margins tOr divergence, but here without quantification. The relation of technology to consumption introduces into the unification of methods, m0dels, procedures and

That the normative intention in a given society in a given era cannot be broken down is apparent when we examine the rela-

proofs of qualification, a relative flexibility, evoked furthermore by the term "normalization," w-hich was preferred in France in 19 30 to "standardi:~ation," to designate the administrative organism responsible for enterprise on a national scale.Sl The concept of normalization t'xdudes that of immutability, includes the anticipation of a possible flexibility. So we -.ee hmv a technological norm gradually rdll·cts an ide<1 of society and its hierarchy of val-

372

373

the power to identify -a beautiful example of ideological illusion - the function of social nonns, whose content it determined, wirh the use that that class made of them.

_,..I I

N0R'.1AL

PROAl E'v1S

ues, how a decision to normalize assumes the representation of a

T I

AND

i'.OR~ATIVITY

of la\v. The magistrates who decide, the bailiffs responsible for

possible \Vhole of correlative, complementary or compensatory

carrying out the sentence, arc persons identified with their func-

decisions. This whole must be finished in advance, finished if not

tion by virtue of norms. installed in their function with the del-

closed. The representation of this totality of reciprocally relative

egation of competence. Here, the normal descends fl-om a higher

norms is planning. Strictly speaking, the unity of a Plan \vould

norm through hif'rarchi1.t:>d Of' legation. In his Reinen Rechtslchrt>. ~5

be the unity of a uniqut:" thought. A bureaucratic .md tt:"chnocratic

J lans Kelsen maintains that the ,·alidity of a juridical norm depends

myth, the Plan is the modern dress of the idc.1 of Providence. As

(_)Jl

its insertion in a coherent system, an order of hierarchi1ed

it is very cll·ar that a meeting of dcleg.Hes and a gathering of

norms, drawing their binding power from their direct or indirect

machines are hard put to achieve a unity of thought, it must be

reference to a fundanh.·ntal norm. But there arc diff('rent juridical

admitted that we vmuld hesitate to say of the Plan '"'hat La Fontaine

orders because there
said of Providence, that it knows what we need better than we

Ifit has been possible to contrast this philosophy of law with its

do. 54

Nevertheless- and without ignoring the tact that it has been

powerlessness to absorb political fact into juridical fact, as it

possible to present normalization and planning as closely con-

claims to do, at least its merit in having brought to light the rel-

nected to a war economy or the economy of totalitarian regimes-

ativity of juridical norms hierarchized in a coherent order has

we must see above all in planning endeavors the attempts to con-

been generally rccogni1cd. So that one of Kclscn\ moo;,r resolute

~titute

organs through which a society could estimate, foresee and

critics can write: "The law is the systl'm ofconwntiom and norms

.1ssunw its needs instead of being reduced to recording and stat-

destined to orient all behavior inside a group in a well-defined

ing them in term~ of accounts and b<1lance sheets. So that what is

manner."S~>

denounced, under the name ofrationali1ation- the bogey

com~

Even while recngni;ing that the law, privatt' .1s well as

public, has no source other than a political one, we can admit that

placently waved by the champions of liberalism, the economic

the opportunity

variety of the cult of nature -as a mechanization of sociallitC per-

multiplicity of cu~torn., which must be institutionali1t>d by that

haps expresses, on the contrary. the need, obscurely felt by soci~

power into a virtual jllridical whole. Even in the absence of the

ety, to become the organic subject of needs recognized as such.

concept of juridical order, dear to Kelscn, the relativity of jurid-

It is easy to understand how technological Jctivity and its nor-

ical norms can be justified. This relativity can be more or less

mal intion, in tt:>rms of their relation to the economy, are related

strict. There exists a tolerance for nonrelativity \Vhich docs not

to the juridical order. A law of industrial property, juridical pro-

mean a gap in relativit~. In I~Kt the norm of norm~ remain~ L·on-

tection of patents or

n.~gistered

patterns, exists. ·)() normalize a

registered pattern is to proceed to industrial expropriation. The

tn

legislate is given to the legislative pown by a

vergencc. How could it he othcnvise if law "is onlv the rcuula"' tion of·wcial activity"?'l 7 [ ••• J

requirement of national defense is the reason invoked by many

The cnrrelativity of social norms- technological, economic,

states to introduce such provisions into legislation. The uni-

juridical- ten
verse of technological norms open~ onto the universe of juridi-

not easy to say what tht· concept of organi1.ation is in n·lation to

cal norms. An expropriation is carried out according to the norms

that of organism, whether \ve are dealing with a more general

174

371

,.,.,..... •

I I

PRO 8 L E r-1 S

NORMALITY

'"-r'O

NORMATIVI T Y

structun: than the organism, both more formal and richer; or

with the exception of archaic and so-called primitive societies

"'. . hethcr we are dealing \vith a model ·which, relative to the organism held as a basic type of structure. has been singulari:red hy so

vvhere purpose is furnished in rite and tradition just as the behavior of the animal organism is provided by an innate model -seems

many restrictive conditions that it could have no more comistency

to show clearly that, strictly speaking, it has no intrinsic finality.

than a metaphor. Let us state first that in a social organization, the rules for adjusting the parts into a collective which is more or less clear

In the case of society, regulation is a need in search of its organ and its norms of exercise.

as to its own final purpose- be the parts individuals, groups or enterprises with a limited objective- are external to the adjusted

expresses the existence of a regulatory apparatus. The need fOr

multiple. Rules must be represented, learned, remembered, ap-

appL'arance in the fOrm of anxiety and the act of searching, the reference of the organism, in a state of given fact, to an optimum

plied, while in a living organism the rules tOr adjusting the parts among themsdve~ are immanent, presented without being represented, acting with neither deliberation nor calculation. Here

On the other hand, in the case of the organism the fact of need fOod, energy, movement and rest requires, as a condition of its

state of functioning, determined in the fOrm of a constant. An

there is no divergence, no distance, no delay betvveen rule and

organic regulation or a homeostasis assures first of all the return to the constant when, because of variations in its relation to the

regulation. The social order is a set of rules with which the ser-

environment, the organism diverges from it. Just as need has as

vants or beneficiaries, in any case, the leaders, must be concemed. The order nf life is made of a set of rules lived without prob-

its center the organism taken in its entirety, even though it manifests itself ,md is satisfied by means of one apparatus, so its reg-

lems." [NP, pp. 248-50] [152] We shall say otherwise- certainly not better, probably less \Veil - namely that a society is both machine and organism. It \vould be onlv a machine ifthe collective's ends could not only be strictly planned but also executed in conformity with a program. In this respect, certain contemporary societies with a socialist fOrm of economy tend perhaps toward an automatic mode of functioning. But it must be acknowledged that this tendency

ulation expresses the integration of parts within dw \vhole though

still encounters obstacles in facts, and not just in the ill-will of skeptical performers, which oblige the organizers to summon up their resourcl'~ fOr improvisation. It can even be asked whether any society whatsoever is capable of both clearsighterlness in determining it.~ purposes and efficiency in utilizing its means. In any case, the fact that one of the tasks of the entire social organization consists in its infOrming itS<-' if as to its possible purposes-

it operates by means of mw nervous and endocrine system. This is the reason why, strictly speaking, there is no distance bet\veen organs within the organism, no externality of parts. The knowledge the anatomist gains from an organism is a kind of display in cxtemi\·eness. But the organism itself does not live in the spatial mode hy \vhich it is perceived. The life of a living being is, I(H each of its elements, the immediacy of the copresence of all. [NP, pp. 252-53] [153] Social regulation tl'nds toward organic regulation and mimics it without ceasing for all that to be composed mechanica!ly. In order to identify tht· social composition with the social organi'-illl in the strict <.;ensc of the term, we '-ihould be able to speak of a society's needs .llld norms as one spcab of an organism's vital needs and norms, that is, unambiguously. The vital

377

NORM AL'T Y

PROBL FMS

A I~ IJ

I·10 Rl--1 '>.T I \ IT Y

needs and norms of a lizard or a stickleback in their natural habitat

wht:>reas \Visdom is the use of principle.., of appreciation provided

arc expressed in the very f:Kt that these animals are very natural

by science fOr the purpose of bringing human life into a state of

living beings in this habitat. But it_ is enough that one individual

practical and affective perfection, or happiness.

in any society question the needs and norms of this society and

Wisdom is therefore the realintion of a ~tate of human ful-

challenge them - a sign that these need~ and norms arc not those

fillment and excellence, a realintion immediately derived from

o.f the \Vhole society - in order for us to understand to what

knmvledge of an order of perfection. \Visdom is thus clearly a

extent social need is not immanent, to what extent the social

practical form of consciousness.

norm is not internal, and, finally, to \Vhat extent the society, seat

Now let us compare the etymological definition and ancient

of restrained dissent or latent antagonisms, is far fi-om setting itself

conception of philosophy with our commonsense image. In com-

up as a whole. If the individual poses a question about the final-

mon parlance, philosophy is a certain disposition to accept events

ity of the society, is this not the sign that the society is a poorly

deemed necessary and inevitable, to subject prejudices and phan-

unified set of means, precisely lacking an end with \vhich the

toms of the imagination to cold scrutiny and criticism, and to reg-

collective activity permitted by the structure would identify?

ulate one's conduct in accordance with firm personal principles

To support this we could invoke the analyses of ethnographers

of judgment and evaluation. It <;eems probahlr, moreover, that

\vho are sensitive to the divcrsitv nf svstcms of cultural norms.

insofar as those principlrs are remote from rveryday life, people

Claude LL·vi-Strauss says: "\\it:> then discoYer that no society is

arr inclined to think nf philosophy a'\ utopian and idlr specula-

fundamentally good, but that none is absolutely had; they all oHer

tion of no immediate use and therefnrl' of no value. Common

their members certain advantage~. with the proviso that there

'>l'mc,

then, seems to lcJ.d to two contradictory judgmcnh con-

is invariably a residue of evil, the amuunt of \vhich seems tore-

cerning philosophy. On the one hand, it ~ees philo~ophy as a rare

main more or less constant and pcrhaps corresponds to a specific

and therefOre prestigious discipline and, if it lives up to its prom-

inertia in social life resistant to all attempts at organization." 5Y

ises, as an important spiritual exercise. On the other hand, it

[NP, pp. 255-56]

deduces from the variety of comp~..·ting philosophical doctrines that philosophy is inconsistent and fickle, hence a mere intel-

On the Normative Character of Philosophical Thouyht [!54 J Philosophy is the lo\'e of Wisdom. One sees immediately

sophical speculation, is contradicted by the filet that philosophers

that \Visdom is for philosophy an Ideal, since love is desire for

throughout history have been the objl'ct of hostility and even

something that it is possible to possess. Thus, at the origin of the

persecution, sometimes hy political leaders and sometimes by

lectual game. Yet this judgml'nt, which tends to discredit philo-

philosophical quest i'i the confession of a lack, the recognition

the masses themselves. If the teaching-; and examples of the phi-

of a gap bet\veen an cxi.;,tence and a need. \Visdom is more than 'iCience in the strict and contemporary

losophers are so 'videly feared, then tht.· activity must not be

sense of the word, for <;Cie!llT

j;., J

COntemplative possession of

reality through cxclu-;inn of all illusion. Prrnr and ignorance,

entirelv futile. Now let us bring thc'it' <.;Cattered oh.;;ervations together.

'i(J

deny

that philosophy ha5 any "utility" i" to recngnite that it reflects a

PROBLEMS

concern with the ultimate meaning of life rather than \,. . ith immediate expedients, with life's ends rather than its means. Just as

NORMALITY

AND

NORMATIVITY

tution that fulfills a collective need for security or aggression. Philosophy is an individual quest, however. In the History of

also cannot interest ourselves o;;imultaneously in ends

Philosophy Hegel says, "Philosophy begins only where the individual knows itself as individual, fOr itself, as universal, as e<;<;ential,

and means. Now, it is usual - not to say normal - for people to

as having infinite value qua individual." The individual can par-

intereo;;t themselves primarily in meam, or what they take to be

ticipate directly in the Idea {or, as we would say, in value) 'vith-

we cannot focus simultaneously on objects close to us and objects far away,

Wl"

means, \Vithout noticing that means exist only in relation to ends

out the mediation of any institution. Philosophy is an asocial

and that, in accepting certain means, they unconsciously accept

activity. There are no philosophical institutions. Schools are asso-

the ends that make them so. In other words, they accept whatever

ciations, not societies.

philosophv happens to be embodied in the mlues and institutions of a

Philosophical judgment therefOre cannot avoid casting itself

particular civilization. To accept, for example, that saving is a means

as a competitor of both political judgment and religious judgment, which in any case are closely related. It is not unusual, moreover, for competition to turn into rivalry. Either philosophy reinforces communal beliefs, in which case it is pointless, or else it is at odds with those beliefs, in which case it is dangerous. "Philosophy," Aristotll' said, "must not take order'>, it must give them." The upshot of this discussion is that the essence of philosophical speculation is to apply a normative corrective to human experience- but that is not all. Any technique is basically normative, because it sets fOrth or applies rules in the form of fOrmulas, procedures, models and so on. But this normative ch.uacter of technique is secondary and abstract: secondary because it has to do with means, and abstract because it is limited to searching for one kind of sati<;faction. The multiplicity of tl'chniques assumes a plurality of distinct needs. If philosophy i" a normative disciplinl', moreover, it is primordially and concretely '\O. The best-known definitions of philosophy tend to stress one of these aspects over the other: t:"ither normative or concrete. Nevertheless, both adjectives figure in all the definitions. The Stoics emphasize the normative: in defining philosophy as spiritual meclicine, they assume that pa~sion and disease are one and the same.

to a better life is implicitly to accept a bourgeois system of values, a value system totally different from that of feudal times. This perversion of our attention is what caused Blaise Pascal to say, "It is a deplorable thing to see men deliberating always on means and never on ends," and further, "Man's sensitivity to small things

and insensitivity to large ones [are J signs of a peculi.u inversion of values." Philosophy is a corrective to this inversion, and if the commonsen:'lc criticism that philosophy is not usefUl, which is strictly
PROBLEMS

NOkMALIIY

ANIJ

NORMAIIVIIY

Novalis says something slightly different when he calls philoso-

and creation as subordinate to contemplation. It comprised a

phy a "higher pathology."[ ... J

physics, a logic, an ethics, but no aesthetics. Ancient thought was

Although it is true that ancient philosophy postulates the

spontaneously naturalistic. It had no notion of values that might

unity of value, it does so, I think, in an ontological sense, for the

not exist or that ought not to exist. It sought value in being, vir-

Ancients also held that the value of action is inferior to that of

tue in strength, soul in breath. Modern philosophy is conscious

knowledge. Ancient philosophy was intellectualist. Knowledge

of the powers of mind. Even the knmvledge of impotence has,

of the universal order is enough to establish it. Virgil's line" Felix

since Kant, often been interpreted as a po\\'er of mind. Hence,

qui potuit rerum cognosccre causas" (Happy is the man "vho knmvs the causes of things) might serve as an epigraph to all ancient phi-

concrete unity of value'5. Summarizing the foregoing analysis,

there b no obstacle to modern philosophy's being a search for a

losophies. No anti-intellectualist has been as clear on this point

then, I offer this dt"finition: modern philosophy is primordial,

as Nietzsche: "A metamorphosis of being by kno"'.rledge: therein

concrete, normative judgment.

lies the common error of rationalists, Socrates foremost among

What is true of norms in general is therefore true of philoso-

them."60 In The Birth of Tragedy, he calls Socrates the "father of

phy. The abnormal, being the a-normal, logically follows the del~

theoretical optimism" and holds him responsible for the illusory

inition ofthe normal. It is a logical negation. But it is the priority

belief that "thought, following the Ariadne's thread of causality,

of the abnormal that attracts the attention of the normative, that

can penetrate the deepest abysses of being, that it has the power

calls fOrth a normative decision and provides an opportunity to

not only to know but to refOrm existence." 01 (Note, in passing,

establish normality through the application of a norm. A norm

that Pascal and Schopenhauer shmved Nietzsche the way to the

that has nothing to regulate is nothing because it regulates noth-

path of theoretical pessimism.)

ing. The essence of a norm is its role. Thus practically and hmc-

Given that modern philosophy cannot use ancient wisdom as

tionally the normal is the operational negation of a state \vhich

a model, can it perhaps better serve the intention that animated the

thereby becomes the logical negation ofthat state; the abnormal,

ancient lovers of wisdom? The connection bet,veen ancient and

though logically postt"rior to the normal, is functionally first.

modern philosophy is deeper than a shared ideal; it is a shared

lienee philosophy is inevitably a second stage or moment. It does

need. The need that gave rise to ancient philosophy was for a

not create values because it is called into being by differences

mental organizing structure, a structure at once normative and

among values. Historically, philosophy can be st"en as an effort

concrete and thus capable of defining what the "normal" form

of mind to give value to human experience through critical exami-

of consciousness was. This need manifested itself in the trou-

nation and systematic appreciation of the values spontaneously

bling, unstable, painful and therefore abnormal character of ordi-

embodied in civilizations and cultures. The sciences little bv little

nary experience. [ ... J

create truth for humankind. Political and religious institutions

The ancient mind nevertheless lacked the notion of a spirit-

little by little turn human actions into good works. The arts, by

ual subject, that is, an infinitely generous and creative power.

representing man's dreams, little by little reveal the extent ofhh

Ancient philosophy treated the soul as subordinate to the idea

ambitions. In the primitive mind these functions are intert\vincd,

PROBl_CMS

_w that myth imperiously defines what is real, what powers men have, and hmv they relate to one another, and that is why philos-

Critical Bibliography

ophy takes myth as its first object of reflection. In the past, philosophy grew out of conflict among myths; today it grows out of

Camille Limoges

the conflict among the various functions of mind. Philosophy can succeed in its intention- to recover the unity

of effort behind disparate acts of spontaneous creation- only by relating the various elements of culture and civilization: scienC(', ethics, religion, technology, fine arts. To establish such relations is to choose among values. Criticism and hierarchy are therefOre cs~cntiai. Philo~ophy cannot adopt anything but a critical attitude

toward the various human functions that it proposes to judge. Its

This bibliography is divided into two parts. Part One includes the

goal is to discover the meaning of those functions by determin-

titles of George"> Canguilhem's published vmrks. Part Two is a

ing how they fit together, by restoring the unity of consciom·

selection of the most significant puhli.~hed revievvs of and com-

ness. The business of philosophy is therefore not so much to solve

mentaries on these works. This bibliography is intended prima-

problems a.s to create them. In Leon Brunschvicg's \vords, phi-

rily as a working tool. It includes a substantial number of titles,

losophy is the "science of solved problems," that is, the question-

published mainly befOre 1943, that are not fOund in the only other

ing of received solutions. Nmv we can unden.tand why philosophy

available bibliography (see below, Part T\vo, the penultimate entry

has attracted hostile reactions through the ages: philosophy is a

under 1985).

questioning of life and therefore a threat to the idea that every-

Succinct biographical and contextual information, whenever

thing necessary to life is already in our pos~cssion. The goal of

rclcv
philosophy is to search fOr reasons to live by seeking the end for

under the year of its publication, in many cases with the circum-

which life is supposed to be the means. But to pursue such a goal

stances surrounding the origin of the text- for example, a pub-

is abo w discover n:a~ons not to live. Nothing is more at odds

lic lecture or paper presented at a scholarly conference. Those

with life than the idea that an end to life may be a value and

books consisting of a collection of lectures and/or previously

not simply an accident. Therein lies one source of philosophy\

published papers are identified as such. When applicable, vari-

unpopularity. [ MS Du CaractCre narmatij de Ia penslic philosophiquc,

ous editions are noted at the first mention of a title. Only new

f. lr, 2r, 3r, 4r, Sr, 6r]

editions involving a different publisher or translation, and/or revisions or additions to the texts, are cited under the year of the new publication. No doubt, had Georges Canguilhcm been asked to provide his O\vn bibliography, he would not have included a good number of

A

VITAL

CRITICAL

RATiONALIST

BIBLIOGRAPHY

the titles ,E!;ivcn here - not because of a \vio._;h to conceal any of

in!.!~·

them, but hecause C.:wguilhem has always maintained

stric.t

hi~ politics ofp.Kifi~m, .md l.ner beonw an attiH· resistatll'~· mcmhn. Despite

distinction betv..·een the works of the author (l'oem're) and the

tlw ~..hangc in his politin. Canguilhcm's cl<JSt' attachment to Alain rww·r wavered;

.1

"traces" of the intellectual and professorial career.

\\'ith the rise ofn.lliona].,ocialism, Canguilhcrn in 1934-3) camt' to reject

he wJs at Alain's bedside upon his death, at'ter ~ulfcring through a long illne~'>,

As a bibliographer \vho is also a researcher interested in French

on June 2, 1951 (see Jt->.1n-Fran\ois Sirine\li, CCnCratwn mte!lutucflc: Khd,qncu1: ct

contemporary intellectual history, it has been my contention that

normalictH dans f'cntrc-dt'U 1 -~7ucrrn [ P<~ri ~: l·a~ .ml, 198 8 J, pp. 3 3Off. and 464ff. ).

an account as complete as pos~ible of the printed "rran:s" of

Canguilhem's da~~ of !':124 at the Eude Norm.1/e SupL·ricurt· wa~ pJrticuJean-P<~ul Sanrt',

Canguilhcm's remarkable intellectual trajectory \vas well worth

l.uly distinguished: it included R.:tymond •\ron,

pursuing. I am confident that many readers will share my opinion.

arnong other luminarin. Th~.: philosopher and mathematician Je.:tn Cav,1ill&~ had

.md Paul Ni:tan,

entered the Ecole the previous year, and he and Canguilhem commenced a ~trnng friendship th.11 1\
Part One 1926 \VORKS BY GroHCI SCAN GUll HI ,v1

'"I

,1

Th{·oric de l'ordn· ct du progn':·s che1 1\ugu~tc Comtc," Diph'>nw d'i•tude~ \upl·riL·ure._, \l,rll
Ccorw·~ Can~uillwm ft't:el\nl hi\ c.nly cducatiun .11 the L·lement<~ry ~choPI

\\"ritten undc1 tht· ~upervi~i<Jn .d C(·lt·~tin Boug!~. :\r that time, the

and then tlh· high ~chool ot' hi..; native town, ca~r.·lnaudary, in southwe~tctn

[Jipltnnc d'L·tuJc~ ~uptorieure~ wa~ pur~ut·d upon completion of undergrad-

france. In 1921, at the ag.e of~ewnteen, he entert>d the kluignc- ~pecial dJ.Y~l'S

uate stmlie~ (liccmc), and before the "ugrCyation" cxaminIll-

that prepared student~ lor the highly competitive entrance ex
dent'> prcpared ar the Fcole :-.lormak Sup{·ricure. Some fifty years btn

the Ecole Nnrmale Supl·rieure - Df the I yc(•e Henri I\' in Pari~. Canguillwm

l'anguilhem 1\'r<>tl' ,l'>hl>rt commem,,ratil>lll>fBougk· (197K).

attendPn the L~nT from 1921 to 19~4. taught b~ the philo~ophcr Emik Chartic1 (better known under the 1wn n.Hllt' "AI.1in"). Alain taught tilt' philmophv UIUJ'St'

1927

from 1903 to llJ33, interrupted <mly by World \\'ar I, when he voluntaril) enlisted (he was too old to be drafted) .1nd sened in the artillery. In his readings of the great philosophical ,md literary texts, Al.:~in led hi~ students to ana-

Canguilhem played a major rok that ynr in the iconocl.l'>tic rn·uc that Ecole

lyle rritically and to rc~pect rhnc writing~. whilt> t>mpha'>iring a neo-K;mtian

Nnrmale student~ l>rg.Ull!nl .md st.lg~"d ar the l'nd of each aco1demic ~'ear. llc

perspectiw·, .1~ \n·ll a~ his own qaunLh pacifism- ,m t'thi(., based on a fumia-

wa.,

mcntal d i.~tru'>t ol' power ("/c cir111 en (Ontrc lcs pouvt~irs") and of republ ic,m gt•n-

the name of the dircctqr qf the Fcok Norrnalc, Cu.,tave Lan'>
erosity. Alain deep!) influenced Canguilhem\ intellectual life during the.,e ycars.

in Indochina, where a battle between the French and the Chine'>c had led to

In 1924, Canguilhcm entt>n·d the Ecole NormaJt. Sup~rieure, where, ;1~ an

the dbmi~~alof the Juk~ rerry gm·crnment in 1H85. J'wo antimilitari~t song'>

un,lpologcric antimilitarist and pacif1~t. he rem.,incd faithful to Alain'\ TL·.Kh·

On<'

1 ''t>rl'

nf the 11ritcrs "f lht· pl.ly "'\c· lk~d'>trt· 1k L.:tng~on," ,, purl i1wolving

considered p.:~nicularly outragcn11~- ''Sur l'lltili~.HirH1 rk., intellectuel'i

A

VITAL

RATIONALIST

CRITICAL

AIBLIOGRAPHY

en tt•mps de guerrl'" and "Complaintc du capitainc Cambusat" (Cambmat wa5

in N\mes. Michel Alc-xandre (1888~1952), then a lycb· professor in that city,

.1n officer n·sponsiblc

the military instruction of the Ecole, Normale stu-

with his wife Jeanne, assumed most of the editorial burden ohvhat was then

f(>r

dents). Canguilhem was author of the first and coauthor of the second, with a

a weekly publication. \\'hen Alexandre first met Alain he \.,·as twenty years

group offdlmv students including Sartrc. Sirint'lli ha~ rt•printed the text of both

old; he remained a devoted disciple throughout his life. l.ibres propos quickly

songs (sec Giniration intellectuelle, pp. 326~28) and provides wbstantial mate-

attracted enough attention among French intellectuals that Gallimard de-

rial about the context of these events. Lanson hdd Canguilhem and others

cided to publish it under its prestigious "NRF' imprint in 1922~23 and

responsible for these actions, and the inscription "PR" (for "revolutionary prop-

1924, when the journal ceased publication. A second series of Libres propos

aganda") was recorded in the military dossiers of the culprit~- who \Vt're sup-

was published as a monthly from March 1927 to Septt•mbt.:r !935; ~t·~·

pmed to become officers at the end of their "military preparation" at the Ecole

Jeanne Alexandn·, l'd., En Souvenir de Michel AIC\andre: Le\ons, tcxtcs, lcttri'S

Normal~.:

(Sirindli, p. 339). Canguilhem purposely failed the examination con-

(Paris: Mercure dl' France, 1956), pp. 499~514. In 1931~32, Canguilht·m

cluding this preparation in Spring 1927 by allowing the base of tht..: machine

as~umed the main editori
gun he w,1S ~upposed to dismount to fall on the foot of the examining officer

undn 1931).

C.(;. !Jerrurcl fpseud. J, "La Mobilisation de~ intdl~ctuels- Prote~tatton d'Ctu·

(ibid., p. 465). At this time, he was actively circulating a petition against tht• I oi P;ndBoncour, which had ju~t been passt•d by the Assemblt-e national<.·. nn the mobilintion Llfthe country tilr wanime (set• belO\v, first entry undt•r 1927).

diJ.nts,'' I ibrcs propo> (April 20, 1927), pp. 51~52. Follqwed on pp. 5 3~)4 by,, text signed ''G. Canguilhem." Printed on pages 4-b~4H, under the titlt• ''1.it DCciM.ltion d'Luropc. no.

None ofthi~ prccludt•d intdlecnl.ll \\'Ork, though: Canguilhem ranked ~n-·

du IS ani\,'' i~ the t<·xr ni" the" prote.-;t, lir~t published in 1-uroFc, signed hy

ond that yt.:ar in rht• high}~· competitive examin,nion for the awi.IJ
lhD intellectual~ .1ntl aLademics, including Al.1in. and f(,llowed by tht· ~igna­

losophic. Paul Vignaux, who would become an eminent scholar in medina!

ture~

philo~ophy,

rankerl fir~t. and Canguilhem's friend Jean Cavailll~~ ranked !nun h.

Raymond Aron, Jean Cavailles, Charles Ehresmann, Jean 1\yppolitc, llenri-1.

Canguillwm then did his military service f(>r eighteen months, between

l\1armu and Je,:m-Paul Sartrc. The Loi Paui-Boncour, about the "genn.1\

November 1927 and April 1929- not as an officer but first as a private and,

mobilization of the nation in wartime," had been voted by the A~sL·mbl~e

latt>r, in preparation for noncommissioned officer~ (briaodicr).

offifty-l(mr ~tudcnts fi-om the Ecole Normah·. including Cmguilhcm,

nationale on March 7, 1927. The law was denounced for stifling inh·lkctual independence and frct.:dom of opinion in wartime.

C. G. Bernard [p~eud. ], "La Philosophie d'lle-rmann Keyserling," l.ibrn propos {March 20, 1927), pp.

18~21.

According to Sirinelli (pp.

341~42),

Canguilhem initiated the petition

at the Ecole Normale.

Review of Maurin· Boucher, La Philosophic !~'Hermann Kcrserlin9 (Paris: Rieder, 1939). Between 1927 and 1929, Canguilhem sometim~.:s u-;ed the pen name "C. C. Bernard" to sign articles in Libre~ propoL It is nnw quite diflicult to find issues of Librcs propos, journal d'Afain; in fact, a complete 5eries can only bt.: flmnd in a fi:-w French libraries. The first issue appl'ared on April 9, 1921, printed by the "lmprimcrie cooperative 'I a laborieme',"

]88

"Anniver5aires. l''r juillet nais~ance de Lcibniz," Libres propo> (July 20, 1927),

p. 185. l:xtracts from Leibniz\ works, !(Jilowed hy the mention "communicated

by G.C." "De Ia Vulgarhation philo~ophiquc. Une Edition du Discours de Ia mt-thode," l.ibres propoi (july 19, 1927), pp. 200-201.

A

VITAL

CR~TICAL

RAT'ONALIST

Revie\\ of Descarte5's "mutilated text" l'dited by P,lU] Lemaire (Paris:

C. G. Rl'rnarcl [pseud.J, "Commentaires t't document~- Adre'>V' ,] Ia Liglll' dl'' droits de \'hommc," Librcs propo~ (Feb. 20, 1929), pp. /.s-79.

Haticr, 1927). C.G. Heman! [pseud.J, "La Logique de~ jugcmt:nt~ de valeur," Uhre~ propos

C. G. Bernard [pseud.J, "F.~~aio;. Esquisse d\mr politi(jUl' de f'aix. Pn~ambule," I ihres propa> (March 20, 1929), pp. 135-38.

(Aug. 20, 1927), pp. 24.S-5l.

"l e Sourire de Platon," l:urope 20 (1929), pp. 12Y--HL

Review of E. Goblot, -lraitC tic logiquc (Parb: Collin, 1Y27). "E~~ais-

BIBLIOGRAPHY

A Ia Manil·re de ...• " I ihrc~ propos (Oct. 20. 1927). pp. 34_)-45.

/\ pa~tidw of the work of Voltaire, whose name is facetiously used to

Review of Alain, On/C chapitrcs sur Pia ton ( 1928). rhe tide of the review is taken from Alain\ Sourcnirs wr Jules l.o9ncau, where he had written, "we

the text. An appcnckd note reveals the real authors to be Canguilhem

forget the ~mile of Plato." Jules l.agneau, who remaim a ~ymhol oft he self

and Sylvain Rrou~saudier, a fellow slUdent at the Ecole Normale. Most of

abnegation, devotion to philmophy and high moral ~tandard~ maintJ.ined b~

~ign

tht· Ecole\

~orne profe~sors of the early Third Republic, had been Alain's philmophy

director, Cmtan:: Lmson, and his reactions to the antimilitarist content of

teacher at the lycl·e. !'hat same year, Canguilhem reviewed the posthumom

the text is published in Sirinelli, pp. 324-25. The

pa~tiche mock~

publi( ation of ~orne of LagneJ.u 's lectun·s (see below, two entries down).

the revm·. "Montagne~

et frontitTes." I ihrn propo~ (Nov. 20, 1927), pp. 401-402.

Emile Routroux, [)es V(;ritCs Cternelles chC/ Descartes, Tht-se latine traduite par M. Georges Canguilhem, l·ll·w de ITcolc Normale SuplTit:ure. PrdJ.ce de

M. Uon Brunsdwicg, de l'lmtitut (Paris: I ibrairil' Fdix A Iran, 1927). A french translation oflmile Boutroux's 1874 Latin doctoral dissertation. A new edition was published in !985. The 1927 edition include~ a ~tudy

by I {•on Rrunschvicg on Routroux\ philosophy, "La Philosophic

d'Emile Boutroux,"

~\hich i~

not included in the 1985 edition; it cJ.n, how-

ever, be found in LCon 13runscln-icg, Ecrits philosophitfUI'S (Paris: Pre~ses Univnsitaire~

"Maxime Leroy,

Dcswrtc~

lc philosophc au mmquc," f:urope 21 (1929), pp. 112-56.

Revie\\'. "Cl·ll·bres le<;,·(ms (k Jules Lagne.lu. Nimes, La Laborieu~(', 1lJ28," Uhrcs propo1 (April 20, 1929), pp. 190-Yl. Review. "[a Hn d'une parade philo~ophique. Le lkrgsoni~me, ~om le pseudonyme 1-ran<:,·ois Arouet. Pari~. Ed. 'Les Re\·ues'," fibres propm (April 20, 1Y29), pp. 191-91. Review. rhe reJ.I name of the .1uthor of this attack on Henri Bergym \\'a~ George~ Poliuer, d communi~t philmopher \\ ho became a soldier in

de hance, 1954), vol. 2, pp. 211-31.

the re-,istance J.nd \\dS executed bv the

:'\!a;ri~

in !942.

"l'rl·jugl·-, et jugenwnt," l.ihrn propos (Junl' 20, 1929), p. 291.

1928

"Circulaire adrnsl·e aux membres de ]'Association lde Secours au;.: Anciens Canguilhem spent lhis l'ntir~..: year in the J.rmy as pJ.rl of his eighteen-month

Fl&ves de ]'Ecole normale supCrieure]," I ihrn propos (July 20, 1929),

military service. I k is not known to haw publi~hcd anything during this period.

pp. 126-_-Hl. CJ.nguilhem i~ one ol the twt'l\'l' :-.ignatorie~ of this circular (including Alain, Romain Rolland, Georges Bl·nl•J_(•, Raymond A ron and ~dicien

1929

Challaye, who ~eem~ to have been tlw writn) protc~ting ,lgainst the presiCanguillwm completed his milit,1f)' ~en·ice in April 1929; resuming his use of the

dent of the A~~ociation, the mathematician Emile Picard. :\t the annual

p~eudonym

ml'eting ol the ;\~~ocidtion, in January, he had condemned tht· eighty-

"C.C. Rcrmnl," he :-.tarted to publish again before being

releJ.~ed.

l9'

A

VITAL

RATIONAL

ST

BIBLIOGRAPHY

three Ecl1le t'>:ormalc student~ who in November 1918 had signo:-d a protest

In this favorablt• review of Rt•nda's bouk, Cmgui!hem, when discussing

against the mandatory officer pn~paratory training ("preparation militaire

the que5tion of re~ponsibility during Vv'orld y.,.'ar [, wrote that the author

supCrieure''). The letter was followed by a "Decl:uJtion" signed by 270

had not sufficiently empha\in·d that tho~c \\ ho have ~inned lc~s agJ.in~t

Ecole .~ormak. including, bt>y<..nd tht· t\._·eJve ~ignatnrics of

''ctt:tnJI" (reJ.vm) are more common among the pl'ople thJn J.mong tht•

the circular, Jt•an Cavaillt-s and Paul Ni;.an. Picard resigned at tht" end of

learned ("clercs"). Thi5 ~tatenwnt proved to he quite controvcr~ial; ~ee

the year (see Sirinelli, GCnrfration intellccruelle, pp- 492-93 and 518-19).

helm\·,

alumni of

th\'

"Ci\ilitt'> p1u~rile et honnt':te," l1brCS propos (Aug. 20, 1929), pp. 392-93. '':\ Ia Gloire d'Hippocrate, p<-re du tempCrJ.ment," Ubw; propos (Aug. 20. 1929), pp. 297-98.

1929).

down.

"Fumen des e\amen.,- I.e

pp.

Racc.:~l.wrCat,"

Ld•rc> propor (F<"h. 20. !9Hl},

H~-90.

pp. 137-41. RcviC\\ ofAndrt· Rridoux, Souvenirs de lt1 m,mon des morts (I yon: "I.e Van."

"Eioge de Philipp Snowden, par un Fran<;:
pp. 434-ll.

1929), and rv1aurice Constantin-Weyer, P.C. de compagnJc (Paris: Rieder, [9 ~0). Hridoux hJ.d been a studl"nt of Alain.

C.G.lkrnard [r-~eud.j, "Ver .. ai!!n-1919, p.:trfrit'dnich Nm\.Jk, Rieder. 1928,"

l.1brcs propos (Oct. 20, 1929), pp. 496-97. Review.

"24 avril. Naissance de Kant (l7.!4),"l.ibrcs

propel). (1\pril 20, 19 HI). pp. IOY-7(1.

Fxtracts fi·om Immanuel Kant's "Anthropology," follmwd by the nwntion 'Tragmt~nts n'Cueillis par G.C."

"Rt-11\'"Xions ~ur une crist• mini,tl·ricllc," L1brcs propo> {Nov. :?0, 1929), pp- 530-32. fkcembre. Mort de RJ.yle,

~ix cntrie~

"Tl·moins- Deux tl·rnoignages d'officiers," Libres propo' (March 20, 19 Hl),

Review of Allen by. Onenwtion des ldt'rs med,cales (Paris: Au Sans Pareil,

".!1:(

CRITICAL

j_

Rotterdam (1706)," Libres propos (Dt·c. 20,

1929), p. 573.

''h:;}tnl·n


namens. La

l>i~~t·rtation

philmophique au hacc,llaun'•af ( juilh-t

et oct<Jbre 1929)," /ibrc>propo\ (April20, J"-)30), pp. 17<J-Hl.

"Line Conception ren'nte du ~{'ntiment religieux et du ~acre." 1-uropc 24 (1930).

Extract from Pierre Ravlc\ PensCcs divcrses 0 l'.ncaswn de /o lomCte, t(JIIowl'd h~ the mention "communiuted b) G.C." "Thdtre. Le Cr<~ml Voyage, piece de Sheriff (traduite J(• I'anglais) J.U l'hi-Stre EdouJ.rd VII," l.ibrcs propos (Dec. 20, 1'::1~9), p. 660.

pp. 288-92.

kc' iew of R. ( hto, I.e Sdc'rt;, l'e/Cment non-rationncl dom /'ic{Ce du dil'!ll et sa rclatwn avec h· rotionncl (Paris: Payot, 19 29 ).

\Vith ,'v\ichel Alexandre, "La TrJ.hi~on des clerc~ --- .\utour de RPmain Rolland," l d)(('_\ propos ( .-\prif 20. 19 30 J, pp. l:-!8-9:?.

1930

A rt'spome tn Julien BemiJ.\ intcrprctJ.tion of a statement madl' by Canguilhem in hi, review of l.o Fin de l'Ctcrncl (see aboYe, \ix l'ntries up), in

With Georges Kt-m•t(•, "Divcnissement philo\ophiquc. Discussion ~ur h- temps scion Kant," { ibres propos (jJ.n. 20,

J':) ~0

). pp. 41-+ 3.

An exchunge in two parts, the fir~t ~igncd by CJ.nguilhem (pp- 41-42), the second by Rl:nl:tC (pp. +2-43). "La hn de l't~tenwl. par Julien Benda, NRF, lY29," Ldw> propos (Jan. 20, [930),

pp. 44-45.

a n·c\'nt issue of t!w periodic,,] I ~

J

lt"tter to Juli('n Renda, 'iigned by Canguilhem and ,\tichel Ale"Xandn·

(for whom, see the first t•ntry under ]927) tr> vindicate K.omain Rolland\ antinatir>nalist attitudl' during World \Var !. Rnlland\ p<~citist viC\\'~

Vl'l'Tl'

<.:lo~e to thme ot' A!J.in and hi~ diKiplc~ at the tune.

"Autour de Romain·R(J]]J.nd - l ettrt· aclre~s(T

j_

Julien Benda p.1r c;_ Canguilh,_.m

A

VITAl

RATIONALIST

CI-!ITICAL

BIBLIOGRAPHY

"ProiCtariat, mati:riali~me ct culture," Librcs propos (Dec. 19 W), pp. 5H4-H7.

ct J\·1. Aln.andrc," l:un1pc 23 (1930), pp. 302-304. Reprint hom the preceding titlt· published in l.ihrcs prop01. furopc. a

Ht·new of EmmantH·l Rerl, .Horr de /o morolc bourgeoise (Pari~: Callimard,

pniudic,11 ,,-ith clear cnmmitnwnt' to the Ld.t, \\',lS fllurHkd h\' Romain

J'-H(J), and "Rl·mcatinm," pub)i,hed in Europe. October 15, !9)1). rhc end

Rolland in 1()2 ).

of the J.rticle is marhd '\1 suivre''; the sequel w,b publi~lwd in fanuary 19 )[

'Txamen de\ exanwns. Le Baccalaur0at," l ibrn propm {May 19 30 ), pp. 2 3H-41.

(~ce

below, first entry under !931).

/)i>cours pmnomC par G. Crm,,lui!hcm, owCw· de 1'/Jnin'flllt:, f'ro{csscur de ph1lo10ph)(•, Q

fa ,h;tnbution des pril du !rdc ,Jc Chorlc~dlc, I~· lltuillct 1930 {Charlcville:

typographic el lithogr,lphie P. Anciaux, !930). A vcr~ rare cight-pag:e publication, by the lych·. with an "official" title

(Jnguilhem had arrangl'd a leave from tt·aching during the academic ~·cdr 19 31-

page bc,1rint! the in'l ription "Ville de Ch,ulevillt·, I \Tt't' Chan!\, Acadt-rnic

3.:>. A\ \-lichel

de Lillc.'' It is the text nl the addrc~~ given by CangltillH'm, the nc,vcomer

assun1ed rt"ipon\ibility I;H nliting I ih"-'1 prop01· (~ee Andrl· Sernin, .-1/mn: Un Sa,qc

on the teaching staff of the lydT, at the dosing cercmonie5 for the academic

dans lo citC [ P.uis: Robert Laffont, !98.5], p. 29H).

,\]~·x,wdrc

\l'a\

qw•rwhdnwd b~- hi~ te.Khing dutic~. Canguilhcm

year, arrt·ndcd by gr<~du.uing student-., their parents, the prefect ,md other local not,lbilitie~. The addn·,, ha~ h....:....:n characteri1ed by )irinr!li {<;CnCrution intcl!cctuclle, p. 595 n.IO) as "a modd of di~crcct impntirwncc" (impcrlincnce feulrric). Canguillwm had been appointed prnfcssor at the lycl·e of

Charkville ahcr hi-. militJr~· ~en· icc; he ~tayed then· until Fall 1~30, when he was app<1inted to tlw l:ci-c ofAlhi.

(Jan. 19 3 l ), pp. 40-4 3. P.1rt

"L.1 Cucuc

d

two of the articll· publi~hld in I ihrcs prope~. ])ecember 1930. !a p.1ix.!

t'

Di.sco11rs
,H.f

,\1arl·chal P(·tain," libn•;

propm (Feb. !93!), pp. 93-94.

"[)eux histoirn d'h~rCsie- Pensl·e5liminain·~." fibre_\ propos (June !930),

"Deux explications philmophiquc' de Ia gunre: Alain <'t ()uintnn," I ihrn propos (reb. 1Y~1). pp. 9S-9S.

pp. 272-73. A dd"-'!IS"-' of two lycl·e protl·s\m~. Armand L'u~illicr and Jclici{'ll Ch<~l­

Signed "C.C." .\ compari~on of Alain, Han o~u lo ,qucrrc JUt]";c ( l',lfi~: Cal-

under attack. for expre~sing anticolonia[i,t and antimilitarist

limard, 1921) and Rent· Quinton, Jf,1~imcs sur /o ifUcrrc (Pari~: (;rasset, 19)0).

opiniom; f(Jl!owed by the presentation ofdocum(•nt'> by Michel Alexamlre

"DCsarmcment - Un Disc our' de tra\'ailli~te," I ihrrs propos ( .l\-1arch 19 31 ),

layc, whd

and RenL·

\\'tTl'

~lJuhlanc

pp. 12H-.?9.

(pp. :?73-81).

"De ]'Introspection," /ibrcspropm (Nov. 1930), pp. 512-23.

F
A review of Luigi l'iran
in the A\5ctnbl0e natinnale by I (·on Blum, with a final paragr.1ph ol commentary

1930).

"t·och et Clt•mt'llCt:'au ou Ia morl en phra~es," l1br~·s fJropos (t'\nv. 1'JH)),

~igned

"C.C."

With .~lidH·l Al('xandrt', "R\·vision de\ trait(·~- l'euple

\.111\

I(Ji ni loi,'' I ihrc\

pmpos(t\pril!93l), pp. 1H2-HL

pp.Sl4-l5. Re\'iC\\' of Raymond Rccouly, :Himoriol de f-o£h (Pari~: Lc\ Edition~ de rrarKt·. 19_:>9) ..md Ct·orJ~C~ CIL-rnenceau. Crondwn cr mi~rhn d'u!lc

l'!dO!fe

"Deux livr('~ d{' Jean-Rich,ud Rloch," I J/•rr<; pmpM ( :\pril 19 3[ ), pp. J94-LJ6. Rnin\ ofJe.:m-Hich.ml Bloch'.; f}:wn ,/u thc;,itrc (Pari~: ( :allim,ml, j Y30 J and Dr'il1n de> siCcb ( f'.1ris: Rieder. [9) 1).

(Pari': Pion, IY30).

~94

A

VITAL

CRITICAl

RATIONALIST

"['AffJ.irt· Dreyfus et Ia troi~it•mt• n'publique par C. Ch,m·nsol," Librn prtlfhlS

"/-rJ.nce·AmCriqlH'- ~wr le Voyage de laq[," l_ibft•s propos (Nov. !'-I H), pp. 519-20. Signed "G.C."

(Aprill931), p. 197. A hridnote on the book, ~igned "C.C.," published under this title

"Sodologie- Lt·~ Came~ du suicide," Lihrc~ propos (Nov. 1931 ), pp. 525-30. Review of Maurice Halhwach~. Lcs Causes du suicide (Paris: Alcan, 1930).

(Paris: Kra, !93!). "Documents

d

BIBLIOGRAPHY

jugemenb. Contr{· Ia caporalisation des intellectuels- Une Pro-

testatinn de Norma liens,"

/1hrc~

"Dl·fense du citoyen- [a Presse, le dCsarmement ct ll' conflit ~ino-japonais,"

l1hrnpropos(OcL. 1931), pp. 567-72.

propos (July lq 31). pp. 324-25.

New regulations h.Hl bl'en enacted at the Ecole Normale

Signed "(;.l-."

~upC:·rit·un· ~pt·­

cifically lilrbidding collcC!iH: action by students without prior authnri;a-

"Critiqut· et philo~ophil': Sur le Problf-me de Ia crCation," I ihm propos {Dec.

tion by its director, and threatening disciplinary action against ~tudcnt~ \'.·ho

1911), pp. 583-88. Review of Pierre Abraham, Criaturc\· cha Balzac (Paris: Callimard, 19 31 ).

refused to comply fully with the mandatory military training. Twenty·two alumni of the Ecole (including Canguilhem. Ninn, Romain Rolland .1nd ~ann·)

had ..,\gnul thi'> protest,


had four students still at tht' ElDie, among

1932

them ~imnnt• Wei I. also a di~ciplc of Alain. This text was also published in L'UnivcrsitC ~vndicalistc in June 19 31.

"!

"Amlr 1914. AoUt 1931. Reveries rre~ positives du cit(·~·en mnbilisable," Librcs

l'{'!urc~.

Re\·iew.

propos(!\ug.l931),pp. 357-5H. "L'fntcrn(ltlondk SdtJH!antc dc5 armcmcnt>, par 0. l<.'hntJnn Rti'i~buld (I'Eg)an-

"\.J. Pai x -.am n.:·wrw? (lui," I il-om propos ( h:b. !9 32 ), pp. YY-\04.

tine, Bruxelles, 19 30 ), " I ihre.1 propos (Sept. 19 ~I). pp. 415-16.

In Novembn 1931, the pacifist 1-'li-[icien Challaye had

Revit'w, f(JI!owcd by an C'l\tract from the book, p. 417.

A puagraph of introdliLtion by CJnguilh<·m and Michel Alexandre t<)

d

collection of documents on French-German naval rivalry, pp. 462-h 7.

f_!brc_r;

propo~

critique of Canguilhem 's review of 0. Lehmann Rf1ssbuld's book (Lib res

page~

93-()4_ In his article, Can!!uilhf'm

~ides

with

Challa~e,

as does a

this {'Oillroversy, ~t·e below, two entries down.) "Documents. Franet'- Les lntellectuels n lc dl·~armement," L1br6 propos (April

Discussion of a letter of Jean Cuelwnno publi~hed under the same title

"Elections anglaise~." Ubrcs rropos (No\'. 19 31 ), pp. 510-ll.

in Luropc, March 15, 1932. Signed "C.C"

Signed "G.C."

Review.

litk "LJ. Pai" ~am resen·c? Non." Ruyssen's lext is summMi;cd in thi~ i~~ue on

lY\2), pp. 201-203.

prnpm, St•pt. !911).

(l\'ov.]CJq),pp.514-16.

lihrcs propo> ~ummarized in January 1'-JU (pp. 36-37). Theodore K.uyssen,

following article ~igned Jean Ll· Mataf ( pp. \04-\09 ). {For further events in

(Oct. 1931), p. 483.

A brief 5tatement by Canguilhem, in re~ponst• to George~ Demartial's

"lncntitude~ allemandes, par Pierre Vil-not. Librairic Valois, 1931,"

an ar-

though himself a fl.lcifist, had published J. critiqu{' of Chal!.1ye under the

franco·alkmand'," Ubrcs prop<))' {Oct. 1931), p. 462.

de~ ruade~."

publi~hed

ticll' entitled "La Paix sans rCserve" in tht· journal ra Paix pur lc droit, which

\Vith ,rv\ichel Alexandre," 'lJCsarmement,' sCrie de tex(es sur le 'probli:>me naval

"l_e Coin

fkcadcnec de Ia nation fi'anyaist'- Le Cancer aml"ricain, par Aron

et Dandieu (Rieder, 19 31 ), " l.1hrcs prop('.<: (Jan. 19 32 ), pp. 42-44.

Libres propo~

"Sans plu~ dl' rC~ervc qu'auparavant," Ubrcs propOl {April 19 32 ), pp. 210-1 1. Canguilhem's an~\\er to Ruys~t'n. following the r('ply (_of the latter (pp. 207-10 ot thi~ i~'tl<', ('ntitled "I a l'aix. oui. ,\\ais par \c dmit") ttl Canguil-

197

A

Vll.<\L

RATIONALIST

CRITICAL

hem\ article "La l'ai:.. ~an~ r\·~~·rw? (lui" {sec above, (\\o entrie~ up). \V1rh Michel Alexandre. "1\\l'nl.l)irl· primitiH·," Ltl>res propos (i\\ay IY32), pp.

l.ibrc>propm(,\1a~

.'\u:orJing to Sirinelli ( c;l;tll;rruinn ITJtc·llc•<.tucllc, p. 596 n.1 3 ), this ccxr im ludn Canguilhem's contributinn to the COII!ru\'t·rsy puhli~hnl in /1brn

ment~

19H), pp. 259-61.

"I 'AgrCgation de philmophie," Hhhodc. Rcrue dt• l'emei,qnemcnl phi/osophicJUC 1

Hithodc had recently !wen !()undcd by Georges

Bl-n~:·;t-

(ltUH!-Iq78), an

londc·

ahow, ~econd entry under

Raymond Aron published a comment critical of thi\ booklet in I 1hrn this, ~et.• :'\ron's .Himoires [Pa~i~: Julliml, IYH l J, pp. 56-58). for Canguilhcm \ rt•action~ to

i\<.ue. Canguilhcm's friends Jean ll~·ppolite and Ra~nHlnd . '\ron <~I<.!J \igned
{~ee

flU

prop()\ (Frb. 1933, pp. 96-99), disseming hom Canguilhem's viewpoint (nn

1932), pp. 17-21.

u!dcr disciple ofAlain. The jourrul di~.1ppeared in June IY 11, after it.~ ~ixth

r>l the

du retus de toute guerrc natinnalt·"

ripo~te.

!932). and a conclusion, "f-inale en sept point~."

Signed "G.C."

(~hy

OGRAPHY

prop•'\ in February 1932, under the new title "Seconde

2'l6-1K.

"Flt-ctions 1932,"

BIEJL

of Descane,, Kant, liege!, Comte and Niett\che h·om tht"

Ar<.1n\ ~·ritiquc, ~tT bclnw, I~Junh t"ntr_v under [')3 ).

,-\ron, whf) had been introduced

I<)

..-\lain by Canguilhem "ht'n tlw~ \\'en·

felln\\ ~nulent~ at the !:cole Norm,lk, puhli~hed \t'\'cral article~ in l1hrn

propos. Canguilhem and A ron were t(l hi'

required author\, nemplifin the concerns of the journal's collaborator~.

,1t

C.tnguilhcm published thrt•e times in .Hithodc.

addres~ ~kt·tching

cnlkague~ in Toulouse and, lah·r,

the Snrbonne. Cangui!ht"m was present at A ron's obsequies and gave an his career (see I.e .ilowlc·, (kt. 21, [98 ~).

"A\.un, Propos wr /'Cducotion (Pari\: Rit•der, 1932 )," Fumpc ) I ( 19 i2 ), pp. HlO- WI.

1911

Review. "Autmrr de Lucien I krr." I ihrc5 propos (Sept. 19 n

),

Review of lucien llerr, Choi\' d'L;criH, 2 \·oh. Chark~

pp. 4 76-7<.:J. (P.ui~: Ril'dn,

1932), and

Andler, Vic de l.ut It'll l1crr (Paris: Kieder, 19 3 2 ). Lucicn I krr ( 1864-

1927) had for decades been the librarian of the !:cole Normale Supl-rieure and an inl1uential intellectual

ach-i~er

to it5

student~.

as well as an

un~uc­

\\·a~

Cmguillwm

appointed to the l)c(·c nf Dou.1i for tlw academic year )') ~.?-' 3,

following tlw pniod of leave he had taken to manage Ubrci propos. In tlw fall

or 1913, he \~a~ sent to Valcncicnne~. where he remained for the next demic

!WI)

aca-

\Tar~.

ces,fid proponent of Hegel in France. Canguilhem published a brief per~
[Comnwnt~ on] :\min', )
ofLucienlleiT in ]<..)77.

"Lin lin~..: .~colaire ... en Allerndgnc," I ilwi propos (Oct. 19 32 ), pp. 5 38-3<..), Rl·vi~·\\' ol

a Tl'.1dcr n!

~lain', work\

tran,latcd into Cnman: /.me .iul".rtJhl

O!H Icincn li(·rkcn 111r [injMuunn!n scin llcnkcn, ed. Juliu~ Schmidt (Berlin:

\\lhtcrmann, 1932).

ing thi\ dnicl~·. 1/,;thorlc. Rcruc de f'cn~o.qn~·nk'tlt phi/osophiquc (Jdn. [Y l ~I. PI'· 10-1\. "R. I(' \enm·, I.e /)emir (A lean, 19 H1). \kthodc. RCI'l/C de /'cnsel,qncmcnt rhllowph!tJUC(IL·b. 1933), pp. 25-27.

/.u Pan mm aucunc riscrvc, Thl·~c dt· Fl·licicn Challayc. ~uivic d'unt· di\UJS\ion

Rl'\

it'\\.

Canguilhem et Jean

''Sur Unl· lntnpr(·tation de l'hi~toire," I ihrn prop01 (.\hn h 19 3 3), pp. 155-)6.

l.c-.l'v1ataf, et des tcxtes de Bertrand Russell et d'Alain sur "La waie et Ia

A critiqut• of an article hy Jacque~ Cranuch,Hrd published in /.J!Jrn rror•l\

entre Tht;odore Ruy\scn, Ft;licicn Challayc,

Ccorgc~

f(JI[c Rl·\i\tancc," Document~ d~..:~ 'Libres Propo~' Cahier no. 1 (!\lime\:

of NoH·mh..:r 1932. Ganuchaud\ n:pl: appcal<"d in the next is.\tll' nt I d>rc·,·

lmprinll'ric La Labnrieu~e. 19 31 ).

f'ropo~.

I'P· 2JY-2t1.

A

VITAL

RATIONALIST

C fll TICAL

"Fssais. Pacilisme et revolution," Libres propos (March 1'7 3 3 ), pp. 1S7-59 ·

81 B L lOG RAP H Y

1935

A reply to Raymond Aron's critiC]Ue, published in the previom issue of

[)uring the academic year~ 1933-35, Canguilhem taught at the lyci'e nfValen-

Librc> propm (see above, final entry under 1932 ). "Mode~te llerrint vu par lui-mCme (et commentt)," L1hrcs rropo-' (April 1933),

cienne~. He \vas appointt·d to Ri'zit'rs lOr the academic year !935-3h.

pp. 217-19. Signed "(;.C." A critiqut: of an article published by Edouanlllerriot in the ne\npaper { e fJCmocrote of Lyon on April [ 5, \Y3 3. "[k l'Objt•nion (h: conscience (~tw

a Ia conscit·nce de

!'objection," Libre.<; propos

Rel"it•w. Fxtract' from thi~ wvie\1 were reprinted in

tht·

8ullclln de

/'.4 >Sociati,m Je.; <1mi1· d'AI01n 2() ( Dt•t. 1964 ), pp. 31-32. ComitC de Vigilance de~ lntclkctuds Anti-fasci~te), f.e f-asostlk'

19ll). pp. 272-75.

A cri(ique of the administrative circular ~igned by Ministt•r Camille Chautemp~

"/\lain, les Du·uy (Nrl. I':) H)," l::uropc 37 (1935), pp. 44S-4R.

Cl

lc1 ponon~

(Paris, 1935).

against the emergence oftht: conscientious objector movement.

Canguilhem was th~· anonymom author of this sixty-two-page document,

"Sur Ia Philosophie contemporaine- H. Serouya, Initiation d Ia philosophic con-

printed in Cahors. Tht' Com itt> de Vigilance des lntellectucls Anti-Ll~Ci)tes

J.

Benrubi, L·~ Sources ct les courants de

was crt'ated in response to the ~cbruary 19_~4 riots in Paris and the threat

lo philmophic contemporaine en Frame (Alcan)," furore B (193 J), pp. 451-53.

offascbm, and it remaint'd in t'Xi)tence up to the war. Its leader~ wne the

temporaine (La Renaissance du Livre),

t·thnologi~t Paul RivPt, 1\-ho chaired the committee, the ph~~icist Paul

Rev in\-.

Langevin and Alain. During tht·~e ~--ears, Alain was often ill and Ulhlhle tn

1934

attt'nd ~ume meeting~; Canguil\wm's ti'iend Michel Alexandre wondd wh~titute t~lr him on tht'~t-' o<.t-J'>ion'> (st·t' Jeanne Alnandre, .:d., fn .\ouvcn1r

"Dt:U\ lltHLvcaux lines franyais sur les origine~ de Ia gut'rrc" Libres propos (Jan.

19 H), pp. 40-44.

de .Hichel AlcwnJrc: lc•t;om, tc\tcs, lcttn·s [Paris: Mercur.__• de

~·r,mct•, llJShJ.

p. 520). Thus, Canguilhem himself was Cjllite clo'>e to the ,Ktion ot the

R...:vit'\\' of Camille Rloch, In Causes de Ia tJllarc mondialc (Paris: Hart-

committee. The b(wl..lct ha., three part'>: "Proposals fix an Agricultural

mann, 1933), and Jules Isaac, 1914- Lc Prob/Cmc dn orif!inc~ de Ia guerrc

Policy," a two-part appendix comisting of the results of a surv<.:y on the

{Paris: Hieder, 1933).

"agricultural crisis," and "Notes on Agriculture in ~ascist Italy and (;er-

"Jean-Richard Bloch, Of{rande d Ia politiquc (Co!\. Europt', Rieder, 19 3 3 )," I ibres propos (Jan. 19 34 ), pp. 52-53.

many," which dealt \\ith the comequences of lasci~t totalit.ui,mism in rural areas.

Rn it'w, signed "G.C." "\1(-ruisme uni\er~it,liJT," Lihrn propos (March 1914 ), pp. 1-1-4-45 ·

1936

rhi~ i.., the !a)t article Canguillwrn wrote fw L1brn prnpvs. Though he

would remain pt'r~onally close to Alain until the L1ner\ death, Canguilhem

Canguilhem wa~ appoint<·d to Tqu]ou'>e

bt•g,m
beginning in October 19 36. 1\c kl·pt thi~ teaching position until the IH:gimJirLg

that "tlnl' could not negotiate wi(h Hidt•r" (o.,ec Sirinelli, GCniration intel-

of tht' Vichy regime, and began his medical studies while teaching.

lcctuclfc, pp. S97-98).


professor ol the

doH•'

de kh'ifinC.

A

"P.-M. Sl huh], h.wi

VITAL

CR'l

PATIQNfd_IST

lu fimnoti(ln ,_/cIa pcm(;(' wee que (A lean, 19 )4 ),''I uropc

HI(

BIGL

,-_,(.RAt'HY

wnc then p
40 (1936), pp. 426-2H.

~~~kL

\\"l'JT

m·,er

puhli~ht·,[.

Rc\iew.

1940-1942

''Raymond A ron, /.a ;.,ooologic ollemunde contcmporoine (Akan, 1935)," I uropc 40(1936). pp. 573-74.

In rhc Ia\! of 1940. Canguilhem took leave from his ll'dching at the lyciT of

Review.

[(m!nu~e.

refusing

reginw. 1-k

1937

Ul

wrote tn

te,Kh in the reaction.u~· context imposed b~· the Vichy

the

HTtor

ol rhe .-\c
come an awCaC de philo~ophic to reach 'L
"lJe~cartl:~

l't

Ia technique," in Trcn-,wx du L\'" Congn's international de phi/(hophie

(Con,l{rt's Dcscclrtcs),

IOtnl·

of the \'ichy gowrnment). lie then dedicated him~elf tu hi~ mediol studir.~. !ZJ:·mond Aron, who .1ho "a~ in Toulnu'l' Jt tht· time, ''roll' ol Cmguillwm

\l (Pari~: lh-nn.mn, 19 37). pp. 77-SS.

Canguilhem\ first conference papn, reprinted in Cohicn STS 7 (l':::IHJ),

then: "Some, like my friend C
pp. 87-9 ); included in thi~ reader.

which was gloriou~ ~in the rc~istann·" (MCmoirc\ [P.lri~: Julliard, l9H3l,

p. ltA). ln Fduuary [941, Je
1938

ver~it:·

":\cti\ it~ technique t._·l n···.1tion." in Commvnic·utiorH c1

di\UIHi(l/!5,

Sncil·u:·

toulou~ainr de philf)~ophic (Ye.u~ 19 37 and 1':138), 2nd ~t·rics, pp. RJ-H6.

of Strashourg (then at Clnmont-h·rrand in .-\uvt'rgne),

thl" \or bonne in Pari.~; ht· convincc.:d CangJ,ri!lwm

to

,H

\\-a~

the Uniq\Jed to

rcpl.ll't' him in Clcrnwnt-

J·err
the mening of the Snciet(· on February 26, 193!-\. A

d'Aqin de l
/(Jotm•te by C.mg:uillwm ( p . .'l(l) indiCJ.tl"\ that di~cu~~i
tann: movement, I lf,,_;rocion, in lq--1-1 (v·e Sirindli, c;cm:w/1'-'n intcl!caucllc, p. )9i.J:

A paper given

ing importance

.lt

or biol(lgy and 'socioloffl<'

rcchnolo,tJiq(Jc' hlr philn~ophy"

has bl't'n omitted from thi~ printed ver~ion. Followed h)· a discussion on

Ci\le~ I tvy and 1-ran(,iOi~ Conh-r .. -1 nous, .IIIVL'r,(Jne.l f_o kritC sur lu rnwon((' en

AurcrHne 19-10-N-I.f (Par·is:

Pre~~es

de l
pagt._·s S6-S9.

1942 1939 "CertifiCJ.t de philo~ophil- g(>n(·ralc· \\lith C.m1illt" Planet, /rmtf de f,,,!Jique ct de morolc (l\·1ar~t·ille: lmprinwrie F. Robert et fih, 19 39). This texthoqk ha~ hccotn(· l''l:trcmcl) rliHkult to find; the Bib\iothCqut• nationak in P.1ri~ h.1~ one cop~-- Pbnet ,,-a~ teaching at dll' lycb· ol ,l\1ar~l'ille while Canguilhem wa~ at the lyd'l' of l<wlou~e. Two nther textbook~ h) the

\,lflH'

, tln p~ychnlng\ and andwtic~ ~ th1.· or her subjt"ct.;; that

l't

de logiquc. lndic,ltion~ bihliographiC]Ues,"

BulfcTJ/l de Ia rot ulcd dco; Lc/IJCI de St[(/Sl'PIIftJ 20. 3 ( 194 2 ), PP· 110-12. A bibliography (for students preparing the Certij)cut
by

C.n·,,illl·s in the Bulletin tlw prnwu~ yt·ar. "Commentairc au troisil·mc chapitrc de l.'l:volution C[(!utricc," Bul!ctm de Ia h/(ultC

d('l lctlrndcStrdlhourg 21 (l'l--12), pp. 1211---1-) and 19Y-~14.

40J

A

VITA\

RATIO~JALIST

CRITICAL

Can~ui!ht'm explains in a iOotnote that this article on Bergson's book

BIBLIOGRAPHY

in lhe directorate of the Unified Resistance 1\lowment~ (set· I

wa~ puh!islwd to help students prepare the program for the asrC9ation de

(·\y

an(] Cordet,

A nous, Auverflnc!, pp. 140-97).

ph 1ftmJphic for 194 3, and that it wa~ based on his lectures at the University

In June 1944, Canguilhem participated in one oft he major batt It'~ between the resistance and the German forces, at 1\.lont Mouchet. in thc· mountaim of

ofStrJsbourg. in Clermont- Ferrand, in 1942.

1\uvergnc, south of Clermont-j-:crrand; he operated a field ho,pital and organin·d its evacuation under fire (~ce Henry lngrand, La l.ibmll!on de /'Auvcr!lnc

1943

[Paris: llachette, 1974], pp. 97-102). One ofhi5 colleagues in these heroic acts wa_\ Dr. Paul Reis5 of the facultt'- dl' Mt·decine at Strasbourg, who was killed

Essoi sur quelques prob/Jmes concernant le normal cl le pathologiquc, Publications de

Ia FacultC des Lcttres de l'U niversitC de Stra~bourg, Fascicule 100. Clermont-

hy the Nazis. During th(' summer, Canguilhem was

nent representative of Henry lngrand, who had then become l'ornnti55aire de

Ferrand, 1mprimerie "La Montagne," 1943. Cang:uilhem'~ doctoral dissertation in medicine includes a one-pagt~ pref-

ace omitted from later editions. This hook was published again, under the 5 amt'

titk. in 19St) (Paris: Helle'> Lcttrcs), with a "PrCface de Ia deuxieme

t·dition," and m.my time~ unclt-r the title Lc ,\'annal

~ent to Vicln .as the perma-

rt

lc patholo!Jiquc from

1966 on (P.uis: Prt·~~.-~ llnivcrsit,lire~ de France). Extr.Kt~ from the ~t:C\11\d revi~ed edition of this book (1972) are in-

,. ·.~.

Ia Republique, which wa5 re5ponsible for the admini~tration .:tnd ~ccurity of the entia· region. According to lngrand, Canguilhem fulfilkd "de!ic.:tte .and 'till dangerous functions" (ibid., p. 149). Canguilht•m received lill' Military Cro~~ .md thl.' Ml·dailk dt• \,1 Rt-sist.HlC<' in 194-4.

:\t the end of the war, he was otfered the p(J'lition of in'•pt'Ctcur g~·nt··r,ll de phi\."J~nphic, r.·~pnmib\e

clwh.:d in this reader.

!PrO\ er~eeing the f]lhllit~- of tcJching in tht· lyd·e~ and

ti-Jr grading professors. lie rcjcctt·d tht• orin and rcturnt·d lo hi~ po5ition at thl' 1-"
1943-1944

1945

Un tht· morning of November 2), 1943, the Gestapo invarled the building ol the bcult.§o des l.l'ttn·" ofrhc University ofStrasbourg in Clcrmont-Ferrand; two professor~

\\Tfl'

killt'd, .1nd many student~ and profc~sors were arrested and

deported to German~· (~tT Gabriel Maugain, "La Vic de Ia FacultC de5 l.ettres de Strasbourg de \939

a 194S," J1Cmorial des

annCes IY39-J945, Publications

de Ia Facult{~ de~ l ettrcs de I'Uniwr~itf de Str.1sbourg, fascicule 103 [Paris: SociCtC d'Cdition Lcs Relics Lettres, 1947], pp. 3-50, esp. pp. 32-40: "La

ofStrJ~hourg.

"Jean Cavailli·s, Resistant," Rul/etin de Ia FuwltC de, let/rei de Strasbvur,q 22-2) (Dec. 1945), pp. 29-34. Ca\'ai!\Cs, who had been a fellow student Jt the Fcole Normale, and always a close friend, had been as~as5inated by the Na;ri' in j.111uary 1944 (~t't' (i<~briellc Fcrri&re~. jean

Cavaii/Cs, phi/osophe et wmbottont ( J
[Pari~: Pres~nllniver~itaire5 de France, 19501).

JournCe du souvenir: 25 novembre 1945," Bulletin de Ia racultC des Lettrcs de Strosbourfl 22-2 3 rJ<~n. 194)], pp. 25-31). Canguilhem escaped the .1rrest and

1946

continued hi~ auion with the underground. Under the name "LafOnt" he became an assi~tant ru lll·nr~ lngr<~nd, the leader of the resistance in Auvergne. In c<~rly 1944, Canguilht·m .a~~umed important underground political functions

"LJ Th(·orie ccllulaire en biologie. Du Sen~

ct

de Ia vakur dn thl•<Jrin ~< ien·

tiliques,'' MClaniJeS 19-15, IV. Ftudcs philowphitJU<'.\, Puhltcation:i de Ia I andre

~

I A

VITAl

CR'TICAL

RATI'JNALIST

BIBL,OGRAPHY

1949

de~ Lettrc~ de Strasbourg. l-asciculc 107 (Pari~: l.t·~ Bdles Lettrt'~. 1946),

pp. 141-75. lncl\Hkd, with rcvi~ions, in I a Conrtc~issancc de lc~

1

ic ( !952 ): ··xtracts

grandcar nCgat!I'C

from this article arc included in this rc.tder. "Gcorgn Friedmann, I cilmit

<'I

"Prd'ac<.•," in Immanuel K,mt, hw1 pour introdtnrc en philo>oph!t' lc conap1 ,/,·

SpinO/ a (Paris: Gallirnard, \946 ), " Rullctin de ld

)!Udh~,_•m),"

Re\'iew.

1940).

lramlation, introduction and note~ b~ Roger Kemp( "Prl·~ent,ltion,"

hnultJ des Lcttrn de Stroshour,q 2 5 ( 1946), pp. 4 3-47.

(P.ni~: Vrin.

in "1\brh(·matiqun d fi>rm.:~lisnw ( lnl·dit prl·wntl· p.u G. ( ,\n-

by jt:'<'.n Ca\.1ilh·'· RcnJt' lfltrrnortl'fl!!lc t/,· philosopiHc

U~ (lq4q},

p. 151'\. Posthumous publication ol
1947

papl·r~

",\tilieu et norme~ de l'homnw au travail." Cahicrs inrcrnotionau\ de (Ociologic

lrft by C
''1\egelen hancc," Rcruc d'histmrc ,•/ de philowphic

rcli.'f!CU\"C

l!\-2Y { 1941'\-4'1),

pp. 282-97.

23 (1947), pp. 120-36. An e))d~ /Cmn humc~1ns du machm11me m-

f 'I. traCtS ifom this article \H"rl'

repuhJi~he.J

in .1JU.'f1!11fll.." /i/U;rairc 1() 3

(NP\. llJ'JI), pp. lh-29.

dustricf (Pari\: CallinMrd, 1940 ). "Jean CavaillC~ (1903-1944)," in .'1-!Cmorio/ dn annCcs 19JY-!94), Publicatiom de Ia fandtl· de5 l.cttn:s de Strashomg, Fascicu!t• HH (Paris:

Lt"\

Rellt·s

Kurt Goldstein, "RemJrqtH'\ ~ur le proh!t'-nw l·pi~tl·mologiquL' de Ia hiologie,'' in CangrCs intcrno(J,lflo! de philn~·'phic dn \"(icnu·s. Pum JY-i'i. \·ol. I (Pari\:

lkrrn
Lettrn. \Y.;7), pp. \4\-)l·L

\\'ith C. Fhrnm<~nn, "Averti\\l"lllent des l·diteur~," in Jean CaYailli:~. Sur lo !.Of!icfUC ct lo thCoric de ic1 ~cicncc (Park Pres~e~ llni\'cr~itaires dt· France,

Tr,111slated fi-t'm the l:ngli\h hy Ceorgn C.1nguilhem .wd Simone CJnguilhcm.

1947). pp. ts-\iii.

19>0

Second edition, Prn~l'\ Universitaires de Frann·, 1';:160; third t"dition, Paris, Vrin. 1976; I(HJrth edition, \/rin, 1987. ".'v1auricc llalbwach5,l'homm...: et !'oem-rc," in MCmorio/ de~ annCcs /9_N-!Y45,

"F\~ai-., ~ur quelque.., prohli·me~ concnnant le nortnalct

le pathologic]lll"," l'ub-

Pub]ic,ninn~ dt• la F
licJtion~ rk la I .1eu\tt· des LetttT.., de Str.1~h11urg. fa~cicuk ll)O (2nd ed ..

Le~ Relic~

Pari5: L...:.., Relies l.t•ttre5, \9SO).

Ldtres, 1947). pp. 229-41.

"Note sur Ia situation !dite en france .1 Ia philosoph it· hiolngique," Revue de

\Vith a

Ill'\\'

"Prl·bcc de Ia ckuxii·me l·ditinn."

m,;r,lph'>"illJUl' ~~ d,· mrr(!k S~ {1947), PP· l2~-32.

1948

"Lt· nnrm.1let It• patlwlogique," in ]{L·n{· I niche, t"d., .~ommc de mCdccinc umCmguilhem had rdurned to tt·aching in '>tr.l~hourg in 1944: fi-01n ]94:-\ until \9) 5 he \\"as inspecteur gt··nl·ral dt· philmophie.

tcmporoinc {Pari~: Ln fditiom nwrltc.1ln deb l>iane li-an~·Ji\l', l'l51), n!l. l.

pp. 27-32.

I.

VITAL

CRITICAL

RATIO"JALIST

BIBLIOGRAPHY

cellulaire" (pp. 213-15), "Note sur lc~ rapports de Ia tht>orie cellulaire et

Included, "ith revi~ion:-., in La Connaiuomc de lo ric (1952).

de Ia philosophic de Lcibnit" (pp. 215-17) and

"Extrait~

du l>iscours wr

!'anatomic du ccrveau t(·nu par StCnon en 1665 .'! messieurs de I'Assembli·l'

1952

de chez monsieur ThCvcnot, 13esoins et tendom('l, Texre~ choi~is et pn~sent{·s par C...:orge~ Canguillwm (Paris:

a Paris" ( pp. 217-18 ).

The second t"dition, "rt-vi\Ce et ilugment{·e," was puhli~hed by Vrin in 1965, and ha~ ~incc hccn rt•printed many times; extr,H t~ from the fitrh t'di-

I lachett<..:, 1952).

A reader, t•dito.·d hy C.:tn~uilhem. of <:xtrdct~ taken from th<: work~ nt bi1>lngists and philo"ophcr~. which was published in the collection ''Textes et documf'nt<> philmnphitjues" under hi~ direction. fhis rnllt•rtinn includes other titll'\ edited by Gille~ Ddeutc, Jean Brun, fram·i\ Count-s, Robert

ti<..m (\9)-!Y)

art;"

included in thi., rcadn. Tht• book wJ~ traml.lted inro \rali,\11

and Spanish in 1976.

"l.a CrCation artistique selon Al.1in," Revue de mCwphniquc cr de morale 57 (1912), pp. 171-Hh.

Pages and jM·qun Guillcrme, as well a\ a two-volume Jmroduaion G l'histoire

1953

des Incnces, publi<>hed in 1970-71, edited by Canguilhem with ~tU(knts

attending his seminar~ at the lnstitut d'histoirt' des scienc..:s at the time (see below, 1970 ami IY7\). Most volumn include a five-pJgt' "Prt·scntation de

"I a Signification de l'enst•ignerncnt de Ia philo~ophie," in l.'l.n>cif!nmunr de fa Philomphie. Unc cnquhe intanotumolc de I'U"-il:SC() (Paris: llNI·S('( l, JY')) ),

Ia collection" signed by Canguilhem.

pp. 17-26.

f.o CnnnomonU' de ld I' I~' (l',1ri~: Hachettc, \952).

Pr(·ct.·dt•d, pp. I 3-IS, hy ,\

lrKiltdt·\: ":\wrti\\emL·nt," tnl'lltioning that some olthe essays indudt'd have been re,·iseJ smce dwir fir"r publication or or.ll pre\entatinn (pp. 5-6); an "Introduction: La Pt'n<>t-e t't le vivant," published here fln thl· fir~t time (pp. 7-12): "L'ExpCrimentatinn ~n biologic animale," a lt•ctun.: given at the Centre inter-

"l.kc\ar.:~tion

commune dt'\

e~JWrH," "i~nrrl

hv Cuido Calogt'TP, George\ C.lllguilht"m, Fugen !·ink, DnnJid .'\1.Kkinnon, Ibrahim IVbdkour, Cmt,l\'t" ,\1(ml\d, Merritt Moore, ~.A. :"Jikalll ,md 11umberto Pinera Llcra. Canguilhem\ text i.; the general pre~cntation of the work dont' by the expert~.

national pCcbgogique dt• Si·vre~ in \9 51 ( pp. 15-4 5 ); "La ThCork cellulain·" (pp. 49-98), first publislwd in 1946 in the

1955

.t!Cionw:s /94) ot" rhc FacultC des Lettre5 de Strashourg; "A~pc<.t~ du viulisme" (pp. 101-23), "Machint' t't org.:~ni~me" (pp. 124-

59) <~nd "[

t>

Vi\JnT ...:r ~on milieu" (pp. 160-93), three lectures givt'll :.t the

Co1k·ge philmnphique in Pari~ in 1946-47, lnllowingJn imit.Hion from ih

Canguilhem sucu·t'dt•d Ga:-.tnn Hache Lard in the fall of llJ55 J~ prnk·:-.~or ot phtlo~nphy at tht· Sorbonne. in P<1ri~. ,\Swell

J\

dirt'ctm of the ln"titut d'hi~toire

dn ~cicnces t:t des tL·chniquL·~ of the Uni.,..ersity of Pari-;. lle remained rhnt·

organi1.er, the phill>~nphl'r Jean \Vahl; "LL· llDTJn.llet It: pathologiquc" (pp. \94-21~). pn·\iou"l~· published, in

until his retirement in ]97].

19.11, in tht· fir:-.t \olume of the Snmmc Jc mCdnin,· (0/Jtcmporaine, t'dited hy the surgeon RL·nC Leriche, then prof(:ssor at the College de hance; and three appendiu·': "Note ~ur le passage de Ia thl·orie fibrillaire

a Ia tht·orie

I il Formotinn du wnccpt de rcj7ciC aux .\TW e/ XV/l/'" ,h:c/c<; (Pari~: Prt'~~e:-. Univcr~itairc~de

France, \955).

A

VIT"'L

LRITICAL

RkTIONALIST

Canguilhcm\ Ji~st•rtation for tht• Doctoral Cs Lettre~. prepared under tht• ,lircction
\\',1'>

of the Hi~torv of Science in 19SH, and he became a hdl rncmiH'r in ]9h0. Jk ~erved

as viLt· president
translated into Spanish in 1975 and Japilne~c in 1980.

Extracts from the second edition ofthi.\ book are included in this reader. "Le Proh!Cme des rt>gulations dans l'organi.,mc ct dans Ia ~ocil~tl·,"' Cahicrs de

"La Physiologie ani male au XVIII'' ~il·cle," in 1--kn{· Taton, ed., llHtoirc W:nCralc de'\- >cicnccs, vol. 2 (Pari~: Prt'~~es Uniwr~it.lirc~de Fr
1':\/lranc·c• /mu:/ilc vn1rc'ndh· 9 2 (Sept.-Oct. 1YS S ), pp. 64-i'H. J'he lecture,

RIRLI0GRAPHY

rr· 64-7 3, is !~)I lowed by a discussion, pp.

Unchanged in thv ~-arinus reprint~ ol the work: included in thi~ reader.

7 3-81.

"Organismes et mmkle., mCcanique<>: Rl·tlcxions sur Ia biologic cartCsienne,"

..La Philosophie biologique d'Augmte ComtL' et son inlluencc en France

,HI

XIX''

siCck," Flullctin de lo So(H/t; fnm~oisc d,· philoi'Ophic 52 ( 19 5 H), pp. I )-26.

Ro·ucphilosophiqu<' 145 (1955), pp. 281-99.

Reprinted in Etude\ d'hi1toirc ct de phdowphie dn \Uc'n(c'> ( 19hH ); e:-..tr.lCb

Not a rnic\\ but an anal~·\i'> ol.\)escartes\ "Sixth !\1ctlitatinn," \\ith a disL·us~ion of Martial Gul·roult\ interpretation ot it in the second volume

of his Dcswrtcs sc/,m l'orJre des raisons (Pari\: Au bier, 195 3 ).

from thi\ article are included in thi~ re.lder. "Qu'e5t-ce que Ia p~ychnlogic?" Rcruc de mCtaphysiquc et de moro/c 63.1 (1958),

pp. 12-25. Lt-cture

1956

~i\'t'n

at dw (',llli·gt- phi!d\nphiqut· on lk,·t·mber !H, l<JSh.

follmH·d hy "Remar<(lll'~

"La Pcnst·c de Rent'· lcrichc,"' Revue rhilosophiquc 14-6 (1956), pp. 313-17. .\ \Ummar~ review of I niche\ intellcctu.ll contributions, following thl' famous surgeon\ death. l'ani!,uilhem h.1d di~UJ\\ed Leriche in Lc l'./or-

\liT

'Qu'e~t·n

que Ia p~ychologie?'" hy K. l'ag(·<>

(pp. 12H-34), ,md a concluding "Note" by Cmguilhern. Puhli~hcd again in the Cahicf\ rnur l'ana/~·~c in 1966 (reprir~tt·d in 1967) dtHI in Uvdn d'h11toirc e1 de phdewph1c de_\ ~CIC/JCCS ( l9hh ).

Tramlated into Engli~h in 1980. 1nrluded in thi\ rL"ader.

mul ct lc pmholow'-luc and had pub!i~hed an article in a bouk edited by I t•ric·hc in 1951.

1957 "Sur un•· F.pi~tt!mologic concordat.1irc," in G. Bou!igand ct al. 1/ommanc d Gd\'tdn Rachclard: I wdc1 de phi/Oltl['hlc ct d'hntmrc•

J,., scicm:cs

(Pari~: Pre~~t·~

"Pathologic ct phy~iologic de Ia thyroldc au XIX'' siCch-," lhalh Y t( 1r JY52-5H ( 1959), pp. 77-92. 13J~l·d

UniiL"rSitaires tk Ftance, 1957), pp. 3-12. "Fontenelle, philmophe et historicn des science~." .lnnalcs de /'UmrcrsitC de Poril-

nn

d

h-cture giH·n at the be ultt· de ,\lL·dcl'ine,

Unin·r~it~

ol

Strashourg. on January ](), 1958. H.qmnred in Etudn ,f'histoirc ct de philosophic dn soc'n(c\· ( !968).

27 (!Y57), pp. 3:'1-i--90.

lha/Cs ha,l ,1~ it'> ~uhtitle "K.c<"ll<'il des tr.l\·aux d(·l'lmtitut d'hi~t(Jirc ,It_.~

5ciencn et cks techniqun de l'Uniwr~itl· de Pari~." ·1 lw first volunw (I ':I 34)

1958

appeared in 1935, published by the "Librairic fl·lix Akan," the major I rench publisher hlr philo~oph~ in Pari\ at dw tirne, under thl' editorship ut :\bel !{'-')•

410

the toundl'r ot tht· ln~tit11t d'hi~tnin de~.,, it·nu·~ l'l dl'\ techrriqut''·

4"

A

VITAL

CRITICAL

RATIONALIST

Other volumes were published for the year~ 1935, !916 and !9P-38, then

"L'Homme et \'animal au point de

810LIOGRAPH~

\'Ue

P"ychologif]Ut:' selon Darwin," Revue

d'histoin• des sciences 13.1 ( 1960), pp. 81-94.

publication was interrupted by the war. It reappe.1red in 1949 (volume 5, dated ]1.14R), puhli~hed by the Prn~es Llniver<>itaire~ tk ham.x. Three other

Reprinted in Ftud<.'.\ d'histoirc et J,. rhilosophie d,., Hicnces ( !96B).

volumn were publishL·d, related to the years when Gaston Bache lard '"a~

Review of The .-'lutobiowaphr of Charles Dlml·in (New York: Dover, \9)g), Archivn intcrnauonales d'hi~torrc des sciences \3 ( 1960), p. 157.

director of the Jnstitut: in 1951 (dated 1949-50), 1953 (1951) and 1955 ( 1952 ). The last volume~ appeared under the editorship of Canguilhem: vol-

Review of Bentley Gla~~. Owsei Temkin, William L. Straus Jr .. eds., Forerun-

ume 9 {1952-58) in 1959, volume 10 (1959) in ]460, volume 11 (1960) in

ncr> of Darwin 17-J.)-JX)Y (1:3altimore: Johns llnpkins llnivenity Pre""·

1959), .hchives interndlronales d'hi51oirc de~ Hienw \3 ( 1960), pp. 157-S9.

1962, volume 12 (1966) in 1968; volumes 13 (1969) and 14 (1970-71), the last to appc.1r, did so as special issues of the Revue d'ht~toirc des ,·tien(es, another

K.eview of Alvar Ellegard, Dorwrn and the General Reader (Gbteborg: /\\mctvi~t & \Vickscll~.

j,mrn<\\ published b) the Pre«.~c~ Un.iversitaire~ de fran ..·e, in ]970 and 1972.

p. 159.

Reprinted in Uudt•S d'histoirc c! de philosophre Jcs sciences (1968); extracts fi·om this article are included in this reader.

1958), AahiH'I' rnternationdln d'htHntrc des s
Review of Conway Zirkle, Evolmion, Manion Biolof!Y ond the .)ociol Scene (Philadelphi.t: University of Pennsylvania Prt•ss, 1959), AHhives imcnwtionaln

"Averti~sem('nt," "/holes 9 t(u 1952-SH (1959), p. 1.

d'hntoin· des scicncn \3 ( 1960), pp. 1)9-60.

Unsigned. Anrmuncement of the journal\ n·appearam:e .Jfter a hiatus of several years. "Thf-rapcutique, expCrimt·ntation, responsabilitt~." Rct·ue de f'cnsciancment wpri-

1961

riwr 2 (1959), pp. UO-~S.

Rt•printed in !:tudes d'histmrc c! de philosophrc dt'5 science,- ( 1968 ).

"Le~ Concepts de 'lutte pour ]'existence' et de 'selection nature lie'" en ISSH:

"I Teale de Montpellier jugt~e par Au~uste Comtt·," Lc Scolpc/114.) (1961).

pp. 68-71.

Charlt·~ narwin et Alfred Ru~sd Wallace," Conprcna·s du Palal'i d,·/o Driwuverte

(Pari~:

1959),

~nie

Paper presented at the "XVI'' CongrCs intl·rnational d'hiqoire dt• Ia

D, no. 61.

mf-decine" (Montpdlier, Septembc.:r 22-28, !958). K.eprinted in ftt/{b

Public lecture given at the Palais de Ia Dl·couverte, in Pari~. on January

d'histoirc ct de philosophic der; sciences ( 1968 ); included in this n·a
10, 1959. Reprinted in f:tudcs d'hntoirc el de phi/asophie des wcnces (1968). Reviev. oi 1\1aunce D.wmas, ed., llt>rvlf<' d<.' Ia scicn.-c tPari<;: G<\1\imard, 1957). Archivn trllcrnationa/cs d'histoirc des socnccs 12 ( 19)9), pp. 76-~2 ·

"I

,1

Ph~iolngil'

niques

t"t

en :\1\em.tgnc," "Jt'UI'\t'~ t-coks \k

prob\emc~

!.1

w.._·onde perimle ," ''Tn h-

de Ia physiol~)gie au XIX'' sit·ck," in Rene Taton, eel.,

llistoire arinCralc de' 'cienccs, tome ilL Lo Sucnce contcmporain.·, vol. l, f_c

1960

XIX··

<;tt;cJ<· (Pari~: Pn·s~es

Llniversitairn de france, 1461 ), pp. 47S-7H, 4 7H-

XO, 480-84.

Canguilht·m became a member of the Commission de philosophic, d't?pistt-molo-

Unchanged in the various editions ol' the book; included in thi<; reader.

gie ct d'hiWJire des sciences of the Co mite national of the Centre national de

"NCcessitt:'- de Ia 'diffi.1sion \CientiriqtH''," Rei'Ue dt l'<•nscigncmcnt wpriricur ~

Ia rechnche scientilique (CNRS) that ~-ear. He remained a member ot' tht· cnmmi~sion until his retiremc nt in 1971, chairing it from 1967 to 1971.

{\C'l\ll).pp. 5-15.

[Cnmmenb lol\owing tht· kcture ol] Oli\·ier Cmta de Beauregard, "Lt· Dilemme

A

VITAl

C Rl TIC A I_

RATIONALIST

Paper presented

nbjectivitt·-qJbjectiYitC de Ia ml·cani<[Ue ~tatistiquc et l't·qui"iikncc cyber-

versit~

nt·tiquc entre intormatinn t't l'ntrnpic,'' Ru!lctw de /c~ ~cJciCtC fwm;oisc de

,lt

BIB L ILl(, RA I" H Y

the S~·mpmium tJIJ the llistory CJf.'-Jcicnce, at till' llni-

of Oxford, held on July '-J-15, 1961, under" the

,wspice~

ul the lli\·hion

of Hi~tory ofScicncr ol the lnternatilJnal Union of tht· I listory <wd Phil!J\·

philosophic 53 (1961), pp. 208-10 and 216.

ophy of \cience. Rcprintt·d in ftudcs d'hil·toirc ct de phdmophic des sciences

!Claude Ronnefo\'. "Rien ne lai\~ait voir que Sartre deviendrait 'Sartre,'" Arts,

(196H), under the titk "Mudl·les et analogit'' dans Ia !!t'-couH'rte en hiologie."

I cttrc1, Spcctdcln, tlusiquc,Jan. 11-17, 804 ( ]96[ ). pp. 13-14. J

"Introduction. La Comtirution de Ia ph~·~ilologie comm~· "'- ience," in Char];•'

Includes ~t·gmcnt,~ of Jtl intt•rvlew \\ ith C.mguilhcm conct>rning S.~rtrt.'

Ka~'Sl'l",

at the timl:' thl'y were both :-.tudents at the Fcolc Normale.

eJ., Ph~siolo9ic (P,.uis: blitiom nh··dicales Hamnurion, I'-J6~). vol. I,

pp. II-4H. Reprinted in EtuJc\ d'h1slnirc ct de philosophic de1 1·ucnccs (19h!\), and

1962

in the ~t'<.-oml edition (II Kay~er's PlnsrofoHrc (Paris: f'l<~mmarion, ltJ70), With G. Lapassade,

J.

Piqu<-:mal.

J.

pp. I 1-50; extracts from thi5 article arc included in thi~ reader.

Ulmann, "Du \)(·ve!oppcm<-:nt ,).]'t-volution

"I 'histoire des sciences dam ]'oeuvre i-pi~tl·nwlogi<[lH' dt' C.l~ton B<~chelard,"

au XIX'' sit-cit·." Thd!Cs II fi-x J'-J60 (1962), pp. 1-65.

.'1nnalcs de /'llnivcrsiu3 de Pum I { 196 3 ), pp . .:'.f- ~9.

Canguilh~·m ct)JHlucted a \nTkl_v q_:min<~r at the [nstitut d'histoirc de~ science~

Reprinted in F-:wd~·s d'histoire ct de philosophic des )'Oc'nCC\ (1968). 1ram-

cr
to mark the centennary of the publication of Darwin\ Orit~m

Lned into Italian in !969, and German in 1979.

of SpC(ics (as

"Dialectique t'\ philosophie du non chc; Gastnn Rachelard," Rl·vue internationalc

explained by C.mguilhem in tht' "Avant-propn~." p. 1). The article, joint!~· ~igned h)-' the Ji1ur ,wthor\, was reprint1·d

(i f'h,ofution

l!U

XIX'' siCdc (P.:tri~:

""a

ric philosopiJJt' hh (I 96 3), pp . .f.f 1-12.

sm,lll book, /)u J),;r.-loppcmcnr

Pres~es llnivcrsitaire~

Reprinted in !:tude> d'hiswirc ct de philosophic de\_\( rc•ncc1. Translated int<J

de France, 1985).

Italian in 1969.

"\_a ,\1onstruositl- t•t It· monstrueux," DiogCnc 40 (1962), pp. 29-43. Hased on

J

"Ca~ton

lecture g.ivt'n at the 1nstitlll des hautes (·tude\ dt' Rclgique,

Bachl·lard et les phill>\•>phe~." ,')cicnu'\ 24(March-April 19&3), pp. 7-HJ. keprimnl in !:'tudes d'hnt01re ct de phdu>ophre dn sfiCrkl'1. / rambted intu

in HnJ~_,c~_,, on h·hruar~ '-1, IIJ02. Heprintnl in the second ,·ditinn (Jf l_o

Italian in !969.

Connoissan,-,. Jc Ia ric ( 1965 ).

[Comments inl-lgrC,qatiOil, Philosophic, 1961: Ropport de .H. Etienne .)ouriau,

1964

prtisidcnt du jur_l· (Paris: Mini\tl~re de l'Cdm·,ltion nationale, lmtitut PC.da-

gqgJquc National. 1%2 ), pp. 3-4. "I li\tnirc des rt.·ligions et hi~toire de5 science" dam Ia th0oric du ktichi5me che1

l'vlimcographed.

Auguste Comte." in -HCiongcs Alcwndrc K01 r<:, Yo!. 2: l. '1rcnturc de /'e~prit (Paris: 1--h-rm,mn, 1964), pp. h4-H7.

1963

Contnbution to th.- ft·~t~chrilt in honor ol rhe hiqoriJ.n ot ~cicnce Alexandre Koyri: ( IR92-1Yh4 ). Reprinted in /- wdcs d'hm,1irc et de philo1·ophic

"l'hc Role of Analogie~ and ,\1odcls in Biolngical Discoverie~." in Alistair

dc1 science\ (1968).

Cameron Crombie, cd., Socnllfic Chanf{c (London: Hcinl'mann, 1963),

"Le Concept d,· rl·llexe au XI\'' ,it·c!e," in K.f. ]{othschuh,ed., flm llocrhom 1•

pp. 507-20.

;I

A

VITAL

CRITICAL

RATIONALIST

(1968); extracts from this article are included in this reader.

bJS Berger: Die En!ll"icklunfl der kontinentalcn Physio/(l9ic im IS. und !9.

"Gottfried Koller, Das Leben drs 810lown Johannes .HUller /001-1858." Isis 56

jahrhundcrr (Stuttgart: Fischer, 1964), pp. 157-67.

(1965), p. 110.

In French. Paper pre~entcd at a symposium hdd in MUnster on Septem-

Review.

ber 18-20. 1962. Rt·printcd in Etvdes d'hi1tmrc t'r de philosophic de_\ 1cicncn

"ThCophile Cahn, La Vie et /'oeuvre d'Etienne

(1%8).

''Galilt~l': La Sit',niflcatio)n th.'

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I'1H'U\TC

Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire," Isis 56 ( 1965 ),

pp. 24-4-46.

ct !,} le>;on de l'homme," ArchiH'5 intcr-

Review.

nationalcs d'histoire des sciences 17 (1964), pp. 209-22. Lecture giwn at the lnstitut ltalil'n, in Pari~, nn June 3, !Y64, on the

4£Jrigatic>n de phdosophic. 1965: Rupporl de .11. Georges Can9ui/hem, prisidcnt

occasion of the four hundredth annin:rsary ofGa\i\eo's birth. Reprinted in

du jury (Paris: MinistL'-re de I'Cducation nationale, lnstitut PCdagogique

Ewdes d'hntoire ct de philosophic dn wcnccs (1968).

National, 1965 ).

fComments in] "Point de vue philo~ophiquc sur \'inadaptation dan~ le monde

Mimeographed. "Philosophie et Science," Revue de J'mscigncmcnt philosuphiquc 15.2 (Dec. 1964-

contcmpnrain," Rccherchcr; ct dt!bats (i'v1arch 1<:!64), pp. 109-58 and 134-1Y.

J•n.

Canguilhem\ comments are part of the dbcussion on a paper prest·n!cd

1965), pp. 10-17. An exchange with Alain Badiou, broJ.dcast on French educational tele-

by Pierre Colin hearing the above-m"'ntioncd title.

vision, Januan-· 23, 1965. ''Philosophie et WritC," Revue de l'cnsei!]ncmcnt philosophique 15.4 (April 1965-

1965

Ma~·

Lo Connaissance de Ia ric (2nd ed.,

An exchange, in the wake of the discussion with Alain Badiou in January

Pari~: Vrin, 196.5).

Reprint df tlw nr~t t'dttitHl, published by 11acht•tte in 1952. with a

IY65 ), pp. l l-~ I.

Jlt'\\'

1965 (see above entry}, on French educational television, with A. Badiou,

"A\'erti~semcnt," some additional reference-; and the addition nftht• stud)

D. Dreyfus, M. Foucault, J. Hyppolite, P. Ricocur, broadcast on March 27,

"LJ. r\1omtrumitl· t•t le mnnstrueux," first pliblished in 1962. This edition

1965.

ha~ been rt:printed man}' timt'S.

1966

Extracts from the second edit inn of this book (1989) an' published in thi~ reader.

"L'IIomme d<· Vt·salc dans le monde d(• Copcrnic: 1543," in Commimoration >olrnnel/c du quamhne centrnu1rc de Jo mort d'.~ndrC Vi_mk, 19-14 octobrc llJ64 ( Rru~sds: Pal a is de<; Academies, l 96 ~ ), pp. 145-54. R~·printt·(! in [ wdcs d'h 1>r,)irc ct dt•

philo.snpilic des scknccs ( \ 96t-\ ).

"L'tdee de mt~tkcine t')<.pCrimenlale selon Claude Fkrnard," Confrirences du Palais de 1.1 ()homwte (P.1ri~: Univt'rsitt~ dt• PJ.ris, 1965), sCrie D, no. Ill\. Public lt-cture given at the Palai~ de Ia Dt~couverte, in Paris, nn FebnJary 6, [q6). Reprinted in Ftude~ d'hiHoire ~·t de philowph1e des scicnc~·~

':I ~I

-;~1

I

I e N'ormal et le pathologique (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1966 ). Rt'print ol the second edition, with its preface, publisht'd

by Les Belles

Lcttrc-s in 1950, and including a new second part: "Nouvelles reflexions concernant lt.> normal ~~t !e patho!ogique (1963-66)," pp. 169-222, and a brief"Avertisscment" (p. i). The "Nouvelles rCflexions" correspond in part to a course given

by Canguilhcm J.t the Sorbonne the preceding year (M.

Fichant, "Georges Canguilhem et l'idt-e de Ia philosophic" [1993], p. 38). Thi~ edition appeart'd in tht· "Collection Galien," edited

·1'7

by Canguilhem.

A

\ITAL

CRITICAL

RATIONAliST

HIBLIOGRAPHY

{\968). The Cohl<'n pr>ur l'ana~ne, which

and whirh included studies in the hi•.aory and philo~oph~ ,)f biology am\

toirc ct de philflsoph,c dcs

medicine. Among the titles appearing in this series were works by several of

first appeared in mimeograph form, were published by the Cercle d'epis-

hi~ studt>nb, Yvettt" Conry, fr,mt;-oh Oagugnt't, Mich~l Foucault and (.lmil\i:'

tbnologie de \'Ecnh· Normalt' Supl~rieure, a grnup o\ students close to

Limoges. Le Normal ct le pathologiquc was reprinted in that collection (the

Louis Althusser. Publi'\hed in Fnglish in 1980; induded in this rl·ader.

fourth and fifth editions , .. ere idt.'ntical to this one) until J<:l!H, when the "Collection Galien'' ceased to exist. The text then appeared, unrevised, in the new co\\ectiun"Quadrige" (Pn">St'S Universitairc-; (lc Franct'). The book was translated into Spanish in 1971, German in 1974, Italian in 1975, English and Portuguc<.e in \978 and japanese in \9R7.

Revit'w of "M.D. Grmt'k, ed., Claude Bernard, Cah1er de notes ( 1850-1860) (Pari<.: Gallimard, 1965),"

R.·~·uc

d'h!stoirc des sciences 19 (1966), pp. 405-406.

["Du Singulicr et de Ia singularitt- en t•pistemologie biologique," Re~·ue inter~ ndtwnale de phil(lsophic (I<J66 ), p. ~2 5. J

The sum mar)' of a lecture Canguilhem gave to the Socit-tC beige de

"Le Tout et Ia partie dans Ia pensCe biologique," Les Etude_~ philosophiqucs, n.s.,

2\.J (!966). pp. l-!6.

SCJ<'Mrs

philosnphie on F(•bruary \0, lg62.

Reprinted in Etudes d'histoire et de ph,losophie des sciences (1968); extracts

1967

from thi~ article are includtd in this reader. "Preface," in Claude Bernard, l.er;;ons sur les phtinomCne<; de la vic commum- aux anim(]il.\ et uux vi9iwux (Pari..,: Vrin. 1966 ), pp. 7-\4.

Included in this reader. "Le Concept t't Ia vit'," Revue phi/c>sophiquc Je Louvaw 64 (May 1%t1), pp.

"ThCoric t>t technique de l'expCrimt'ntation che1 Claude- B(•mard," in l::ticnne Wolf, ed., Philosophic et mithodologie sciennfiques de Claude Bernard (Paris: M.bson, !-ondation -"inger-Polign.K, 1967). pp. 23-32. Paper presented at an international colloquium organiied h)r the ccle-

!93-223. Based on two public lectures given at the Ft:ole des sciences philo~o­

br.:~tion

of the u·nte-nary of the pl!blication of Claude Bernard's {ntroduc-

a l'hudc

de fa mide(ine nptirimentale, in 1965. Reprinted in Etudes

phiques et religieuses of the faculti' universitaire Saint-Louis in Brussels,

tltln

on February 22 and :!4, 1966. Reprintt'd in Etudes d'hmoirc cl de philth'ophie

J'lwtoire ct de phdowph1c de> sucnc~·s (1968). Translated into German in

des sciences (1968). Extracts !rom this article are included in this reader.

1979. Extracts from this article are included in this reader.

.igri9atwn de philosophre, 1966: Rapport de M. Georges Ctlnf:IUIIhem, prisident du jury (Paris: MinistCre de \'education nationale, 1nstitur PCdagogique

National. !966). Mimeographed. "Qu'est-ce que Ia psychulogie?" (£Jhiers pour l'analrse 2 (i\hrch 1966), pp. I 12-26. Mimeographed reprint of the article, fOllowed by "Remarques sur 'Qu'estce que Ia p~ychologie?'" (pp. Jn-34) by R. Pagt-s, and the concluding

"Lin Ph~·siologistc philosophe; Cl.Hldc Remard," Dialoffuc 5.4 (1% 7), pp. 55 5-7 2 . Lecture given at the DCpartement de philosophk, LlniversitC deMontrCJI, in the fall nf lg66; includt:'d in thi<; reader. "Mort de l'homme ou Cpuisement du Cogitot" Critique 242 (july 1967), pp.

199-6!8. Es~ay; revie\v of Michel Foucault, Lc1 .Hots et lcs chases (Paris: Gallimard,

llJ66). Also pub\hhed in Italian

(S\'t'

below. two entrie~ down).

"Note" by Canguilhem, all already published in the Rn·ue de mtftaphysique

"Du CrJnccpt scientifique J Ia retlcxion philosophique," in Cah1o:rs de philosophic,

et de morale in 1958. Reprinted in the 1967 rdition of the Cahien pour

publi5hed by the Grnupr d'Ctuch·~ de philosophie de ]'Lini\'ersitC de Pari.~.

l'ana~vse, then published by the Editions du Seuil, and again in Etude.i d'his-

LINEF-FC[L. no. I (Jan. 1467), pp. 19-69.

4'9

T A

VITAL

RATIONALIST

CRITICAL

A lecture by Canguilhem (pp. 39-52), followed by a discussion.

818LIOGRAPHY

in 1959; "L'Homme et l'anim
"Marte dell'uomo o estinzione del cogito?" in Michel Foucault, Le Parolee le

cose (Milan; Rizzoli, 1967), pp. 432-33.

Darwin" (pp. 112-25), published in 1960; "L'IdCe de mCdecine expctrimentale selon Claude Bernard" (pp. 127-42),

Italian transl.ltion of the text first published in French.

published in 1965;

1968

"ThCorie et technique de l'expt>rimentation chez Claude Bernard" "Claude Bernard et Xavier Bichat," Actes tlu XI~ Con9res international d'histmre

(pp. 143-55), previously unpubli~hcd; "Claude Bernard et Richat" (pp. 156-62), based on a p,lper publi~hed

des sciences (I 96 5 J 5 ( 1968), pp. 287-92.

in the proceedings of the Xlth International Congress for the History of Sci-

Published in Etudes d'histoire et de philosoph1e des sciences ( 1968).

Etudes d'histoire et de philosophic des sciences (Paris; Vrin, 1968 ).

ence, in Warsaw and Cr
Includes; "Avant~propos"

(p. 7);

lard" (pp. 163-71), previously unpublished, based on a lecture given

"L'Objet de l'histoire des sciences" ( pp. 9-23 ), previously unpublished,

<1t

the

invitation of the Societe de philosophie de Dijon, on January 24, 1966;

based on a lecture given at the invitation of the Canadian Society for the

"L'Histoire des science<; dans !'oeuvre Cpistt!mologique de Gaston Bache-

History and Philosophy of Science, in Montreal, on October 28, 1966;

lard" (pp. 173-86), published in 1963;

republished in Italian and German in 1979; Canguilhem had given a series

"Gaston Bachelard et les philosophe~" (pp. 187-95 ), published in 196 );

of lectures on "La fonction et !'objet de l'histoire des sciences" at the Ecole

"Dialectique et philosophie Ju non cht'l Gaston Bachelanl" (pp. 196-

Normale Superieure in 1984; ''L'Homme de Vesale dans le monde de Copernic" (pp. 27-35),

207), published in 1463; pub~

"Du Singulier et de

lished in 1964, reprinted as a pamphlet in 1991; "Galil~e;

~ingularitC

en t'>-pistCmologie biologique'· (pp.

211-25), previously unpublished. based on a paper presented

to

the SociCtC

beige de philosophic, in Bru~sds, on February 10, 1962, translated into

Ia signification de \'oeuvre et Ia ler;on de l'homme" (pp. 37-

50), published in 1964;

German in 1979;

"Fontenelle, philosophe et historien des sciences" (pp. 51-58), pub~

"La Constitution de Ia physiologie comme science" (pp. 226-73), pub-

lished in 1957:

lished in 1963; "Pathologie et physiologit' dt' Ia thyroide au XIX.:- siecle" (pp. 274-304),

"La Philosophic biologique d'Auguste Comte et son inlluence en France au XIXc siecle" (pp. 61-74), published in 1958;

published in 1959;

"L'Ecnle de Montpcllicr jugCe par Auguste Comtc" (pp. 75-80), pub~

"Mode!es et analogies dans la decouverte en biologie" (pp. 305-18),

lished in 1961; "Histoire des religions et histoire des sciences dans Ia tht!orie du

Ia

published in English in 1961; "Le Tout et Ia partie dans Ia perm:."' biologique" (pp. W:l- 33 ), publi~hnl

ft!ti~

chisme chez Auguste Comte" (pp. 81-98), published in 1964;

in 1966;

"Les Concepts de 'lutte pour !'existence' et de ·~eJection naturelle' en

"Le Concept et Ia vie" (pp. 3.35-64), published in 1966 [this article

1858: ChMles Darwin et Alfred Russel Wallace" (pp. 98-111), published

is sometimes erroneously c.itcd as "La Nouvelle connaissancc de !.1 vie."

'.~.

r A

VITAL

RATIONALIST

CRITIGAL

which is actually the title of the subsection of the book to which this ar-

AI8LIOGRAPHY

An exchange with Fram;:ois Dagognet, broadcast on 1-rcnch educational

ticle belongs];

television, Febru,uy 20, 1968.

"Qu'est-ce que Ia psychologic?" (pp. 365-81), firq published in 1956;

"Un ModE-Je n'est rien d'autre que sa fOnction," in .".1inistCrf' de ]'Education

reprinted here without the commem by R. PagCs and the follmving "Note"

Nationale, Entreriem philosophiques: A l'usaw des profeueurs de philosophic

by Canguilhcm, both of which can be found in the Revue de mitaphysiquc et

de !'ensei9nemcnt ~ec.mdaire (Paris: lnstitut pt>dagogique n.ltional, 1968),

de morale in 1956, and in the reprints of the Cah1crt p(Jur f'analrse in 1966

PP· I Jl-l6.

and 1967; "ThCrapcutic[UC, cxpCrimcntation, rcsponsabilitC" (pp. 383-91), pub-

1969

lished in 1959. This book has been reprinted many times. It was translated into Japanese

"jean Hyppolite (1907-1968)," Revue de mitap~l'sique et dl' nwale 74 (April-June

in 1991. Extracts from the fifth edition (1989) of this book are included in

1969), pp. 129-l
this reader.

Tribute to Jean Hyppolite, the respected scholar and tr,mslator of Hegel,

"Biologic et philosophic: Publications europi-ennes," in Raymond Klibansky,

at the Ecole Normale Supi-rieure on January !9, 1969. Canguilhem and

e(l., l_a Philowph1e contemporaine, Chroniques, vol. 2: Phdosophie des sciences

Hyppolite had been students at the Ecole Normale and became colleagues

(Florence: I a Nuo\'a ltalia Editrice, 1968), pp. 387-94.

at the University ofStra<;bourg and, later, the Sorbnnne.

A review of works published between 1956 and 19&6 in biology and on the hi<;tory

"Avant-propos," in Dominique I ecourt, l_'Epistimolo.qit hnronquc dt• Gaston

of biology.

Rachtlard (Paris: Vrin, l9b9), p. 7.

[Comment~ in] "Objeuivite et historicite de Ia pensee scientifique," Raison

Thi~

prisence 8 ( 1968 ), pp. 24-54. Canguilhern's comment can be found on pages 39-41, 46-47 and 51-52.

L'Epistemologiu di Gaston Bachelard: Scritti di Cangwlhem e Lecourt, trans.

Reprinted in J.·M. Auzias eta!., Structuralisme et m<-1rxisme (Paris: 10/18,

Riccardo Lanza and Magni (Milan: Jaca Book, !969).

1970), pp. 205-65; Canguilhem's comments there are on pages 235-39 and

Italian translation of Dominique Lecourt's L'EpistCmologie historique de

260-62.

Gaston Bachelard (with Canguilhem's "Premessa" on p. 11 ), to which a sec-

"RCgulation ( epi~t&mologie )" Fncyclopaedia universalis 14 (Paris: Encyclopaedia Universalis hance, 1968), pp. 1-3. Reprinted in !~)I lowing editions.

"·

filusofL1 del 'non' in Gaston R
1967-j,n. 1968), pp. 58-64.

cast on French educational television, february 6, 1967.

ond part is added comprised of three articles by Canguilhem on Bache lard: "La storia delle ~cien1e nel'opera epistemologica di Gaston Bachelard," pp. 87-98; "Gaston B.lchelard e filosofi," pp. 99-!0S; ''La di.llettica e Ia

"La Recherche experimentale," Revue de /'ensCJf)nement phdmoph1que 18.2 (Dec.

An exchange \vith Charles MaziCres on experimental research, broad-

book i-; Lccourt's master's lhesis, prepared undt'r the ~upt.'rvt~ion

ofCanguilhem.

first appeared in French in 196 3.

'I I

1970

"Le Vivant," Revue de l'emei9nement philosophique 18.2 (Dec. 1967-Jan. 1968),

pp. 65-72.

With S. Bache lard, J.-C. Cadieux, Y. Conry, 0. Ducrot,

J.

Guil!erme, P.G.

CRITICAL A

VITAL

BIBLIOGRAPHY

RATIONALIST

Hamamdjian, R. Risis (Paris: Hat:hette,

"C. Konoew~ki, Ia Pn·cholooie dynam1quc cr /<1 penstlc vCcuc (Pari~: Hammarion, \Y70)," Rc~·u<' ph!losophi
1970). "Avant-propos" (pp. iii-v) by Georges Canguilhem. Publi~hcd in Canguilhem's collection "Textes et documents philosophique," it is aimed mainly at students in the final years of the lyct'es. At the time of publication, the authors were all participating in Canguilhem's weekly seminars at the Institut d'histoire des sciences d des techniques. "Qu'est·ce qu'une idCologit' scientifiqud" Or9anon 7 (1970).

pp. l-13.

Based on an im·itcd lecture given at the Institute for the Hi<>tory of Science and Technolog)' of the Polish Academy of Sciences, in Warsaw and Cracow, in October 1969. Reprinted in ldiologic et ralit>na!Jtti dans /'histoire des sciences de Ia vie (1977) Extracts from this article are included in this

"Logique dll vivant et histoire de Ia biologic," 3cienccs 71 (March-April 1971),

pp. 20-!5. An t·ssay review of Franyois Jacob\

"Bichat, Marie, Franyois-Xavier," in Charles C. Gillispie, ed., Diccionary of Sci<'ntific Biooraphv (New York: Scribner, 1970), vol. 2. pp. 122-23.

"Presentation," in Gaston Bachdard, Ewd.·s (Paris: Vrin, 1970 ), pp. 7-10. Canguilhem edited this collt>ction of articles, which Bachelard puhlhhed

f_ogiquc du vivant (Pari~: (ialli-

manl, 1970). "Cabani~. Pit•rrc-Jcan-Georges," in Charles C. Gillispie, ed., Dictionarr

of So-

entljl( Ru1grdphy (New York: ~cribner, J971), \'01. 1, pp. 1-3.

"De Ia Science et de Ia contre-science," inS. Bache lard Hyppohre (Puis: Presses Univer~itaires

d

al., H,lmm
,j

Jean

de 1-rance, 1971), pp. 173-!W.

A contribution to a book publishl'd in honor of Jean Hyppolite. thrt:l' years after his death. With S. Bathelard, Y. Conry,

reader.

/_a

Salomon-Bayet,

J.

J.

Guillerm<:, P.G. Hamamdjian, R. Rashed, C.

Sebe~tik, Introduction d l'histoirc de> <;(icnces, vol. 2: Ohj<'l,

mCtlwdc, C(<'t11ples. Textcs choim (Paris: 11M:hette, 1971 ).

St'cond and tlnal volume, following rhc one published tht> prniou~ year, with a ne-w "Avant-propos" (pp. 1-4 ). I o norma/_1 !o paroiOoico (Mexico: Siglo 'eintiuno editores, 1971 ).

between 1931 and 1934. ''Judith Swazey, Reflexes and ,lleror Integration: Sherrinoton's Comcpt of lnteorative Action, I larvard University Press," Clio Medica 5 ( 1970), pp. 364-65.

A wcond t~dition was published in 1978; this translation was ma(k trnm the French edition of 1966, including its new wcond part.

Review.

1972

[Introduction] "Georges Cuvicr: Journees d'Ctudes organisecs par I'Institut d'histoire des sciences de I'Univer~ite de Paris, les 30 et 31 mai 1()69 pour le bicentenaire de la naissance de G. Cuvier," Revue d'histoire des sciences

"P1dace," in lnedirs de Lt~morck, Prt-sentt-~ p.u _r..,.ta~ \'.1chon, G. Romwau, Y. I aissus

23.1 (1970), pp. 7-8.

(Pari~:

Ma<.son, 1972), pp. 1-2.

"Prefact·," in GaHan Bachelard, l.'Ennawmenr rutionaliste (l'aris: Pre~~t·~ Uni-

1971

Canguilhem retired that year from his professorship at the Sorbonne, and from

the direction of the lnstitut d'histoire de~ sciences ct des techniques.

versitaire~

de France, 1972), pp. 5-6.

''Phy~iologie animale: Histoire," Encyclopaedia univcrsolis 12 (Paris: Encyclopae·

dia Univt'rsalis france, 1972), pp. 1075-77. Rt•printed in the new edition ol 1989 under a ~lightly different title.:; included in this reader.

A

VITAL

CRITICAL.

RATIONALIST

"I 'ldt·(• d\' nature dans la thl-orie et Ia pratique mt~dicales," Midccinc de l'hommc -~)(,\brd

phiques (July-Sept. !974 ), pp. 29 3-97. Ba~cd on a paper given at a colloquium held at the hou~e ot .-\u~~u~tc­

1972),pp.6-12.

An extract

i~

Comte, in Paris, on June 27, 1972; included in this reader.

included in this reader.

/_c '\'ormal et le pathologiquc (2nd rev. ed., Paris: Prcssc~ Universitaires de france,

"La Question de \\~cologie: La Technique ou Ia vie?" Dialogue (Bruxdle~) 22

(Mmh 1974), pp. l7-44.

ll/72).

Based on a lecture given at the "Journh:s du protestantisme libt·nl," in

Reprint of the 1966 edition, with sorr.('. "rectifications de details et quelques notes comp!Cmentaire~" (addt•ndum to the "Avertissement"). This edition has since gone through ~everal printings. Extracts fi·om this edition arc includt'd in this reader.

de I'UnivcrsitC de Paris,

Sl·te, on November 11, 1973. "Gaston Bachelanl," in Scienziati c tecnologi contcmpownei (Milan: .".1ond.1dori, !974), vol. I, pp. 65-67.

I a ,ttorh,;mafi.~,Jtion des doctrines informe~: Colloque tem1 IUrntL'~

BIBLIOGRAPHY

mm

Q

1'/mtitut d'histoire des

Ia direction de Georges Canguilhcm (Paris:

Dos ,1\i'ormalc und das Pdthologische, trans. Monika Noll and Rolf Schubert (1-rank-

li.Jrt, Berlin, Vienna: Ullstein, 1974). Translation of the 1972 second, revised French edition. Thi~ tran~lati•m

I krmann. 1472 ). "i~l\ant-propm"

(pp. 7-9) and comments

hy Canguilht>rn. I his cnllof]uium

wa~

on

pages 67-68,69, and 13 ~-34

\\'a~

reprinted in 1977.

held June 24-26, 1970.

1975

1973

".'\ugmte CPmtc," in Scienziati c tewolof/1 dullc origin! a/187) (Milan: ,\ltondadori. 197 5 ), ,·ol. I. pp. 3 2 5-28. [Comment 5 in l ilctcl" de Ia jvurn,:,.. ll<~vpatui~ (Paris: Vrin, I 97 5 ), pp. 1HU -~!.

l'!n). pp. 764-69.

On Anne Fagot, "Le 'Transl(mnisme' de ~1aupntuis," pp. 16 3- 7H.

Rcprintl"d in th<:- ~ecnnd c·dition of 1989; included in thi~ rcader.

The5t' were the proceedings of a Ct.llloquium held in Crl·tl'il in I kccm-

1974 ber 1973. ''Sur l'llistoirl" dn Kiences de Ia vie depuis Darwin," Actes du XIII" CongrCs intanm iond! d 'h1~toire des sciences ( !971 ), Confircnccs pliniCrcs (Moscow: Nauka,

1974). pp. 41-6l.

A short letter by Canguilhcm answering que~tion~ rq~arding oppn~i­ tion to reform of the national programs of the lycees, which \\Ould .1iku the teaching of philosophy at that level. The title is not Cangui!hem's; all

Translated into German in 1979. "John Arown (1735-l?HH). La Thi:oorie de l'incitabilitt~ de l'organismc

"Pour Ia philosophic," La ,\'ouvcl/c critique (May 1975), p. 2LJ.

d

son

importance historique," Actcs du XIII'' CongrCs International d'histoire des sciemn(/97/j(Moscow: Nauka, 1974), Section IX, pp. 141-46. Reprinted, with modifications, and under a different title, in !diolo9ic cl mriondlitC dans /'hiHoire des sciences de Ia vic (1977).

"1\i'iloirc de l'homme et nature de~ choses scion Augu~tc Comte dans lc Plan des tn11·oux sucnti{iqucs pour rivrgamscr Ia sociiti, 1822," l.es [tudes phi/ow-

.1n5wers given by hench philosophers whom the journal contM_·red

W("r\"

published under this name. ll normalc e d patologico (Rimini: Guaraldi, 1975).

Translation of the 1972 ~econd, revise1l French edition. l.a formaci6n del conccpto de rejlcjv en los siH/os XV If y XV Ill (Valencia, B.ucelona:

Juan I.literas, 1975). Translation of the 1955 first French edition.

A

VITAL

CRITICAL

RATIONALIST

BIBL•OGRAPH\"

medical school where Canguilhem had complt'ted hi-; degree in medicim·. Klein continued to teach at the uniwrsity when it was moved tn Clcrmont-

Vic ct mort de Jwn Cavodk~ (Ambialet [Tarn]: Pierre Laleure, 1976). The text~ included had not been previnu~ly published: "Avant-propo~"

dt'portcd him to the conrt'ntration camps of Amchwitz, Grossrosen and Buchenwald, from where he 1ns libe-rated in 1945. He published widely

(pp. 7-S);

"Inauguration de !'Amphitheatre Jean Cavaillf>s a Ia nouvelle FacultC des Lettres de Strasbourg (9 mai 1967)" (pp. 9-34); "Commemoration J. J'O.R.T.E, France-Culture (28 octobre 1969)"

on histology, endocrinology and on history of biomedical sciences. In this obituary, Canguilhem suggested that Klein's historical papers be collected and published as a book; the book was in fact publhhcd in \980, and Canguilhcm wrote the introduction (see below, second entry under 1980).

(pp. 35-39); "Commemoration

Ferrand during the German occup.llion. In \944, the Gestapo arrested and

a Ia Sorbonne,

Salle Cavailles (19 janvier 1974)"

(pp. 41-53);

f_o conoscenza della vita (Bologna: II Mulino, \976). U conocimiento de Ia vida (Barcelona: Editorial Anagrama, 1976).

"Bibliographie: Publications de Jean Cavaii!Cs" (pp. 57-61).

1977

A new edition was published in 1984. "QualitC de Ia vie, dignitC de L1 mort," _4acs du colloque mondial Biologic et

!diolo9ie et rotionaliti dans l'histolfe de\

.\uCnc<'S

J,· lu nc: ,\'ouve!le\- etudes d'histoire

devenir de /'hommc, Univenirt- de Paris, 1976 (New York: McGraw Hill,

ct de philosophic des sciencc5 (Paris: Vrin, 1977).

1976), pp. 127-12.

Includes:

final report of a commission presented at an international collo'luium held at the Sorbonne in P.ui5, Si'"ptember 19-24, 1974 (it is followed b)· an English tramlation oft he tnt, pp. 532-37). Canguilhem was a member of the French organizing and rf'n'ption committee of the colloquium. "Nature' dCnaturCe et Nature naturantt.: (J. propos de !'oeuvre de Franyois Dagog:net)," in Savo~r, t•spt;ra, In "mites de fa raison (Brussels: FacultC Universitaire Saint-Louis, 197&), pp. 71-R8. "II ruolo dell'epistcmologia nella ~toriografia scientifica contemporanea,"

Scienta &. Tecnica '76: Annuano della Encidopedia della ScienLa c della fi!cnica (Milan: Mondadori, 1976), pp. 427-36. Reprinted in ldColoyie a rauonalitC dans l'histoirc des sciences de Ia vie (1977). Tramlated into Gt'rrnan in 1979. Extracts from this article arc included in this reader. "Marc Klein, 1lJ05-IlJ75," 4rchin•s inrernutwnales d'histoire des sciences 26.98 (1976), pp. 161-64. Klein had ~p<.'nt hi~ cart'er as a professor at the University ofStrasbourg\

"Avant-propos" (pp. 9-10): "Le ROle de l'f>pist~mologil' biologique dam l'hi~toriographie scientifique contt'mporaine" (pp. 11-29), publisht'd in Italian in 1976; "Qu'est-ce qu'une idt?ologie scientifiqud" (pp. 33-45), published in 1970; "line Ideologie medicale exemplaire.le ~ysteme de Brown" (pp. 47-54), based on the paper published in 1974 under a different title in the Procet:dings of the Xlllth International Congress lOr the Histo;y of Science in Moscow, August 18-24, \971; "I'Effet de Ia bactCriologie dans !.1 fin de~ 'ThCories mCdicale~· au XIX'. siCcle" (pp. 55-77), based on a lccwre presentt·d in Barcelona in April 1975, translated into German in 1g7g: "La Formation du concept de regulation biologique aux XVIII'. et X!Xc ~iCcles"

(pp. 81-99), an t'Xtend\·d ver:-.ion of the p
1g77, in tht~ proceeding~ of a umfl:'rem t' held in 147-l; "Sur l'Hiswire des scienc<:~ de la vie depuis Darwin" (pp. 101-119),

A

publi~hcd

VITAL

CRITICAL

RATIONALIST

in 1974 in the proceeding~ of the XI lith International Congress

BIBLIOGRAPHY

SupCrieure 138 (March 1977), pp. 12-13.

for the I li~tory of Science in JV1mcow;

On the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary ofllerr's death. In 19)2,

"La Que~tion de Ia normalitt> dans l'histoire de Ia pensiT biologique" (pp. 121-39), based on a paper presented at a colloquium organized by the International Union of the l!istory and Philosophy of Science, in Jywaskyla.

Canguilhem had published a rcvievv of a collection of Herr's \Hitings as well as of his biography by Charles Andler. "Lc\ machines

hnland, in June-July 1973.

.lgut~rir," f_e Mamie

(April6, 1977).

Review of Michel Foucault, Blandine Barret Kriegel, Anne Thalamy.

Tht• book was translated into German in 1979, Portuguese in 1981, Fnglish in 1988 and Italian in 1992.

hanc;ois Reguin and Bruno fortier, Les Machine\

Q

guCrir (au.\ origines de

l'hdpital modcrne) (Paris: lnstitut de l'environnemcnt, 1976). Canguilhem

A second edition appeared in 1981. Extracts from the 1988 tramlation of the

first edition are included in this reader.

i.~

incorrectly identified at the bottom of the review as "Proj"nseur au Colle,qe

de Frana."

"l.a Fonnation du concept de dgulation biologique aux XVII" ct XVI W siecles," in AndrC Lichnerowicz, Jacqun Lions, Fran(\:ois Perroux, Gilbert Gadoffre, ed~ .•

1978

I '!die de rigulation dans les >Licnccs (Paris: Maloine-Doin, 1977),

pp. 25-39. Paper presented at the College de France in December 1974, at a colloquium organi~_ed by the editor~ of the proceedings, on the idea of regulation in science. An extended version was published the ~arne year in ldColo!Jie

X~"/J'"

ct XVIII" siCcles (2nd ed., Paris: Vrin,

(1~78),

pp. 13-26.

"Le Concept d'idl·ologie \Cientifique: Entretien avec George\ Canguilhem,"

Following the previous year's publication of ldCologie ct wtionalitC dans /e1· ~cienccs de lo 1·ie, which includn the article "Qu'est-ce qu'urw id{·ologic

1977). The first edition had been published by the Presses Univcrsitaircs de France in 1955. This new edition, "rC.vistc ct augmcntCe,"

include~

a short

"Avcrtisscmcnt de Ia deuxit>me l~dition," corrections of misprints and a "Comp!Cment bibliographiquc" (p. 202). Extracts from this article .:~re included in this n:adn. "Jacques Ruffit>, /)e Ia Riologic d Ia culture (Paris: 1976)," Fncyclopacdia univcrsolis (Paris: Encyclopaedia Uni\'er~ali~ Franct~, 1977), pp. 378-79.

<>cientifiquc?" On page\ 55-.58, Gabriel Gohau comment'> on that article <md raise\ five questions, which Canguilhem amwcr\ (pp. SH-60). "Ct·lntin Rougll·," 4nnuoire de l''lssociation des anciem dCrcs de /'Ecole ,\'ormole Supirieurc(I97H), pp. 29-12.

Canguilhem had written his "Diplt\me d'l·tudes ~upt>rieures" under the supervision of Celestin Bougl(· in 1926 (see above, first entry under

1926). On the ;Varma/ and the PcuhofoHicaf, trans. Carolyn H. F,nnett, with the edito-

Revie1v. "J. Schiller et T. Schiller, Henri Dutrochet," Archive~ internationales d'histoirc des ~cience~

17

Raiwn pri1·entc 46 (1978), pp. 55-68.

et rationaliti dans f'hi>toire des sciences de !a vie.

I a f-ormation du concept de rCf1cxe aux

"Une Pt·dagogie de Ia gui'rison est-elle pos~ibld" Nouvelle re;uc de psrchonohse

rial collaboration of Robert S. Cohen. lntroduc tion by Michel Foucault (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1978).

27 (1977), p. 340.

Translation of the IY72 \tTond, reviwd hench edition. Reprinted b~

Review. "Souvenir de Lucien I !err," Rulletin de Ia SociCu> des om is de l'Fcole ,\'ornwle

430

Zone Rooh in 1989; extrdct\ included in thi\ reader.

4l'

A

VITAL

CRITICAL

RATIONALiST

()normal co patolowUl (Rio de Janeiro: Forensc-Universitaria. 1978).

Portuguc\t' translation oft he 1972 ~econd, n·vi~<·d French edition.

BII:!Lr0GRAPHY

"Die llerausbildung des Komeptes der biologischen Regulation im 18. und 19.Jahrhundert" (pp. 89-109), first published in Fn·nch in 1977; "Der Heitrag dcr Baktcriologit: zum Untergang dt·r 'medizini~chcn Theorien' im [9. J<~hrhundert" (pp. H'::l-109), first publi~hed in hench in 1977;

"L 'llistoirc des sciences de l'organisat ion de Blainville et !'Abbe Maupicd," Revue J'histoirc des

S(

icm.Ts ~:? ( 1979 ), pp. 7 3-91.

"Zur Geschichte der Wissenschaften vom Leben ~eit Darwin" {pp. 134)3). first publi~hed in French in 1974.

Included in this reader.

1980

"Preface," in Othmar Keel, La GCnCalug1e de l'histopatholoaic (Paris: Vrin, 1979 ). pp. i-ii. "Pn'·facc," in franr,;t'i~ Dclaporte, /_e Second n?9nc de Ia nmurc (Paris: Flammarion.

"ll· Cerveau et Ia penst?e," Prospecth'e ct

~ontC

14 (Summer 19~0), pp. 8[-'::18.

Based on a lecture delivered on h.·bruary 20, 191-10. at a confercncL"

1979), pp. 7-10. Translated into English in 1982 and German in l9H ~"L'oggetto della storia delle scieme." in Gaspare Poli:ui, cd., Sciewa cd cpistcrrlc'-

organized b) the "Mouvement univn<;e[ de Ia re~pons,lhilitl· scicntifique." in Paris. Reprimed with

~orne

corrections in 1993.

lof!id in Francia ( !900-1970) (Turin: Loescher Editore. 1979), pp. 200-10.

"fl.1arc Klein, hi~torien de Ia biologie," in Marc Klein, RcwJrds d'un hwlowHc:

Translation of"l.'Objct de l'hbtt_Jire des science~." published in frude1

F.volution de l'appro(he scicntifique. I 'hucigncment midiwl strr.Jshourgcois (Pari~:

d'l?!sUmc ct de phdoJuphic des .rocna:s ( !968 ). ~Vrucnschaftswschhhtc und EpistcmlliOfliC: Gcsammclte Aub·auc, Wolf Lepenie~.

ed., trans. Michael Bischoff and Walter Seitter (FrankfUrt am Main: Surkharnp

Jlt"rmann, 1980), PP· ,·ii-xii. St"e Canguilhem\ obituary ol .,Jt·in abo\'e, fifth ~·ntr) under 1976. '"l'rt?face," in Andrl· Pic hot, E/Cmcms pour unc thCone de lo bioloHie (Pari~: Maloine,

19HO), p.

Verlag, 1979). A reader ol Canguilhem's worh. including:

"Die Ccschichte der \Visscnsch.1lten irn cpistemologi>;chcn \Verk Ca~ton Bache lard'' (pp. 7-21), fir~t published in French in 1%3:

7~10.

"Conditiom de l'objcnivire scientifique," Raiwn prisentc 55 ( 1980), pp. 81-83. "What i~ Psycho!tJg)" ?" !dcofo,q\ ond ConsciPusncn 7 ( 191\(J), pp. 37-50. Translation h) Howard Davies ol tht• text fir'>t puhli~hed in 1958.

"Ocr Gegenstand der Wissens<...haft<;geschichte" (pp. 22-37), fir~t pub-

1981

lished in French in 1968; "Die Rolle dn Epistemologie in der heutigen Hiqoriograhie der Wi~­ s<.·mclufl-t•n" (pp. 38-58), fir~t pub!isht'd in Italian in ]97h and in rrench

ldee/o.'/!ll c mcionuhdadc

ll
it~ncio> du Fld,J ( Li~bon: Fdi~·t\n

70. J9fl I).

rranslation of the first rrench edititm ( 1977).

in 1977; "Die Epistt~mologische Funktion des 'Einzigartigcn' in dt'r Wis<;enschalt vom !.eben" (pp. 59-74), first publi5hed in 1-rench in 1968; "Theurit' und Technik de"> Fxperimentinem bci Claude Bernard" (pp. 75-HH), fir~t publi~ht'd in 1--"rench in l%7;

4J2

ld(iolo[/ie ct rational itt! dons !es sciences J~ /o ric: Nourdlc> ewdc1 d'hi1toire et de philowphic des scicnu><; (2nd re\'. t"d., with corrections, P
An Italian tr,lnslation of thi~ edition was publi~hl"d in 1992, and .1n Fn~li~h

traml
4ll

I A

VrTt.L

RAT•DNALIST

"PrefJ.n·," in Henri Pl·quignot, hcilhr cr Ctre Thi~ text wJ.s

de demain:

~·rcdhr

l'k'U\

~ccond

(Paris: \'rin, 1981 ), pp. i-\'.

rwJcs

d'hi~toire

EliRI rOi_,R.>.PHY

et de philo\l)ph!e des science\ (5th ed., Pari~: \'rin, 191' ~).

ricil/,•llc~

Includes all the te:as publi~hed in dw 1'-lhh l·ditiun, ph.~~ "Puis~
(Vrin, llJH6, pp. i-v, with a "Complt>ment pour

limite~ de Ia ration,1lin·· en ml·decirw," J.!so puhli~hcd in the proceedings

also indudt•d in thl:

ct .:ue

Ill' II\

CRIT·C.AL

edition. rwwly t>ntitled

une nouvelle Cdition," p. vi).

ofaconferencein 1984(pp. F11-.f11).

"Gustave i'vlonnd, philosophc, pt;dagogu<'," in Loub Cros, eel., Gustave J1onod:

Fxtr<~ets included in this rt:'.hkr.

Un Pionnier en Cduwtion Lcs Classes nauvrllcs de Ia Libirution (Paris: Comitt-

"Vnrwort," in Fran\ois Delaporte, Dt~s

universitJ.ire d'infOrmation pl·dJ.gogkjUC, 1981), pp. 15-19.

~Cgetahilischcn

"What is a Scientific ideology?" Rudrwl Philosophy 29 (1981), pp. 20-25.

Translation of the text first published in rrench in 1979.

1982

J.

Xl.'
Piquemal.

Pre~5t'~

R(•print ol the

~tudy

J.

1984

lllm.mn, Du DCvcloppcment

Q

l'holutwn au

J.

in I hal.>.> (1%0). published in 1962; with a "Pre-

Dagognct (Paris: Vrin, 1984), pp. 7-1/J.

sentation" hy Etienne Balib<~r ,md Dominique Lecnurt, pp. v-vi. A nt'w, identical edition ,1ppc.1n-d in 19S5. :\iature'~

.Sc(ond Kmgdom (Cambridge ..".-1A:

.~nuromic

d'un

ipi~tCmologue:

Fram;·oi1·

An introduction to the proceedings pf a conh-rl'I1Cl', organi:ted by Can-

Julien en Beaujo!ai~, had written his

I'ranslation oftlw book first publi~hed in french in 1979. '"Emile Littrt:'>, philosophe de Ia biologi(' et de Ia mt:'>decine," Ct~ntre internasyntht~~e.

Lambert, Y. Michaud, A.-,\\. Moulin,

_uuillwm. and held nn tvta~· 14, \983, at th1· 1\\usC.e CI,HJdt· fkrnard in Saint-

.'v11T Press, !Y82), pp. ix-xii.

tional de

"Prl·~cntation del' Anatomie," in G. Canguillwm. C. Debru, G. F~cat, E Gul·ry,

llni\'l•rsitairn de Francl:, 1982).

'"Foreword," in hanl;oi-. lk1aportt'.

,\'oturrcich, iihcr die Fronen de\

PP· 7-9.

Translation and an introduction by Mike Shorlland, pp. 19-20.

\Vith G. L1passadc,

/1\c'ttc

im IS Jahrhundcrt (Frankturt: Ullstein MJ.terialen, 1983),

Aacs Ju (,,1/oquc Lmilc L1ttri 1801-1881. Paris, 7-9 octohre

1981 (Paris: Albin Michel, 1982), pp. 271-83.

These proceedings .tlso c<1nstitute a special issue oft he Revue de ~rnthCse 106-10H (April-Dec. 19H2); included in this reader.

trl

discuss the work~ qf 1-ranc;_:oi~ D.tgognet. IJ.Igognct

dis~crtJ.tion,

LJ Ruiwn

c't

!cs rcmCdn

(P.tri~:

Pres5es Univer-

sitaires de France, 1964), underCanguillwm\ ~upervisi<Jn. "PuissJ.nce el limite~ de Ia r.1tion,1litt- l'n mCdecim•," in Charles Marx, ed.,

.HCdccine, science et technique: Rewl'il t/',:tudcl rCd1,(J('cs d l'ocwsion du ccntcnairc de Ia mort de Claude Rcmard ( 1813-1 S i 8) (Paris: Editiom du Centre national de !J. recherche scicntifigue, 1984), pp. 109-30. R{·printcd in the fifth edition of [tudes d'hi>toin• et de philowphic dc1

sdcnces ( 198 3 ); included in this reader.

1983

"Ga~ton 13.tchelard, psychanaly~te dans Ia citt"- scicntifique?"

II Protagom 24.5

{jan.-June 1984), pp. 19-26. Canguilhem was awarded in 19f\3, in al,.wntia, the Sarton Medal, the highest honor of the History ol SL·il-nl_t.: Societ~ (sec below, in Part T,vo, entry under 1984, for tht• rdnl'net' ro thl' citatirm).

Published in an is~ue of tht' jnurn,1\ (kvoted to "C.1ston Bachdard. Kilancio critico di una

epi~temnlogia."

"Entrctien aYec (;eorgc~ Catlguilhem" (\\'ith J~·an-Pi(·rre Chrclien-Goni and Christian La:t:teri ), in ln.lllc!phnc>: Ct!h!cr_> S. 1.S. 1 { 19~4 ). pp. ~ 1-34.

4l4

411

A

VITAL

CRITICAL

RATIONALIST

1985

BIBLIOGRAPHY

"Lecture et souvenir de Jean Rrun," in Franyois Dagognet et al., Une philosophic du seuil: Hommage Dijon,

[Comments in J Comiti- consultatif nati(Jnal d'Cthique pour les sciences de Ia \·ic ct de Ia sante, Rapport 19f/4 (Paris~ La Documentation fran~aise, 1985),

1987), pp. 1-7. Published in a Festschrift prt'scntt'd to Jean Brun, a Fn·nch philo~opher

who had been a stufh:nt ofCanguilhcm at tht' l.yt:l:t' Fermat, in Touloust',

pp. 182-84. Comments on three papers pn•sented by F. QuCre, M. Glowinski and

in 1937.

M. Pel icier at a roundtable on the "Problf-mes d't">thiques poses par Ia re-

"Discours de Monsieur George'> Canguilhem prononce le 1'"r decembrc 19R7 ,l

cherche sur le systCme nerveux humain,'' organized by the French National

\'occasion de Ia remise de Ia M{daille d'or du CNRS," Medaille d'or du C,\'RS

Committee on Ethics in the Life Sciences and Medicine, December 6, 1984.

1987 (Paris: Centre National ric Ia Recherche Scientifique, 1987).

Emile Boutroux, Des Viritis titernelles chez Descartc.~. Tht'>.se latinc traduite par M. Georges Canguilhem, elf.ve de !'Ecole Nonnale Superieurc (Paris: Vrin, 1985 ). Reprint of the 1927 edition, then published by Felix Alcan, lacking the preface by LCon Brunschvicg; with a short "Avant-Propos" by Jean-l.uc

"Avertissement des editeun

a !.1 prt>miere edition," in Jean

Cavailli:~,

Sur Ia

l.o9ique et Ia theorie de Ia science• (4th ed., Paris: Vrin, 1987), pp. ix-xiii.

The first thre(• t'ditiqn~, l:wginning in 1947, had been published b~· the

i\1arion. ''Fragments," in Revue de mitaphysique et de morale 90.1 (I 985 ), pp. 9 3-98. "Striking fragment~" selected from the works ofCanguilhem, by Dina Dreyfus, Claire S.J.Iomon-Bayet and Jean-Jacque~ S.1lomon. "Descartes et Ia technique,"

A two-page printed text of Canguilhem's acceptance speech of the CNRS's gold medal for scientific achievement~.

Cahier.~

5. TS. 7 ( 1985 ), pp. 87-9 3.

Reprint of the paper first published in 1937.

Pn.:~scs Univer~itairt·~

d(• France.

Seijou to Byouri (Tokyo: Hosci University Pres~, 19H7).

Japant'St' tramlation, by l~lkehi~a Taki1.ama, of Lc Normt!ll't ll' Pathoh',qlqut•.

''PrdJ.ce," llutpr.• o.md hchnDIDgy 4 (1987), pp. 7-10. Thb text

wa~

Canguilhem's contribution to "Science: Ia renaissance

d'une histoire," a colloquium held in memory of Alexandre Koyre in P.ui~

1986

on June 10-14, 1986. It i~ printed here as the introduction to a special journ.J.I issue of the proceedings of that colloquium.

"Sur l"llistoire de Ia folie' en tant qu'hCnemenr," I.e Debat 41 (Sept./Nov.

1988

1986), pp. 17-40. Note on the circumstances surrounding Canguilhem's report on Foucault'~

doctoral dissertation. Didier Eribon published the report in 1991

(sec below, first entry under 1991).

ldeolow· and Rationalitr 1n the History of" the Life Sciences, lrans. Arthur Cold.

hammer(Cambridge. MA: .'-..tiT PrL·~~. 1988). Translation of the second, rcvi-.ed French edition (\981); extracts in-

1987

cluded in this reader. "Pres{'ntation," in h·es Sch\\aru, E.\pCnenCt' er umnaiswnce du trarail (P,uis:

"La Decadence de l'idte de progrf-s," Rn·ue de mCtaphyr;iquc ct de morale 92

Editions Sociales, 1988), pp. 19-22. "I.e Statut epistCmologiqul' dt' Ia medf"cinc," 1/isto~v and Philosopht of the /1fr

(1987), pp. 437-54.

4]6

4l7

A

Scicn~e•

VITAL

PATIONALIST

CRITICAL

10 (suppl. 1988), pp. 15-~9.

"PresentJ.tion," in Fran\oi~ De laporte, Hi.1toirc de Ia jlhrc jounc (P.tri~: Payot,

Included in this redder.

Jq8q}, pp.

liansh,woincn no reh•h1 (!Okyo: Howi University

Pre~~.

19HH).

Il-l~-

Translated into Spanish in 1989, English in 1991 and Japanew (in pres~).

Japanese translation, by Osamu Kanamori, o( La formation du concept de

"Preface," in Anne fap:ot-Largeault, v~ Causes de Ia mort: liistoirc nalllrcllc ct

rCjh:-1c. "La ~antC:·,

BIBLIOGRAPHY

fOctwrs de risque (Pari~: Vrin I Ly(ln: lnstitut intndisciplin,lin: d't:·tudes

concept , u!gain·

d

question philnsophique,'' Cahicrs Ju >lminairc·

epi~tt-mnlogiques.

ile philosophic 8: Lo santC (Strashuurg: Editions Ccntrt• de Documentation

"PrCsentation," in J1ichcl Fouwu!t ph1losophc: Rcnconfrc imernationale, Poris 9,

en I I istoin· de Ia Philosophic, I9H8 ), pp. 119-3 3 ·

10, II janvier 1988 (Paris: Sl'uil, 1989), pp. 11-12.

!"he text of a lecture given
Published as a hooklt"t in 1990. and again, in p.ut,

J(}R9), p. xiii.

.h

Ra~ed on

the intmduction to a

book in 1992, under the title "La ~ante, verite du corps."

.1

~peech k1r thl' t.olloquium org:
le Centre Michel f·oucault.

,)

"Prefacio," in Fran~ois De laporte, liistoria de lo flchrc amarilla (Cemca: Ill 1-

:~

UN.-\,".-l. 1989), pp. 13-14.

1989

Sp.-.ni~h trami,Hion nfthe \ext publi\hed )ir~t in l:rl'nch (~L'l' above,

thrl'e entries up). "[ e5 Maladic~." in Andre J
pp. illl-lh. Included in this reader.

"Philnsophie d'unc t-viction: l'obj<'t contn· Ia chose," Rn·uc de mhaphr·siquc ct

"Physiologic, I: Physk,logit• animale ~ Objcctifs et mCthode," Fncyclopacdiu

de

unn·crwlis 18 {2nd cd., Paris: lnc~·clopacdia llnivers
pp. 244-40.

95.1 (1990), pp. 12)-29.

Hl'vicw of FrJW,_(li\ Dagognel, f!ogc· de l'oblcl ( 1-'Mi~: Vrin, IY89).

La

Reprint from the first edition.

mar<~lc

Sant,~. ,-ollL'Cpt vulg
ct quc.\tion phdowphiquc

(Pin-B<~lma:

Sabin. J(j90).

A thirty-six-page booklet reprinting the text first publi~hed in llJHH.

"Rl·gulation ( epistCmol(lgie ), " Encyc!op<Jcdia univcrsal!s 21 (2nd ed., Paris: Fncyclnp.h·dia

Univcr~d!is

France, J<:.J8g)_ pp. 711-13.

lqql

HC"print from the first edition. "Vie," [nqclopacdia universalis 23 (2nd ed., Pari~: Encyclopaedia Universalis Fram:e, 1989), pp. 546-53. Kcprint frum the fir->t edition; excerpts from tht' firs\ cditi•m are in· eluded in thi~ reader. The ,\'orma/ and the Pathological (1\'cw York: Zone Books, 19H9).

Reprint ofth1· tr.mslation publhht•d by Reidd in 1978; rxtr,ltts included in thi~ reader.

"Rapport de M. Canguilh{'Ol sur le manu.\crit di·po5l' p.tr i\1. Michel foucault, dire' teur de l'lmtitut fratH,.-ais de !lam bourg, ('n vue de l'nht1·ntinn du pnmi~ rl'imprinwr cnmmt· these princrpale de dPctnrat l'\ lettrn."

Canguilhem's rcpiJrt (r\pri! 19. 1900) on Fouc<~ult\ doctoral di~~~·r-ta­ tion published umkr thl' tith- 1-o/"· et dhwmn: !I moire dr: Ia fohc claui'-{UC

a l'd,qc

(Paris: Plon, 1901 ), in Didit·r Fribon, -1khcll oucau!t (2nd cd., l'ari~:

FlJ.mmari<m, 1991), pp. 358-01.

439

A

VITAL

RATIONALIST

CRITICAL

"Qu'est-ce qu'un philosophe en France aujourd'hui?" Commentaire l4.51·(Spring 1991), pp. 107-12.

FliBL.IOGRAPHY

Partial reprint of the rext published t\vice befort:', undt'r the title "L.1 santC. concept vulgairc ct question philnsophique," in 1988 and 1990.

Occasioned by the awarding of the Jean (availle~ Prize to J<·an-Pkrre St'ris for his book Machine et wmmunication (Parh: Vrin, 1987), at the Ecole Normalc Supt~rit'urc, March 10. !990.

/dcologia e ra/.ionalitd nella 5toria dell<' scien/<' della vita: ('./uovi studi di storia e Jilosafie delle scien;~e (Florence: La Nuova ltalia Editrice, 1992).

Translation, with an introduction by jacques Guillcrmt' (see bdow, Parr

"/lege! en France," ,tfoga;~ine littiraire 293 (Nov. 1991), pp. 26-29.

Two). by Paola Jervis of the 1988 French revised edition.

Extracts from the article published in 1949. I 'Homme de VCsale dans fe monde de Copanic (P.1ris: Lahoratoires lJelagrangt', 1991 ).

1993

A reprint, as a booklet, of the article first published in 1965. "Tt·moignage," in Socit·t~ de~ Amh de \'Ecole nurmale 'uphit·urc, Bullerin 186 (Dec. 1991). pp. 20-23.

"Lc Cerve.m et Ia pen<>i-e," in Georw~ ConfJuilhem: Phtlosoph(·, histoncn dCI' sciences. Actes du colloque (6-7-8 dicembre 1990) (Paris: Albin Michel,

On J(•an Hyppolite.

1991), pp. 11-JJ.

"Preface," in Fr.m~ois Delaporte, The Historv of Yellow Fever (Cambridge, MA:

Rt•print of the articlt> originally publisht>d in !9~0; tht> subtitlt>s that had been aJded by the journal ,uc omitted, and some of the original para-

MIT Press, 1991 ), pp. ix-xi.

!!raphing has been reestablished (sec p. I~ n.1).

English translation of the tt·xt first publisheJ in french in 1989. Kut~akush' KaeakutetsuHaku Kcnkru (Tokyo: Hosei Univer,ity Press, !991).

"!'reface," in Jacques Piquemal, 1-:ssais et lerons d'histoire de Ia medccinc et de Ia

japane:-.t• trJ.n\l
biologic (Pari-;: Prc<,<.c-; Univt:rsitaircs ~It- France, !94 3 ), pp. 7-H.

"Prcldce," in Fran~ois Delaporte, Ounetsu no rckishi (Tokyo: ,r...1isu;u Shabo, 1993). Japanese transl.ltion of the text first publi~hed in French in 198q.

1992

Part Two

"Postface," in Jean Gayon, ed., Bujfon 88: Actcs du Col!oque international Pari<;.Honti-<MJ-Di}'m

(Pari'>: Lihrairie Phi\osuphique Vrin 'L)·on; ln~titut inter-

disciplinaire d'Ctudcs Cpislt~mologiques, 1992), pp. 745-49.

A SEu-_cnoN or Rf-vrnvs

AND CoMMENTS

O:"J

CANGUJUII-'"t's \VOKKS

"Ouverture," in Eli,abc-th Roudinesco, ed., Pema la folic: l:ssms sur Michel rouwuft(Paris: Galilee, 1992), pp. 39-42.

1933

Opening address given at the colloquium on tht~ "Hhtoire de Ia folie trentt• .tns J.pri-5,'' held by the Socit-te d'histnire d\: !a psy( hiJ.trh-

t'l tit'

J,,

psychanalysc, in Paris, on November 23, 1991. "La ~.mlC, veritt·· du corp~." in Marie-Agnes Bernanlis, ed., L 'hom me el fa wnt<:

HJyml•nd :\ron, "Reflcxit\1\S <,ur le 'p.Kifi<.mt· intCg:r:d'," l dm.'s prof''-h: (h:h. 19 3 3 ),

pp. 96-99. On "La Paix

~am re~en·e"

( lg12).

(Paris: Seuil, 1992), pp. 9-!5.

440

44'

A

VITAL

RATIONAl 1ST

CRITICAL

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1946

1959

Daniel Lagache, "Le Normal et le pathologique d'aprl~s Georges Canguilhem,"

Jean TheodoridC~. Review of "Lc~ Concepts de 'luttc pour ]'existence' ct (h

Rullctin de Ia facultC deslcttre> de Strasbourg14 {1946), pp. I 17-10.

\election nature lie' (1959)," An hive~ internothlfla/e<; d'h11toirc des s,·icnccs I~

A review ofCanguilhem\ 1443 study. lagachc, who wa~ ont.: nf the e,uly

(1959), pp. 32-33.

proponents of psychoanalysis in France, had entered the [cole Normale Sup~riemt' in 1~24,

tht'

~·.1n1e ~-car .IS

Cang1rilhcm. lit'

,,l~o

ta1rght

.It

the Uni-

1964

versity ofStra~IJOurg when he wrote this article. This revit'W was also published, in a ~lightly shorter form, in the Rcrue de mCraph_niquc ct de morale

Pic-rre MJchcrey, "l.a Philosophic de Ia ~cience rlt- Ccorgt·s Cmguilhcm. Epist(·-

51 (1946), pp. 355-70.

mologiv

l't

histoire des sciences,'' La PcnsCc I I I ( 1964 ), pp. 50-74.

With a foreword by Louis Althm~er, pp. 50-S4.

1956 1967

P. Delauruy, Rcvie\\ of I a F,Jrmation .fu con(cpr de rCJ7nc· (Pari~: Presses Univer<,itaires dt' Francl', !955), Archrves internationaln d'hi>toirc des scicm,'\ 9

jL·an Lacroix, "Le Normal ct le pathologiquc," Le ,.11onde, Jan. 8-9 ( 19b 7), p. l ~­

(1956), pp. 161-62. !-.B., Review ofLo Format ron du concc·pt de rijJ..,e f>re~\es

aU.\

Rt·vinv of the 1966 editiom of the book published under that title.

.\TI/' er X\'/fr siCdcs (Pari,:

llniversitaires dt.: France, 1955), L'AnnCe psrchologiquc 56 (1956),

1968

p. 329. Unly the aUlhor\ initials ar.:- given.

Frederic L. Holmes, Review of Claude Bernard, Lcc;ons sur /.!s phe'nomCncs de fo 1·ie

1957

com mum au., llllimou~ ct <JU'< vCfi•;Wux (Pari~: Vrin, [96fl), in IIi~ 59.)

(1968), pp. 149-50. (An1m~mousl.

C. Rudolph. Rcvil'w ofCI.1udc Rt•rnard, Lcc;om .wr lc1 phCnom~'nes de /(1 , 1e wm-

Re\'inv of Lr Furmat1on du con<~-pt de n;fll'\c au\ .\T/1" et XTIW

animuux ct au\ rCgCtOU\ (P<~ri~: Vrin, 1966),

siicfcs (Pari~: Presses Univcr\itaires de France, 1955), Revue de mCtophn1quc

muns

ct d.: morale 6~ (1957), pp. 99-10!.

tionales d'histoirc dn 1-cienccs 21 .82-H 3 ( 1968 ), pp. 196-97.

OIL\'

.'lrchnn rntcrno-

1970

1958

Alvin P. Dobse\·age, Rl'vicw of La /·ormation du concept de rCflne

itl

llll.\

XVW et

.r...\auro Di Giandomcnico, Revit·w of hudes d'hi_\tmre cl de ph1lomphic des scicmC\ (Pari~: \'rin, 19f>H ), lpistcm<' 4 ( 1970), pp. II 3-l·L

\' ~-{//'' 1-iCllCI (Paris: f'n·,~c~ Universitaircs dt• Franc c, 19 55), Phrlosoph1 <~nd

In ltali,m.

Phmomcnolo9ical Rncurch 18 (Sept. 1957-Junc 1958), pp. SbS-69.

443 I

j

A

VITAL

RATIONALIST

CRITICAL

Annette La'"·er.<., "~or a 'Committed' Hi.ltory of Science." Historr ofSciena 9

BIBLIOGRAPHY

histoire des sciences; lc rationalisme applique des sciences biologiques," discusses Canguilhem's epistemological views. A second edition \\-'.l~ pub-

(1970). PP· 101-101. RPvicw of Etudes d'huMire et de philawphie des sciences (Paris: Vrin, 196~ ).

lished in !979.

1971

1974

F. CnurtCs. Review of Introduction d l'histoire des sdence~. vol. I (Paris: Hachcttc,

Ywm Gauthier, Review of La mathCmatisation des doctrines infrrmcs (Paris: Vrin,

1968 ), [,;, 65 ( 1974 ), pp. 5 27-28.

\971 ), Etudci philosophiqucs 26 ( ISI71 ), pp. 124-2 5.

rranyois Russo, "Epistemologic et histoire des K'iences," Arch In'S de phdosophic

37 (1974), pp. 617-57.

1972

A review essay that comments Dominique Lecourt, Paur unc Critique de l'CpistCmologic (Pari~: MaspC:.ro, 1972).

or1 many ofCanguilhem's works.

G. QuartJ, "G. Canguilhem. storico della ~ciema," If PrMagoro 14 (1974),

pp. 95-96.

Chapter 3: "L'Hisloire C:.pistCmologique de Ge.IJtgcs Canguilhe.m," pp.

64-97. 1977

hant;:ois Russo, "Chroniquc Jcs sciences ric Ia vie," Archive-' de philosophic 3S

(1972), pp. 469-IOH.

An essay review, including comments on numerous worl...s ofCanguilhem. Jean Starohinski, Re\'iew of !:_tudes d'histoirc ct de philosophic dn sciences (Pari~:

J.A.

Schuster, Review

Vrin, l%t-l), Bulletin a{ the History of.Hedione 46 (IY72), pp. HH-~9.

1973

nf l_a .l1athimatisation des doctnnes in{tJrme<; (Pari<.: IIer-

mann, 1972), Annals of Science 34 (1977), pp. 78-81.

1978 ,\-1irhel Foucault, "Introduction," in Georges Canguilhem, On the Nrrmol ond the Patholoi-)Jca{ (Dordrecht: Reidel, 197~ ), pp. ix-xx.

Jaml'S L. larson, Review of Etudes d'histoirc et de philosophic des sciences (Paris: Vrin, 1968),/sis64(1973).pp. 115-16.

M. Eck, "ll' Normal et le pathologique," La Nouvelle pressc mCdicalt· 2.1 (Jan. 1973), PP· 51-56.

For a slightly different tramlation of the same text, see second l;'ntry under 1980. lverett i\lcndelsohn, "Editorial Note," in Georges Canguilhcm, On the l'•.l<Jrmol

and rhe Patholo9iwl (Dordrccht: Reidel, 197H). pp. xxiii-xxiv.

A defense ofCanguilhcm's viewpoint against attJ.cks made by F. Duyclacrts in his hook I a ·"''ot1[1n de normal en p~1 cholo9ie clinique (Paris:

Giu5eppe Quarta, "ldeologia e storia delll· scieme in G. Canguilhem," flollctino di ftotia della filoso[iil 6 (!978), pp. 2 N-51.

Vrin, 1954). Michel Fichant, "l'C:.phtCmologic en france," in franyois Chatclt:t, cd., La

1979

philosophic au 2CY siecle (Paris: Hachette, 197 3 ), pp. 129-72. P<~rt Four of thh e~say (pp. 161-70), under the title ''EpistCmologil· et

444

\-V1 1lf l.ep(•nies, "Vorbcmcrkung des 1-lerali~gehers," in Georges Canguilhem, Wii-

441

A

VITAL

CRITICAL

RATIONALIST

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1982

scnschaft•seschichte und Epistcmolo9ic: Gnammr/rr -4ufslit/_{', \Volf Lepenics, eel. (FrankfUrt am Main: Surkhamp Verlag, 1979).

~1. Short land, "Disease a~ a Way nfLile," ldco!ogr and Conscioumcss 9 (19Kl-82),

Introduction to this reader.

pp. lll-22.

S. ,\l.nnnTi, Rnicw of l_a conOSctll/rJ della riltJ (Bologna: II 1\hJiino, 1976), Rr~-i~ta mti{Q

dr Horia della f!luscJ(itl 34 ( ilJ7lJ ), pp. 226-3 3.

(.

A rev in\ of On rhc "1\:'nrma/,md rh,· Potholo,qiwl (Dordrecht: Rt'irlt-1.

"],'

197H).

1980

Tamayo, Ruy PCrez, friptrco ( r\kxio::n: Fl C<Jiegio Nacional, !982 ). A critical evaluation ofCangui!h,·m\ work, in particular lhc ,\'ormul t!n,J

Orndla Costa, Review of ldCologic ct ration<J!rti dons /es sciences de lo ric (Paris: Vrin,

1~77),

the Patholowcal, on pp. 15-+1.

Scientia 115 (1980), pp. 227-35.

Michel Foucault, "Georges Canguilhem: Philo~opher of Error," Ideology and

1983

Consciousness 7 (1980), pp. 51-62.

Translation bv Graham Burchell ba~ed on tht: same French original used

Chri5topher Lawrence, Revll'W ofCt"orges Canguilhcm, On the l\''ormal and thr

b~ Carolyn R. Fawcett in 1978 f(Jr the intrpduction to her translation of

Patholof!ical (Dordrecht: R,•idel. 1478), and of E Kr.lupl Ta~lor, Jhe Con-

I hr ,\',•rmal and the Patholo,qical. The he-nch te.xt used by the two transla-

cepts of !lines>, Discmc and A1orhus (Cambridgt•: Cambridge Universitv Pre~r..

tors differs in many ways from that publi~ht>d in Frem·h in 19HS under the

197~). British }ournul for rhc 1 fnt,,n o>( Scrml'l' I 6 ( !9H) ), pp. 9 )-96.

title "L,1 \'ie, !'experience et Ia <>cienct'" (~t't> ]H-hJw, undn 1485). Cnlin (;onion, "The Normal And the Pathological: A Nott- on Georges Canguil-

1984

h{·m," fdeolo,qr and Conmousm·ss 7 ( !980), pp. 33-36. Ru~~t·ll

Maulitl, Review of On the ,\'ormul and the Potholo,qiwl (Dordrecht:

William Coleman, [Lxtran~ t'rorn the citation written and read by \Villi.llll

Reidel, 1978 ), lsi> 71 {I 9HO), p. 6 74.

Coleman, on the occasit1n oftht' award of the Sarton Medal of the 11i\tor;. of Science Society to Ceorges Canguilhem, on 28 October \';IH3j, "Pri 1 e

1981

announcements," l>is 75.2 (lq84), p. 357. W.A. Albury, Review of On the }'v'ormal and the Pathologiwl ( Dordrccht: Reidel,

Jean-Pierre Chrl·tien-Goni, "Georges Canguilhcm, 1904-," in Denis lluysmans, ed., Dictionnaire des phi/uwph,·s, 2 vols. (Paris: Pres~es Universitaires de

1978), Clio.11edica 15 (1981), pp. 115-16. l\1iJ...l~

France, 1984), vol. I, pp. 4hfJ-65.

Shortland, "Introduction to Georges Canguilhem," Rodiwl Philosophy 29

An analy~is ofCanguilhem's main wDrks.

(19KII. pp. 19-20.

,\note on Canguilhem, introducing an Fngli~h tran~lation of"Qu'est-ce qu'une ideologie ~ci<:"ntifiqut•?" ,l\1.utin ~ta.um, Review of On the ;\or mal

1985 dnJ

rhe Patholo,4rwl ( Dordrecht: Reidel,

1

The following artie!,·~ wer,· publi~ht•d in a ~pet ial is.<,ue of Rcvve de m~;l
197H), Journof of the lli>torr of .1/._·Jrunc and Allred S(icnces 36 (1981), pp.

ct de morale 90.1 ( 19H)) (kvoted tn Cmguilhem:

HH-H9.

447

I

A

VITAL

RATrOr
1-r;:m~·oi~ Dagognet, "line oeuvre en trois temps," pp.

CRITIC:.O,L

29-3H.

on "I e Normal ct le patholngique t'll question" in honor ofCanguilhcm:

Canguilhem had been lJagognct's dissertation supervisor.

hanc;ois Dagognet, "Le Normal et le patho!ogique," pp. 7-10;

Michel Foucault, "La Vie, ]'experience et Ia ~cknce," pp. 3-14.

Jean-Claude Beaulne, "Canguilhem, Foucault t't lcs aut res," pp. 11-20;

Tlw rrench version of Foucault's introduction to the English tramla-

Christiane Sinding. "Rei ire Canguilhem. De Ia NormativitC

a Ia norma-

litC," pp. 21-25;

tion of Le Normal ct lc pdtholofJiquc. Henri PCquignot, "Cl·orge~ Canguilhem ct Ia mCdecine," pp. 39-)0.

flenri PCquignot, "L1 Clinique face au deli technique," pp. 27-31;

Canguilht•m had \\'fitten a preface lo Pt>quignot's book, Vieillir ct Ctre

Anne Fagot-Largeault, "Vers un nouveau naturalisme," pp. 33-38; Denis Versant, "EpistCmologie de l'incertain," pp. 39-46;

vieux, in 1981.

JJ.cques Piquemal, "G. Canguilhem, professeur de Terminale (1937-19 J8): Un

Herve Le Bras, "La 'nomtc' d&mographique: Politiquc et ideologic dam les sciences sociales," pp. 4 7-50;

Fs5ai de tCmoignagt•," pp. 63-83. Jacques Piquemal had been a student of Canguilhem in Toulou~t· .md later in

8•B•-•OGR4PHY

Gil!c~ Errieau, "lin Pr.tticien fat:t' aux ClmCepts: 'Normal' et 'patho-

lngique' pour lc gent-ralistc."' pp. 51-52;

Pari~.

Jean-Jacques Salomon, "Georges Canguilhem ou Ia modernitt~." pp. 52-62. Salomon had been a student ofCanguilhem in Paris. Rertrand Saint-Sernin. "Georges Canguilhem

Stuart E Spieker, "L'Un t't le multiple: L'EpistCmnlogie mCdicale fran· c;aisc vue des LISA," pp. 53-59;

a Ia Sorbonne," pp. 84-92.

Saint-Sernin had been a student ofCanguilhem at the Sorbonne.

Franyois Raveau, "Pour un dialogut' nalurc/culturt': Les Vue~ de l'anthrnpologie mCdicale," pp. 61-62; Charlt's Bri<.sct, "La 'Douhle' hisroire 1k \" lolie: Avant et aprf.-~ Ia p:-.y-

[Anonymous]. "Bibliographil' des travaux de Gt'orgl'-' Canguilhem," pp. 9q-105 · This bibliography p.utially coven; Cang11ilhem's writings .md giw·~ a li\t

chiatrie ... ," pp. 63-66:

of Canguilhem\ courses at the FacultC de~ lcttres of tht' Unin•r<.itC: de Strasbourg, at tht' Sorbonne and at the lnstitut d'histoirc des sciences.

G.H. Brieger, Review of On the Normal and the fathologiwl ( Dordrecht: Reidel,

1978), Bulletin of the Hi>tory of Medicine 59 ( 1985 ), pp. 132-33.

Marcel Colin and Thierr~- Guichard, "lJCvianct•, psychiatrie et societe: Lc~

lmpuissances du corps social," pp. 67-69; Mireille Delmas-Marty, "Normes et droit: Rep(·re~ pour une 'mise en

oJmpatibilitt-,'" pp. 71- 76; t-ran<;oise Ga.i!l, "F.xemplain· oct>,:mographie ... Lc- 'Normal' en rholu·

19Bb

C.M.P.M. llertogh, B,1(hclard en Caneuilhem: cpHtcmologische Discontmwreit en het medisch normbcrwip (Amsterdam: VU Uitgeverij, 1986).

D. Chevroton, Review of Du Dh·cloppcment 0 l',:mfution (Paris: Pre~~e~ Uni\'t'rsitaires de France, ll)85), I'Anm!c Psycho/v~J!'}!I<' 86 (1986), pp. 275-76.

1987

tinn permanente," pp. 77-79. Stuart E Spieker, "An lntroduninn to the: Medical Epi~tt·mology of Georges Canguilhem: Moving beyond Michel Foucault," The Journal of Medicine ond Philosop~r 12 (1987), pp. l47-411.

An an.alysis of On the Normal und the Patholnf1ical. F. \',i.S(JUt'7 Gar(;ia, "La Lritica dt." Ia historia. dogm.ltio de Ia~ cicncias en Ia

epistemnlogia de Georges Canguilhcm," in Angt·l 1\·1. Lorenzo, Jose L. Ta~­ sct ,md Francisco VJ.squct, 1-.swdws de historia de los idccH, vol. 1: Locke, llume,

The journal Pro'lpcctivc et SantC published a spt'cia! issue 40 (Winter 1986-87)

Cangui/hem (Los Palacim, Villafranca: A.M. l.orenzo, 1987), pp. 95-126.

T I

A

VITAL

RAT,QNAI 15T

CRITICAl

Pichot, AndrC, Review of Du DCvcloppement G l'bolution (Paris: Pre~ses Universitaires de France, 1985 ), Ftudcs philosophiqucs 42 ( !987), pp. 329- )0.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

tion of France (Cambridge, MA: 11arvard llniwrsity Pre~s. 1988), J1cdical Histo~r

34 ( !990), pp. !13-14.

Roger Smith, Review ofldcologv ond Rationdlitv in the lfisto~r of" the LijC Sciences (Cambridge, MA: MIT Pres,\, 19!-\8) and of The Normal ond the Potholo,qiwl

1988

(New York: Zone Books, 19!:-!9), ;1nnafs oj"Sucnce 47.2 (1990), pp. 199-201. Fran~oi~

Atouvi, "Canguilhem, Georges," Lc Dibat 50 (May-Aug. 1988), p. 2 36.

1991

A short biographical notice.

Jo) 1-L:trve~. Review of /dcolouv and Rationality in the llistorr of the l.ifC Sciences

1989

(Cambridgt:, MA: lv11T Press, 19!-\8),

hi~

82 {1991), p. 1110.

PauiJorion, Rni.·w of l&1olof!iC ct rationalitC (Paris: Vrin, 1977), Rerue de l'lnstitut Gary Gutting, J1ichcl Foucaulr's Archaeolom of Scientific Rcawn (Cambndgt.:: Cambridge University Press, 1989). Includes a discussion ofCanguilhem's work, pp. 32-54.

Pre~~. 1Y~H!),

WC!cl/cl!Jk'

1-2 (1<:.JYI), pp. 167-70.

(Cambridge, ,I\1A: MIT Pr{'s~. lq88), Environment and Planninf! D-Sociel\ and

Kenneth A. Long, Review of ldeolo,qy and Ratwnalitr 1n the I li~ton· of the I ife Sciences (Cambridge, MA: MIT

J •.

(;_ Kearn-;, Review of ldcoi,J!_-ll' ond Rationali~r in the Histo~~- of the I ijC Srienccl

Clio 18.4 ( 198Y), p. 407.

jfhl<<' 4 ( l<:.J41

), pp. 37 3-74.

,\1. Nicols
H.eS()llrlT\

forth<· Snciolnf!,y

(,j \\

i-

entit'it: Know ledge," I Ji~rorr and Philo!ophl' of'-Sricnrr 22 {1991 ), pp. H 7-69.

1990

An l'~~ay review (,f /he ll..·'orma/ and the Pathological (:'-Jew York: IPrw Hook~.

David Hrain, "From the

Hi~tory

of Science to tht:' SncioiPgy of the Normal."

Contemporary .\ociolof{r 19 (1990), pp. 902-906.

1989) as well as of those \vorks of Michel roucault tr.mslated into English. .'-.1. Erl':-.hl'hky, Rl'vit'\\' of ldcolo,qr ond Rotionali~v in the lfislOn o{ the Revic1~·

R. ( )]b~·. Review of ldrnlogr and Ratwnolity in the History of the I ifi: Sciences

(C"mhridge, \·1A: MIT l'ress, 1988), British Journal for the 1/istory of" Science

A review of The Normal and the Pathofogiwf ( Ne\\ York: Zone Bonks,

(Cambridge, J'v1A: MIT Press, 1988), Qyartcrlv

19!-\9).

lif,• SCirnrn

24 (1991), pp. 494-96. D. Pnrtn, Review of The Normal and the Potholo,qical (New York: Zont: Boob, 1llf\9 ), journal of the

of Biolo,q_1· 21 ( 1991 ), pp. 542-4 5.

o{Biolow 05 ( ]490),

1992

pp. 58-59. S. Gilman, He\'iew of The .\-'ormol ond the Patholowwl (New York: Zone

Bonk~.

1989), Isis 81 (1990), pp. 746-48.

Petn Ostwald, Re\'iew of "/he ,\'ormol ond the Pathologiwl (New York: /.one

!Inward I. Kaye, Re\'iew of The .~'ormol and th{' Potholof!icul {New York: Zone Books, 19!-\9), journof o{ Interdisciplinary If is tory 21 ( 1990 ), pp. 141-4 3.

Prn~.

Books, 19!-\9), Journol of the lfiston- of the Rehoriorol S(icn(('l- 2!-\ (Oct. 1992),

pp. 422-24.

ifr ~riences

Jacqun Guillerme, "PrcsentM.ione dcll'edit.ione ita!i.1na: George:-. Canguillwm,

!98!-\), and of Bruno Latour, "/he Pm-teuri/0-

un er(w moderno?," in Canguilhem, ldcoloHia c {(llionolitO ncfla storio dc!le

C. I awn·nn•, Re\'iew of ldeoloHV and Rotionafit_r in the Histo~r of" the I

(Cambridge, MA: MIT

Histo~r

41'

A

VITAL

SO<'M~' de/Ja vita: ,~'uoV/ stud!

d1

RATIONALIST

CRITICAL

swriu e fi/oso(ia de/Jc

SCI en/~'

(Florence: La

BIRliOGRA.PHY

Gerard I ehrun, "De Ia supi·riorit
Nuova ltalia Editrice-, }992), pp. vii-xvi. Jacques Guillermc l1.1d been a student ofCanguilht>m in Paris.

hant;oi~

Delaporte, "l.a Problf>matique historique de Ia vie," pp.

22 3-3 2; Alfonso M. Iacono, "George~ C.1nguilhem et l'hi5toire du concept de

1993

f
Jan Scb<·~tik, "Le ROle de Ia techniqut· dans ]'oeuvre de Georges Canguilhem," pp. H 3-50;

Edited by the organiten of the colloquium: Etienne Balihar, Mireille Cardor, Fram;oisc Durou:-., Michd Fichant, Dominif!UL" Lecourt and jaCCJUt'S

Marc Jeanne rod, "Sur le Conn·pt d"' mouvcmcnt volontairc," pp. 251-61~ Dominique Lecourt, "La Question dt> l'individu d'apn··~ Georges Canguilhem," pp. 2h2-70;

Ruubaud. Includes:

Alain Prochiantz, "Lc Matt>rialisme de (;t'l>rges Canguilhem," pp. 271-78:

Micht>l Hchant, "Georges Canguilhem et ]'Idl-e de Ia philosophic,"

Francisco

Pierre M.acherey, "De Canguilhem .l Cmguilhem en passant par Fou-

PP· 37-48; Fran<;:ois~.: Duroux, "L'Imaginaire biologiquc du politique," pp. 49-57;

Etienne Balibar. "Science ct \·CritC dans Ia philosophic de George~ Canguilhem," pp. 5R-76:

cault," pp. 286-94; Alain Hadiou, ''Y a-t-il une thl·orie
~ujct

che;r Canguilhem(' pp.

195- 304;

Helene Yerin, "GcPrg~·~ Canguilhem et le genie," pp. 77-89; Jean-Pierre Si-ris, "L'Histoin.: ct Ia vic," pp. 90-103; Fram;:ois Gros, "Hommage

J. Varela," 'I.e Cerveau et Ia penst>e'," pp. 279-85;

a Canguilhem," pp.

104-\09;

Claude Debru, "Georges Canguilhem et Ia normativitC du pathologiquc: Dimensions CpistCmologiquc~ et Cthiques," pp. I 10-20; Anne Marie Moulin, "La MCdecine modcrnc selon George~ Canguilhem. 'Concepts en attente'," pp. 111-34; Elis.abcth RoudincKo, "Situation d'un textt": Q\l't"st-ce que Ia p<>ychoIogie?" pp- 135-44; Yvette Conry, "La FDrmation du concept de miotamorpho-;e: Un Essai d'application de Ia probli:matiquc canguilhiomienne du normal et du pathologique," pp. 145-57; Gerard Molina," 'Darwin et Y../allacc .. .', trente ans aprl.-~," pp. 158-74;

Yves

Schwart;r, "Une Rcmontt>t> en

troi~ temp~:

Georges Canguilhem,

Ia vie, le tr,wail," pp . .305-21; and Michel Deguy, "Allocution de cl()ture," pp. 324-30. Includes a letter received from Canguilhem, on p. 324. Fran<;oi.\ Amuvi, "Lin Maitre innucnt ct di<;cret," Lc iHonde, May 27, !993. Rcvit"w of GMrgcs Canguilhem: Philmnphc, hmoricn

de~

Kien(CS. A, tc~ du

colloquc (Paris: Albin .~lichel, !99 3 ).

DidiC'r Fribon, "Canguilhem lc patron." l.c Nc•urel Oh><'fl'oteur (March JR-.?4.

!99l).p. lh. RcYie\\ of Georae> Cannuilhcm: Philon,phe, hl>tnrien des Hicn(e>. Actes du colloque (Pari~: Albin Michel, 1991 )-

Marc Regan, "King Cang," lihirotion (ft"b. 4, 1993), pp. \9-21. Information on Canguilht•m\ life and work, on the occasion oftht• pub-

Pascal Tassy, "Dt>veloppement et temps gCnCalogique," pp. 175-93;

lication of G<'Grf!<'> Canguilhem: Philmophe,

Jean Mathiot, "GCnCtiqut: ct connaissancc de Ia vic," pp. 194--107;

colloquc

(Pari~:

Albin ,\lichel, \993 ).

413

hHt,lfl<'n

dn >cicnn•<;. A etc> du

A

VITAL

RATIONALIST

Acknowledgements The compil.ltion of thi~ bibliography benefited substantially from the gcnnou~ a~sistancc

Notes

of many peopk to whom I am greatly indebt{'d and very grate-

ful. These in('lude: hanyois Delaporte, Claude i\knard, ,\.1onique David-Mi'n,ud, Pietro Cor~i. lleiL·ne Vhin, Jacqun Guil\erme and Yvn Schwartt, who prqvided photoc-opit·~

at)d rdnence.,- ol titles rlit'ticuh to locate ..mrl Ccorges Cmguilhem

who gave nw copies of rare item~. I also wish to thank

I\\

n of my research a~~is­

tants, Stephane Castonguay who conducted thorough -;carches in bibliographical data banks, and Vincent Pa<"]uetLe who transcribed different version~ of the bibliography, as well as the

documcntali~t~

of our

rt'~carch

center. Pierrt'

Di Campn ,md Marie-Pierre lppersiel, who derliLatcJ much time ami were remarkably ingenuous in procuring texts. I also want

to

thank the

authoritit·~

of the Hihli\)thf-que nationale in Paris, who provided me with a microfilm of the complete l.ibre~ propos d'Alain. Finally, I want

to

stress the exceptional com-

!. jL·an-Franyoi-; Sirindli, GCnCmtion inlcl!.·nucllc: f..:hdf!nW\

l'l

norma/ 1e1H

dam 1\·ntre-dcu.\-f/UCrre> (P,ui~: rayanl, 1988), P· -1-f.S. 2. Ibid., p. 599.

Books, particularly

). Ceorges Canguilhl'm, l e \.'ornwl ct /c p<~th,,fogiquc ( 1-\uis: \'rn~cs Uni-

Mcigh;m Gale, without whom I would have m.1dc numerou~ inconsi~tcncics an,(

n·r~i(;tires Je France, !9h
mistakes. t )f course, any rem.1ining di'"ficicncy is fully mine-.

F,HICt'll

petence, thoroughness and dedic.1tion of the editors at

/on~

I:'\'HVllllJCIJOr>.;

(New York: ?om• HtuJk'>, 19R9).

-1-. Jean-Jacques SalonH,n, "George~ Cwguillwm ou Ia modcrnitt'·," Revue

de mCtaphr>ique ct de morah· I ( 198 5 ). 5. Loui~ Althu~ser, "PrC~cntation," in Pierre ,r>,..1achny, "I a l'hilmnphic de

la ~< i('11CL' de Gcorw·~ Cangui I hem," La Pcmt:c Ill ( lqb4 ), p. ; I. h. Canguilhem, "Introduction: The Knk ol Fpi~tenwlog~ in Cont,·mpo-

rar;. Hi~rory of Science," in ldeofogr and Rau,molin in the 1-/istor.J oj the Uje Science's {Cambridge, MA: MIT Prl'~s. 198R), p. 9.

7. Ibid., p. 3. H. Hruno Latour and Cenfllowkn, "A Hooming Di\cip!im· \hort ol [)i..,ci-

plinl': (SI!cial) Sludin

o)(

.'\cil·nn· it'l frann ." ,\o.:ial Stud1c~ oj .~ 11 cnr,· 17 ( 19K7).

9. Canguilhem, "['Ohj ... t dl' !'histoin· de~ ~ciet1ccs" (1968), in Ftud.:1 (l'hil"-

toirc et de philorophie des socncc_\ ( Sth erl., Paris: \'rin, 1983), p. ] !. \(1.

Ibid., p. 16 J!td ~l'L' pp. 25~26 ol thi~ n·,Hll'r.

11. I hid .. p. 18.

454

A

'/ITAL

RATIONALIST

12. Canguilhern\ Doctorat dTta.t,

/.d

Formatwn du corl(cpc d~ rl:flnc

NOr E S

t!Ut

XVII ct XVI/I siCclc\ {P.uis: Presses Univer<>itaires de r.rance, 1955; Vrin, 1977).

activity of the quarryman or miner, from \'mrk in a quarry or mine. To dwell on this commonplace here would take us too far afield.

· D .1gognc t , "Une (),·uvre en trois· t<"lllll'j" 13. I,·r,m~m~ • R.:ruc de mhaphrst<]UI' .

3. Quoted in Metzger, La Gcnhe, p. 195.

4. This h, in part, the subject of a ~tudy by Jacques Piquemal.

et dt• morale I { J9H5 ). p. 30.

14. Ibid., p. 3!.

5. "Theoretical practice falls within the general definition of practice. It

15. Ibid .. p. 37.

,vorks on a raw material (representations, concepts, facts) which is given by

16. Cmguilhem, "The Question oi Normality in the Hi~tory
other practices, whether 'empirical,' 'technicJ.I.' or 'ideological.' ...

Thought" (1973), in Ideo/ow· and Rationality, p. 12H and seep. 205 of this reader.

thi~

TIH" theo-

retical practice of a science is always completely distinct from the ideological

17. Canguilhem, The ,"-.'ormal <Jnd the PlltholoHrwl. p. 131 and ~ec P· 343 nl

theoretical practice of its prt'history" (Louis Althusser. For :Harx, trans. Ben

reader.

Brewster [New York: Vintage, 1970), p. 167). 6. Sec my "Caston Bache!J.rd," Snen.~iat1 e tecno/,)f:li wntcmporanei l. pp. 65-

\8. Ibid., pp. 196-97. 19. Canguilhem, "Le Concept c·t Ia vie," in Etudes d'histoirc ct de philosophre d.·~ 1ciencc~.

p. 335.

20. Dagognet, "Oeuvre," p. 32.

67. [Bachelard's work in the history of science and epi~temology is much better known in Europe than in the United States, where his reputation i~ primarily a~ a literary critic. Interested rcadt>rs without french may wish to comult

21. "l e Concept," p. 360.

my tramlation ofTh~ New Scientific Spira (Roston: Ac-acon, 1985), which con-

21. lb;d., p. 362.

tains biographical and other information. -TRANS.]

23 ..\{iche! FoucJ.ult, "L<~ Vi(', l'expi-rience cr l.l -;cicnce." Revue de mha· physuflte et J e mow Je 1 (1985) , translated as the Introduction to The 1\J"ormd/ and

7. Gaston Bache-lard, le Hatiriahsmc rationnel (Park

Prc~<,es Univcrsitaire~

de France, 1953).

8. Ibid., p. 86.

the Poth<J/(lwwl.

24. Jean Cavaill{·s, Methode 0\tomatique et Jormalisme: Es.wi wr le probMme

9. See Anne fagot's paper, "Le 'Transforrnismc' de Maupntuis," and my

du fOndcmcnl dt•s mJtht'm£ltl<jUeS (P,uis: llerma.nn, \43H), RL·mdfque.\ sur Ia far-

remarks in the t"nsuing discu~sion in :lacs de fo Journt;c Jlaupcrtuis, Crc!:-teil,

motion de Ia thCorie abstraite des ensembles (Paris: Hermann, \939); Cmguilhcm,

December I, 1973 (Paris: Vrin, 1975). Emile GuyCnot in L't:volution de /<1 pcnsCe

l'r..- et rJ1ort de jean (availlt?I, in Lr1 Camcts de Baudesar (Ambialet: Picrn· Laleure,

sciennjique, le~ sriences dt' Ia vie au\ XVII'" ct XVIII'" siCde1 (Paris: A. tvlichcl. 1941)

1976).

goes so far as to call Maupertuis "a geneticist" (p. 389).

Ca,·aillt-~. "Prote~tantisme et llitlerisme: La cri<>e du Protestantisme allemand,'' Esprit (Nov. \9 33 ).

10. Jean Cavailli·s, Sur Ia logique

rl

Ia thie>ric de Ia sticnce (3rd ed .. Paris:

Vrin, 1976), p. 70. 11. lb;d., p. 78.

PART

ON1: Mn

12. [in french: fracture. The vmrd, whi<'h is to be compared with the no-

HoontoGY

1. He\Cnc Mett.ger, 10 GenC>e d(• Ia soma de~ ,-ristam {Paris: A lean, 1918).

tiom nfan ephtcmolof~ical bn·aJ.. (rupluft") or "tear" (dCchirurc) ushl by Bache lard,

2. No doubt, a "naturJ.I object" is not naturally natural but ratlwr the object

i~ hotrmved from }:an Cavaill~~: " ... L·e~ fractures d'indCpendJ.nce succe~sives

of common rxpcrience and perception within a culture. For exampk. the object

qui

"mineral" and the object ''crystal'' have no significant exi~tence .1part from the

ni-cc~~dirl'tncnt et pour k dCpol~ser" (Sur ld lotJI4tiC et lc~ thCorie, p. 2H).J

ch,l(jll<'

fr1is dCtacht·nt sur i'J.ntCrieur le profil impi·rieux de ce qui vient apr&\

417

f {

A

VITAL

N 0 r

RAl"IONALIST

1), The re~pon'>l' t<J Danvin in France has been studit•d hom the standpoint

t,

•>I crillcal cpi~tL·mo\.-,gy by Y\Ttte Conry, L'fntr<Jductum du Janl'lni~mc en han(~

rj I

au XIX' sii!clc (Pari~: Vrin, 1974). 14. See Alexandre Koyn:·, "Galilee et Platon," Etudes J'histoire de la pemt:e

~cienufique (Pari~: Gal\imard, 1971), PP· 166-95, and EtuJes galilCennes (Pari~:

I /. ,,

~

5

24. Thoma~ Kuhn, "/he Structure of Scicntlji"c Revolutinm (2nd ed., Chicagn: llniver~ity

ofChicag:o Press, 1970); The C(lpaniwn RevolutiOn (Nc\\' Yor\._; Vin-

t.lgc, 1959). 25. hanc,;oi~ Ru..,~o. "Fpistt·mologie t't hi~toire de~ ~ciences," Archives de philo.mphie 37.4 (!974). Fathn Ru~so frequently refers to the important work

Df Knowledw. edited by lmre Lakatos dnd Alan Mu.\gran-

1krmann, !940). At the beginning of the latter work, Koyrl> states that he

Cnt1cism ond the Growth

borrowed the tt'rm murrHIOn from BachdanL It i~ true th.H in Le N1•U1'cl rTril

(Camhridge. UK: Cambridge Univenitv Pn·,..,, l':J70). 1n which Kuhn's idea~

•ncntijique (19H) and /.a Philosophlt' du non (1940), epi~tvmological discontinu-

di<,cmsed at length and at time~ ~everely criticized by LaJ...ato~. Karl Poppcr dJ1d

ity is described using metaphor~ borrowed hom biology. This early Rachelardi.1n

Paul Feyerabend.

Mt'

26. See Ruchdahl, "On the Pre~uppmitions of H i\torians ot Science."

vocabulary wa~ e\irninatt•d in favor of"cpistcmological brt•ak" in I e Rationalisme

27. for a critiiJU<.: of externalism, ~cc Ko~·ri~. "Pcr\pectiv<'\ \Ur l'hi~toire d('~

<~ppliquC ( !949).

1S. Maurice Clavelin, l.a Phi/ow>phie naturcllc de G<JJih;r (Pari'>: Armand Ct•lin, !968), confirm~ the validity of the Archirnedean modt·l and cha\lcngn thl'

..,ciL·nc,·-..," in ftt1des d'histvir~· de /o pnlSL-:C SCICrlflji~uc. This te:o.t i..;, ,1

J.

comm1·nt on

p.1pcr by llenri Gueri.lc, "Some lli~torica\ Assumptions nf the llistory of ~ci­

emT," in A.C. Crombie, eel., Scientific Change (London: lleinemann, 1963 ).

u5d'ulnes'> of the Platonist arfiliation.

28. J.T. Clark, ''The Philosophy of Science and l/i5tory of Science," in

16. Ludovico Ceymonat, Gali/ea G.:~lilei (Turin: Einaudi, 1957).

,l\1.:tr~hall Cl.tget. eel., Criticol Problem.\ in the Historr o{Snenct' (2nd eel., 1'vladi~qn;

17. KoyrC, f-wdc·sgalilCennes, pp. 171-72. 18. Jacqu•·s PiC]uemal, ''Aspens de la pcnst-t> lie 1\h·ndel," lecture de\i"ered

Uniwr'>ity ol

Wi~l~m~in Pre~\,

1962). p. 103.

2':J. Koyri·, 1 rom the Clascd Warld tr> rhe Infinite Unnwse (Baltimore: John~

ar the Palais de Ia \)i·couvcrte, Paris, 1965. \9. In this case, thl' name of the science was translt-rred post hoc to the

30.

ideology; in tht• CJSt' of atomism, it wa'> the other way around. 20. Gerd Ruchdah\, "On tht> Pre~uppositions oft I i'>torians of Scienn·," in Alistair Camcwn Crombi~· and l\·1ichad l]o..,kins, cds .. I 11~/LJ~\' of

Hopkins University Pre~~. 1957).

Sciemc

1 ( 1% 7),

21. See the inaugural lecture in a course on the general history of'>cience, ColiCge de Frann· (March 26, IR92), printed in Revue owdentale, May 1, IR92,

Koyr{·, (he Astronomical Revolution: Coperniws, Kepler, Borelli, trilns.

H.F.\V. Maddi5on {lth.lca: Corne!! Uniwrsity Pre~~. 1971), P· --1-0. 11. t:C>r a ~-ritiquL', ~l't· Michel Ft>tlt'.111it. lht> t)rdcr of lhmg<,: iln ;lrchac,,)p,cp

of the

pp. 67-77.

StT

llumon Sciences rl%6] (New York: Vintage, 1973), pp. 145-65.

32. See i'iquL"mal, "Aspects de !d pensi·c de .1\kndel." 3 ). Koyre, The Astronomical Revolution, p. 77. H. A.L. Jcitteles, "\-Ver ht der Bt>grlinder der Lehrc von den Heflexbewcg-

p. 24. 22. Bach,· lard, I '.-lctintC

rafiO/Jtl/1\IC

de Ia ph_1siquc tVntcmporalllc (Paris:

Presse'> Univer'>il,lires de Franct', !951). p. 25. See also "1 'Actualite de l'hi~toire

de~ sciences," lecture delivered at the Pdlai~ de Ia DCcouvnte, Paris. 23. Bachclard, I'ActivitC rationo/11tc, p. ). See also I e Rationalisme appliqtk:, p. 112: "Ration,1li~t thinking do('S nm 'begin.' It corn·cb. It regulorite\. It

normali,rcs."

ungen:'' ~·lcrtcilahnchrift }iir du: prakrnche Hei/kundc (Prague, 1858), vnl. -1, pp. 50-72. 35. Du Bob-Re)mond i5 known !()r the concluding word, "lgnorahimu~!." of his Uher die Crcnl<' dCI- .~'aturcrkcnncn\ ( \R74 ). 36. Du Boi~-Hcvnl
\Ol.

2, p. 204. The tt'XI o! this addn'~'

4~9

\1'.1\

/irq pub\i.,lwd

A

VITAL

NOTES

RATIONALIST

in the Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften (Berlin, 1859).

54. Ibid., p. xvi.

37. S~t> Du Bois-Reymond's lecture on Ll Mettrie in Reden (Leipzig. 1886), val. I, p. 178. Du Bni-.-Reymond \urdy was not unaware that La Mettrie had '>"ougl1t and found asylum at the court of Frederick l! in 1748.

55. Ibid., vol. 3, p. 14.

56. Ibid., vol. I, P· 246. 57. Ibid .. p. 284.

38. Du Bois-Reymond neglected a point that was clear to Konrad Ec-khard, namely, the relation between the problem of sympathies and that of reflexes.

58. The concept of mca'\UH' in cumparativt" anatomy appear'i in Claude Perrault, architect and anatomist. In the prditce to Mt~moiri'I pour sen·1r 0 J'histoire

39. I have not been able to consult this work, but I have already noted [ear-

n<.Jture!le des animaux (1671-76), he wrote, "It has been necc~sary to agree on a

lier in the work from which this exct~rpt is taken- TRANS. J that Prochaska used

Measure or a Module, as one doe.~ in architecture ... ~o that, when one say~. lor

the concept of reflection in hi~ Physiol
("'{ample, that a dog has an elongated ht·ad, a .,mall ventricle, and an uncomplicated leg, i( is only by comparison of J.l! these part~ with all the parts of the

4-0. Reden, 2nd '>t'ries, ,..oJ. 2, p. 205.

human body." Quoted in fran~oi" Dagngnd, Pour une rhiorie gCnirale de~ form
41. Ibid, p. 117. 42. According to Fritz

Lejcun~. LcitjOden zur (;cschichte

dcr Medi!in ( 194.3),

p. 12 3, Prochaska performt'd more than three thous.and operations to remove cataracts.

(Pari~: Vrin, 1975), p. 178. Bur lor Blainville and Maupic-d, the man-measure is

the more-than-animal-man: that is the criterion ol' perfection in the series.

59. See especially Blainville and Maupied's Histoire, vol. 3, pp. IS and 337;

43. Du Bois-Rt:ymond\ lecwrc is not mentioned in Fearing'~ tnt or bibliography.

and Cuder ~·t Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, p. 431: "M. Cuvier. in my view, is one of tht> mo:-.t emint•nt examples of political philosophy in action.''

44. Blaitwille, Cuvia et Geoffroy Saint-HJ!Q/re (Paris: Librarie j.B. Baillif.re,

60. Ibid., mL 1, p. vii.

1890), p. 436; compare Duvernay. l'./vtice histonquc sur les our raws a Ia vic de

61. Ibid., vol. 3, p. 16.

11. Le B'vn Cm'ier (Park EG. Levrault, 1833). The "science of finance," in which

62. Ibid., p. 529.

Cuder took courses at the Caroline Academy, included economic theory and

63. Ibid.

practice, ''policy science" and

technolog~··

64. ibid., vol. 2, p . .58.

45. Blainvil\c, CUVJ~'r ct Geoffroy Soinr-Hi!airl', pp. 48-49. 46. Georges Cuvier, HJStoire des .\ciences nuturcllcs (Paris: Fortin,

Ma~son,

1841-45), vol. 3, pp. 14-15.

47. Blainville and Maupied, Histoire des 1ciences de !'organisation et de lwrs profVCs, commc base de Ia philmophie (Paris: j. Lecoffre, 1847), vol. 2, p. 65.

P.o\.H 1

Two:

Ev!s·r£MOLOGY

\. /\ristotlt:. De anima, trans. Kenelm Fo:-.ter and Silvester llumphries ( Nc\V Haven, CT: Yale University Pres-;, \95\), ILl, art. 217-IY. p. 163.

2. Ibid., 11.2, art. 254, P· 184.

48. Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 25 3, 27 3, 2!'.0.

l. Ibid., ILl, pp. 196-203.

4~.

4. Jean-Baptiste I amarck, Rccht•nhe<; wr ['organisdtion des corp\ vivdnt (Paris:

Ibid.

50. Ibid., p.

2~5.

51. Cuvier, Histoire, vol. 3. pp. SS-56.

52. Ibid .. p. 61. 53. Blainville and Maupied, Histoire, vol. 1, pp. xiii-xiv.

rayard. 1986). S. Lamarck, Phi/osophie ;ooloa~quc (Paris; Chc1 Ol·ntu et L'Auteor, 1809), vo\. 2, p. 6. 6. Georges Cuvier, Rapport Historiqu!' sur ies progrCs dt.'s sciences naturel/e<;

A

'•',TAL

R"-T',QHA\ ',_',f

22. Paul-Joseph Barthe;r, Nouveau\· iliment5 de lo >dcncc de l'homme (Pari~:

d(-puis !7S9 justlu'J cc jour (Paris: De L'imprimerie impt·riale, 1810).

(;oujon et Brunot, 1806), vol. 9.

7. Ibid.

2 3. Comte, Cours de philowphie positive, vol. 4,

H. Michel foucault, The Order of Thin!JS: An ·lrchaeolotJ_v of the lfuman

2-1-. Bernard,

su~'fkc'S [1966] (New York: Vintage, 1973), Lh. H.

Y.

nun R.mk. The Tr,wmu of Birth ( ~ew Yt_)rk: I !arcourt, Brae e,

10. Rank, The

M_1 th of the Btrth of the Hero, tr,ms. E Robbim and Smith Ely

J'inf••rmmwn

(Pari~:

<1\l

48.

I ilH.liril' J.H. Baillit-re, 1937).

vit?" in f'Ornomsot1on hwlo,t]itJUC ctl,lth\~('fiC de

Hermann. IY72).

2o. Jorge luis Rorges, "The Aleph" (1962), in .I Pcrsonol ilntholow (Ne\-\

Jellitfe (New York: R. Bn·nncr, 1952). 11. Claude Bernard, Introduction d l'itude de Ia midecine expirimentale (Paris

York: CroYc, 1967), pp. 118-54.

,wd Nt•w York: Librairie J.R. BailliCre, !865), vnl. 2, p. I.

27. Antoine Augustin Cnurnot, Considc'ratiom wr lc1 man-he des idies el de1

11. Rent· Descartes, "'Treatise on Man" (AI" X1.201-202), in Descdflc)·:

{.Cncm<'/Jrs dans lcs temps modern<'-' (Buenos Aire-s: El :\tent'<•. !4fA), vol. 2, p. 136. ~8.

Sc!tu,•d PhiJ().>aphicol Wril!llf)'· tr.ms. John Cottingham, Robert Stor>thcM J.nrl

Dugald Murdoch (Cambridgt·, UK: Camblidg~· University Press, 14R4-Y1 ),

Frome

l:!.ernard, Rapport .wr Jn pr.;wh n lu mnf{hr 1/t' J,1

phr~1nlogic

HCn,;m/c en

(Pari~: L'lmprimeric lmperiille, 1867), p. 2~! n.209.

2q. 13londlot, born in 1~10, was a profe~sor of clwmistry at the !acuity pf

vlll. 1, p. IOH. 1~. DcscartC\, "Pa~sion~

of the Soul" (AT Xl.364-65), in ibid., vnl. I,

Nancv. I lis fistulation technique is di.\CUS~ed by Bernard in lewm 26 of re(OIH

de phl-llnlo,qic opCratoire (Paris: Librairie J.B. BailliCre. IR79).

Jrt. 4 7, p. 346.

1-t. ,\1Jrce\lo M.1lpighi, De formatione pulf1 in

30. Albrecht von li<~ller. Eh-mcnto phrsiologiac ( 1762), vol. 4, p. 26.

cn·o (Landini: Apud Joannt'm

1,\. :Owt· Fn\·in \h-int At kt'rkn .. cht, lhuopie (~ttJttgart: Fnb·, 1970): ''\)i{·

~Lmyn, 1673 [\66Q]).

15. Caspar Friedrich Wolff, Fheoria wneratwnH (Halac ad SJ.!am; Litt~ri~

16. Gottfried \Vilhelm l.eibnb, 1he Monado/tlgy

of Lcibni,-, trans. Herbert

Wildon Carr (I_(}\ Angeln: UniV{'rsity of Southern Calif(Jrnia Pre~\, 19 30),

r-

! 12.

17. Leibn~t, "Letter to Arnauld, Nov. 28. 1686, ''in G. W Lcibni?; Philosophi-

cal l:Ha_rs, ed .•md tram. Roger Ariew and lhnit'l Garber

J'her
I kndeli
(lndianapnli~. IN:

to~r

of" Medicine 16. 5 ( 1962 ). 32. lkrnard, Principes de mc:dainc e.\pc;rimcntalc (Genn-a: Alliance Culturelk·

du line, 1%1), p. 211. B. LtlUi~ Pt·i>;~{', /o 1kd,,.-mc <'tIn medcum (Pari~: I ilnJiric J.R. Kail\icn·. 1857). vol. 2, p. 401.

H.1ckt·tt, IYHY), p. HO. 18. Daniel Duncan, 1-ilwJire de /'animal, ou 1<1 umnaissdna du corp.1 un~me

19. Charles Bonnet. "TJ.bleau des consideration~ sur des corps organisCs," in /d Palinginisic phi/o5ophiqu~ (Geneva: C. Philibert J.nd B. Chirol, 1769). CrllltjUt'

ofjud,lJmcnl,

tran~. Janw~ Creul .\-kn·dith

(Oxford, UK: Clarendon Pre~s. 1952), art. 65, pp. 20-22. 21. Auguste Comte, (ovrs d~ philosophic pos1/1Vc (Paris: Schleicher li-i:res, 1907-24), vol. 3, lewms 40-44.

34. Jean Rapti~te BouiiLltld, h-sai wr Ia philosophic midiwlc et mr /es ,qCn,:roliti~ de Ia climquc midica/c {Paris: J. Rouvier et !:. Le Bouvier, IH)6), p. 7S.

pM Ia micaniquc et Ia pout chim1c (1686).

11). Immanuel Kant,

Pensie~. nnter,l.iru~hici·(Paris:

25. llt'nri Atlan. "i\.·\ort

\9 24 ).

]{'Win

15. roucault, The Birth of th~· Clinic, trJ.ns. A.M. Shl'r-idan Smith (New York: Vinta~{', 1475), p. 192.

~f.. Littrt- i<> quoted in Pt·iv,l', Lo .'.fct!cunc rr Jn nn:;J,•uJH, vol. 2, p. 3h2.

37 · Bl'rnard, Principe\- de midcnnc expirimcntalc, p. 442. ~H. Citl'd by Bouillaud in l.1wi wr lo philo.I'Ophie me'diwle cl st1r /cs ,q(:nirulitt:\

de Ia clmiquc mc;diwlc (IH 16), p. 69.

A

VITAL

RATidNALIST

39. Bernard, lntroduttion d /'Ctudc de Ia medecinc exptfrimentalc, vol. 2, ch. 2, sec. 3:

"Vivi~ection."

40. Bernard, Principcs de medecine cxpirimentafe, p. 440. hi~

don, 1667).

3. See, for example, P. Rouin, Auguste Prcnant and L. Maillard, TraitC

way, Bernard remained faithful to Cuvier's view that the nervous

system is the animal and essentially the only organic regulator.

43. Sec Mirko Dra.-en Grmek, Raisonnement cxpirimental et recherches toxiwloBiquc.r (hcz Cl. Bernard (Geneva, Paris: Droz, 1973), esp. pp. 408-16.

44. Rcne-Theophile Hyacinthe Laennec, De /'Auscultation midiate (Paris, 1819). p. 57.

d'histolo9ic (Paris: Schleicher, 1904-11 ), vol. 1, p. 9 5, fig. 84; or Max Aron and

Pierre Grasse, Pricis de biolo9ic animalc (Paris: Ma~son, 1939), p. S25, fig. 245.

4. Ernst Heinrich Hacckd, Gemeinverstiindlichc Werke (Leip1ig: KrOner, 1924), vol. 4, p. 174. 5. Comtc Buffon, Histoirc naturclle des animaux (1748), ch. 10. 6. Buffon, Des UCmcnts, in ibid., pt. 1: on light, heat and firt'.

45. FrJ.nt;ois OJ.gognet, "L'Immunite, historique et methode," lectures at the Palais de Ia DCcouvcrte, Paris, January 4, 1964. 46. On Ehrlich and his \vork, sec Hans Loewe, Paul Ehrlich, Schopfer der Chcmothempic (Stuttgart: Wissenschaft Verlagsgesellschaft:, 1950); Felix Marti

lbant:'7, The .Hind Jnd the World of Paul Ehrlich (New York: 1958), pp. 257-69; t.eon Vogd. "Paul Ehrlich," Re1'U<' J'h,stoire de Ia midecine hCbraique 84-85 (1969); .wd Pauline ,"..UI. M.uumdar, "The Antigen-Antibody Rea<:tion and the Physics .111d Chemistry of Life," Bullwn

2. Robert Hooke, Micrographia, or Some Physioh>.qm1l Dnaiptwm oj Minute Bodies Made by Magnifvinfi Glass, with Observc1tions and lnqUirit·s Thereupon (Lon-

+1. lhirl., pp. 179-80.

42. In

NOTE 5

of the History of Jledicim· 48 (1974),

PP· 1-21. 47. On these mailers, sec Dagognet, La Raison et /es remedes (Paris: Presses

7. Ibid. 8. lb;d. 9. Ibid.

10. On Oken as a nature philosopher, see Jean Strohl. Loren1 Okcn und Gtwg flu(hncr (Zurich: Verlag der Corona, IY 36 ).

I l. On Sch\\'ann and cell theor). '>t'e tht• tundamental work ot f<.1J.rcd Hl)rin,

,\'awamc ct dt!viation de Ia thi:nnc cellula ire dons l'oeurrc de Tht;odorc S(h\l·ann (Pari~:

Hermann, 1960).

11. Marc Klein, Hiswire dc'i origines de /<1 rht;onc tdlu/um·, p. 19. 13. On the origins of cell theory, ~t~l' J. Waltn \Vilson. "Ct'JiularTissue and

Universitaircs de France, 1964 ), and Surria/isme thirapeutique et formation drs

the Dawn of the Cell Theory," Isis 100 (Augmt 194-1 ), p. lhK, and "L>utrochet

concepts midicoux, in homage to Gaston Bache lard (Paris: Presses Universitaires

and th(: Cell Theory," Isis 107-108 {May 1947), p. 14.

de France, 19)7).

48. Bache lard, }_e Mathialisme rationnel (Paris: Presses Universitaires de france, 1953), p. 202. 49. Dagngnct, MCthodes et doctrine dans /'oeuvre de Pasteur (Parh: Presses Universitain·s de France, 1967).

50. lb;d., p. 67.

14. Haeckd, Die Wcltriiucl, in Gemcinwntiindliche Werk.·,

\'OJ.

3, p. 33.

IS. Klein offns additional information on this point in his "Sur It'\ (kbuts J~.: Ia rheorie ccllulaire en France," Thafi:_\ 6 (1951), pp. 25-36.

16. Jean Rostand, "Les Virus Proteines," in Biologic ct midecinc (Pari_\: Gallimard, 1939). For a summary of latn work, we Rostand's "La Conception particulaire de Ia cdlule," in Ln Gronds courant> de Ia bioloaic (Paris: G.~llimard,

1951). PAIH TIHH:Eo: HISTORY

I. My understanding of cell theory owes a great deal to Marc Klein, Histoire des ongincs de /u th.iNI<' ccl/ulairc (Paris: IIermann, 19 36 ).

17. l'he lines that follow were .1ddcd to an article first writtt•n in 1945. The addition seemed natural. I do not say this in order to claim an) prophdic gift hut, rather, to call J.ttention to the f~lCt that certain inno\',lti
Ml'

rnll~·

A

VITAL

RATIONAL:SJ

some,vhat older than advocatn more eager to use than to understand them are

NOTES

in ibid., pp. 99-108. Clersclier i~ undoubtedly right on thi~ point. 27. "It is important to know the true cause of the heart's movement that

willing to admit. JR. Paul Buw· Grawitz\ hpcrimcntelle Grundlawn zu cincr modcrnen Potho-

without such knowledge it is impo~sibk to know anything which relate~ to the

Molewlar-patho!ogie (B.tsel: Schwabe, 1946) is the German

theory of medicine. For all the other functions of the animal arc dependent on

!ogic: Von Cellular ver~ion

/Uf

of a work first published in Spani~h.

19. Charles Naudin, "l e~ EspCces affim·s ct Ia thl>orie de l'i·volution," Revue 1cienti{ique de lo France etdc l'Ctwn[Jer, ser. 2, vol. 8 (1875).

this, a~ \viii be clearly '>Cl"n in what !()[low~" ("Description of the !Iuman Hody" [AT Xl.245], in ibid., p. 319). 28. Poisson took this argument from Descarte~ hirmelf(cf. "To f'lempius,

20. Article 10 of "The Passiom of the Soul" i~ entitled "I low the Animal

2 3 March 1638" fAT 11.67], in The Philosophical 1-1-'fitings of Dm-artes, vol. 3,

Spirit~ Are Produn·d in the Brain," but in fact DesCdrtes show~ how the spirib

p. 9 3 ), to defend the Cartesian view against rather 1-abri's objections: see

come from the heMt in the f()rm of"very fine part~ of the blood." They undergo

Rcnwrc1ues mr la mCthode de .Honsieur Descartes, part 5, ~ccond ob~en·ation,

"no change in the brain" other than to be separated from "other, less fine part~

p. 293 of the second volume of the 1724 edition. The example of the frog

of the blood" (AT XI. 3 35) in Descartes: Selected Philomphical V"Vritings, trans.

who~c

John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff and Dugald Murdoch (Cambridge, UK:

the question was put to him by a corre~pondcnt. He escaped the difticulty by

heart

i~

cxcbcd or head

~evered

clearly embarrassed

Descarte~

when

Cambridge Llniver~ity Press, !988), vol. I, p. 33!. Thus it is not incorrect to

arguing that life is defined not hy muscular movcnwnt but by cardiac heat.

~ay

See "Letters to Boswell(?), 1646 (?)"(AT l\/.686 and 695), in Charles Adam

that the heart is the "source" of the spirit~ in "Treatise on Man" (AT Xll66),

in ibid., vol. I, p. 104. 21. Dcscarte~. "Tre.ttise on Man" (AT Xl.132), in ibid., p. 101 n.l. 22. Descarte'>, Discourse Four in "Optic'>" (AT Vl.109-14), in ibid.,

and Paul Tannery, eels., Oeuvres de Dcswrtes (Paris: Vrin, !974), vol. 4, pp.

686, 695. 29. "(Cor) enim non viscus nobile

l"t

primTps nt ut

u.~quc

adco uti per-

pp. 164-66.

hihetur sed meru~ musculus, carne tantum et tendinibus more coeterorum

n.

const.tns, et sanguini clrcumpellendo imerviem" (\Villi5, Pharmaccuticcs rationo/is

Ibid.

24. Descartes, "Treatise on Man" (AT XI 129-31), in ibid., p. 100.

[ih73l, pt. I, sec. 6, ch. 1). See Appendix, p. 174. See also De wnauini~ inwles-

25. De~cartes, Discour~e four in "Optics" (AT Vl.!09-14), in ibid.,

Lentio (1670), in Opcro omnid, vol. I, p. h6~ ("ex quo liquet cor c.~~t· mnum

pp. 164-66. Rabelais's friend Guillaume Rondclct (1507-1566) ofMontpellier

mu'>culum") and De nervorum descriptio cl usus (1664), in ibid., vol. I, p. 368

appears to have been the first to hypothesize that nerve~ consist of independent

("Uicrndum crit quod ipsius cordis com pages, c.trne val de fibrosa constans,

bundles of centripetal and centrifi.1gal conductors.

potim musculm quam parenchyma appdLui debet").

26. In the 1664 preface to Descarte~'s "Treatise on ~v1an," Clerselier points

30. "In cordc, sicut in toto praeterea musculoso gcnere, spirituum insitorum

out that the nerve\ in'>ertion into the muscle, and thnefore the mmdc\ expan-

particuli~ ~pirituosalinis copula ~ulphurca a ~angine '>uggt"~ta Jdjungitur; quae

sion hy the animal spirits, were poorly represented by Louis de La Forge, \vho

matnies, dum spiritus agitantur, denuo t"li~a. ac velut cxplosa (non secus a

beliewd that the nerve~ conducted the nm\· of spirits into the muscle~. whereas

pluveris pyrii particulae accemae ac rarcfactae) rnusculum, ~ive cor ipsum, pro

Descarte5 taught that "the nerw~ fibers and branche~ rami!)' in the muscles them-

nixu motivo efficiendo inflant ac intunwbciunt" (Willi~. De ncrrorum dCI"criptio

those fiber~ S\vcll or collapse, their arrangement cau~es the mm-

et ums). On the compariwm of the heart to a hydraulic machine: "Circa motum

des to swell or collap~c .tccordingly, producing various effl·cr.." (AT Xl.119-202),

5anguinis natural em, non hie inquirimm de circulatiorH" t"jus, sed quali cordis

sclvn, and

dS

A

VITAL.

NOTES

RATIONALIST

,t vasorum structur,\ velut in m>1china hydraulica comtanti ritu circumgyr('tur"

muswhui, in vol. 2, p. 681.

40. "We call 'reflex movements' movement~ due to a stimulo-motor ner-

(De febribus: [1659], in Opera omnw, vol. l, p. 71). 31. "Calorem tamen cor omnino a sanguine et non sanguis a corde mutuatur"

Hnts lOree produced by the unconscious fUnctional activity of the sensory nerve~.

It would be more correct to call them movements produced by a nervous reflex

Wi\lis, De sanguinis: incales:centia, in ibid., vol. I, p. 663 ).

1

J.ction, for it is not the movement who'ic direction changes but the nervous

32. Cf ibid., vol. I, p. 661. 33. Willis, Ccrcbri anatomc (1664), ch~. 9, \0 and 14, in Opera omnia,

Ioree, which we regard as ha\'ing been somehow rdlected insidC' the organism

.ol. 1, pp. 28qff., 320. In De fermentatione (ibid.), p. 4. Willis describt·~ a still

sn that a centripetal motion becomes a centrifugal one. But the fir~t expres-

.nd explains how it works. The hierarchical arrangement of the terms "distilla·

sion is convenient, and it~ use is sanctioned by custom" (Henri r~·1ilne-Edward~.

ion," "purification," "mblimation" and "spiritualization" provides remarkably

f_er;ons wr la physiologic compardc de /'hommc ct des animaux [Paris, IH78-79J,

_•recise corroboration of an idea of Gaston Bachdard's: "Imagination necessJ.r-

n>l. 13, p. 112).

ly ascribes value .... Consider tht' .-.I chemists. For them, to transmute is to •erfect ... for an alchemist, a distillation is a purification that t•nnobles a \ubJance by remo\·ing its impurities." See I_ 'Air ct les songt>.> (Paris:

J. Corti,

194 ~ ),

42. J.A. Umer, Lntc GrUnde eincr Pht H(llogic der eigcnt!ichcn thu·mchen Natur thrermhen Kiirpcr ( 1771 ). sec. 495.

43. It is cheating a little to include the name ofLegallois, whose first paper

'P· 296, 298. 34. Willis. De motu muscular! (Landini: Apud Jacobum Martyn, 1670), in

on his experiments with cutting the spinal cord dates from 1809. As lOr Whytt, I mention him only insobr J.S his cnnct'ptions coincide at various

>pcra omnia, vol. 1, pp. 680-84.

35. De fcrmenta/Jonc cnntains all the- physical and cht>mical preliminaries o \Viii is's phy~iological theories: we: esp. ch. 10, "De natura ignis et obiter de olore t't \uce: Ex preamissis non difficile nit pulveris pyrii in tormcntis be\licis

tlll_l~e

point~

with

of authors .,.,_.hn made explicit use of the nt)titm of reflection.

44. Johannes MUller, flandbuch der Physwlogic dn Memchen (Coblent: J.llolschcr, 1833-37), bk. 3, ch. 3, sec. 3. 45. Franyois Jacob, La Logiquc du vivant (Paris: Gallimard, 1970), p. 302.

1sitati naturam explicMe." 36. On tht' .:1natomy and physiology of the nt.'f\'(", see Ccrebri anotame,

4n. Aristotle, De af)lm£1, tram. J.A. Smich (OxfOrd, UK: Clart'ndon Press,

190X-12\. II. I.

h. \0. 37. "Quippe spiritus animale~ a Cerebra ct Cert>bt·llo, cum mcdul!ari 1triusque append ice, velut a gemino luminari aflluentes, Systt·ma nervmum

47. Aristotle, De pnrobu_\ animalium, tran~. William Ogle (London: K. Paul, French, 1882), 1.5. 48. Aristotle, De gcneratione onimalium, trans. David Balmc (OxfOrd, UK:

rradiant" (Cerchri anatome, vnl. \, p. 3 36). 38. "Quapropicr Ionge me !ius ju~ta hypothesim nnstram, hos spiritu~ c .:mguinis llamma emis.so~. lucis radiis, sJ.IIem iis aurae J.eriquc interte:-;ti~. ~im· lcs dicamm" (De anima brutorum, in Opera omnia, vol. 2, p. 31). "Spiritus tnimales, velut lucis radios, per to!Um systema nervosum dithmdi supponimu~"

Clarendon Press, 1972), IV. tO. 4(}. Dc~cartes, "Principle~ of Philosophy" (:\T VIIIA,326), in /'h,• Philosophical ~"Vritinw of Desc<~rtn, \'ol. 1, p. 288.

50. Oescartes, "Meditations on First Philo~ophy" (AT VII.85), in ibid., vol. 2, art. 6, p. 58.

Ccrcbri anatomc, p. 3 J8).

39. "Pari fen· mode ac si quisquam pulveris pyrii acen-·o~ per funem ignarium d dist,mcc accend.-rct" (Pharmaccutras rationalis, pt. 2. p. 149). Sec also D~,

-1-1. See Willis's De <~nrma brutorum ( 16 7 2 ).

nJ(ltu

51. Ibid. 52. Ibid.

A

VITAL

NUTFS

RATIONALIS"T

relation !wrween wnsihility and tht' di<,positinn of the orgam, ~ee Descann\

53. See F. A:ti:ta Shu~ter, Lc .t1Mecin de soi-mCmc (Paris: Prt"~se~ llniver~itaire~

theory of the "degrees of the scmes" in "Author\ Replies to thl' Sixth St•t of

de France, 1972), ch. 1. 54. Cnng Frmt ~tahl, De dutocmtio

JWltlrac

( )hjectinn~" (AT \'11.436-N), in ibid., ml. 2. StT. lJ, pp. 294-9h.

(!696).

6. "Letter of 19 ~r...1arch 167H, to Conring," in Gottfried Wilhelm l.cibni/:

55. See, for example, Buf/On's article on "The A~s" in llistoirc naturrllc dc1·

Sdmt/ichc S£hriftcn und Bri~fc ( Dmmtadt: Reidt'!, I':J26 ), 2nd

anrmaut.

St'r ••

vol. I, pp. ~97-

56. Sec On the OriHm of the .\pecies, ch. 14.

40!. Compare Lcibniz's critt'ria for distinguishing animals from automata with

57. Salndor Edw.ud I uriJ. life: !he Unfini>hcd hpcrrmcnt (New York:

lksrarte~\

on the sam!" question in "Madzel's Cbessplayer." On Lcibniz\ dio;rinction lw-

Scribner, 1973).

twcen machine and organi~m. sec":\ Nl'w Systl'm of .1\Jature and the Com-

58. Xavin Richat, lnatomic gCnCralc appliquCc J Ia physiologic ct Ia medccinc

munication of .)ubstances," in Lcibnu: Philtnophrwl Lctu•n and Papers, tr .w~.

(!HOI), vol. 1, pp. 20-21.

and ed. Leroy Loemker (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, !956), sec. 10,

.i9. See my prefau' to the modern edition of Claude Bernard's Lc(ons sur

b phinomCncs Jc Ia \'ic

argumnlts as wdl as with Edgar Allan Po.·\ profound reflcctiom

(<Jmmun' 11UX an1maux

,1r1d "l\1on.Hiology." in .tf(lnadulow· an
ct au1 rinCtau\ (Pari~: Vrin, 1966)

bO. Set• my lhc ,1-.,}ormal and the Patlwlogical (New York: 7.om· Rooks, 19H9),

·'

Schrccker and Amw Martin Schrt'ckcr (New York: Macmillan, l9H5), sec~.

6\-66.

pp. 275-H9.

7. Leibni:t too 11·a~ intt'r!'Sted in the L1brication o! rnachinl"~ and dlltom-

61. Marjorie Greene, Approoches to a Philosophical Biolow (New )nrk: Basic

at.l. Sel", for example. hi\ corrc\pondcrKe with the Duh· of llanover ( !676-7c!)

Books, 1965 ).

in .\dmt/rchc Schrijtcn und BncF (Darm<;ta.rlt: Kcidt•l. 19~7), 1st wr., 1ol. 2. In R(·denkcn

PART ~OUR: J:-..JHRI'RilATIO:-..JS

I. Rent· [)t'<;Lartt'', "T~_1 (Tht' t\·\.uqut·ss d" Nt'wcastlt· l. (ktobt'r !o4-5" (AI

\'On

ilu(ri(htun,q eincr lkudcmic odcr Socictdl

in

[)cutschland

/U

Aufnchmen

dcr Ktimtc und WissCfl'itha[tm,! t•ihnil pr.tbnl the ~uperiority r>l Cnnun art,

IV.329), in The PhilosophKall+fitmH' of Dcswrtcs, tran.\. John Cottingham, Robert

l,hich had always been interested in tlw 1;1bric.ttion ofmo\"ing machitH"\ (nwn-

Stouthoffand nugald i\lurdoch (l'ambridgt·. UK: C1mbridgt' llniver\ity Pre\~,

~(cr\, clock~. hydraulic machinery and

\O

on), o\er ltali.Ul art, 11hich cnnu·n-

trall·d a!moq exclmively on nMking \tatic, lifi::ole~s object~ to be contt'mplated

1984-91), vol. 3, p. 275. 2. "Rult'~ fOr tht' Direction of the Mind" (AT X.380), in ibid., vo!. I.

from with
pp . .20-21. 3. Descartes wrote, "For there i~ within us but one soul. and thi~ soul ha\ within it no (\iwr'\it)" of part<.: it i'\ at onu· \t"n;;itiw ,md rational, am\ .111 it<> appetite~ art' volitions" ("The Passions of the Soul" [AT Xl.364], in ibid., vol. I,

fl

sco/o>ti!JUC (Pari\: Lilnairll· de

I' an catholiquc, 1920), p. I 23.

8. "Treati5e on Man" (AT XI 119-20), in I he Philoi"Ophical Writ in£!~ of [Jc";C([fl<"~. vo!.

1. p. 9Y.

9. \\'hat is more, Dc~canes cannot explain (;od's con~tructinn of animalm,whincs without in~"<~king a purpmt': •·cnnsid(•ring: tht· rn.Khirw ol dw hl1man

art. 47, p. 346). 4. Part 5 of"DisctJUrse on the Method" (AT \/1.40-60), in ibid., vo!. 1.

hndy as haYing been l(nmcd h~ Cod in order to have in iht·lfall the movements

pp. 1 H-41; "To tht' Marqui~ ofNewca~tk 13 November \646" (AT IV.570-76),

u~ua!ly lnJ.nifl"~tcd thnc" (".)i\th Mnlitation," in "!he Phr1mophtc.ll I.Vork\ of Dc>rartn, tr,m~. F.S. llald.11W and C.H.I. Ros~ [Camb11dge, l!K: C.tmbridgl'

in ibid., val. 3, pp. 302-304. S. "To More, 5 February \649" (/\T V."267-70), in ibid., pp. 360-67. On the

470

Univl'rsity Press, 1911], vol. 1. p. 195).

47 1

A

VITAL

RATIONALIST

10. "Description of the Human Body and All of!ts Functions" 1 (AT 11.225 ),

NOTES

[(AT Xl.520], in Oeuvres de Deswrtes, val. 11, p. 520).

2 L "Accretio duplex est: alia mortuorum et quae non nutriuntur, fitque

in The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, vol. I, p. 315. 11. See Ra)'mond Ruyer, Elements de pl,rcho-biologie (Paris: Presse~ Llniver<.itaire~

per simplicem partium oppmitiont'm, ~ine ulla earum immutMione, vel sallem sine magna ... A Ilia accretio e~t \ iYentiurn, siv(' l'Orurn quae nutriuntur. l't lit

de France, \<:147), pp. 46-47.

12. "It is so important to know tht' true cause of the heart's mowment that

~em per cum ali qua partium immutatione ... Perfecta nutritio sive accretio simul

without such knowledge it is impossible to knDw anything which relates to the

genl'rationem sive seminis productionem continet" ("1::::-.cerpta anatomica: de

theory of medicine. For all the other functicms of the animal are dependent on

accretione et nutritione" [AT Xl.596], in ibid., vol. 11, p. 596). Descartes here

this" ("Description of the Human Body and All of Its Functions" 2 [AT Xl.245],

contrasts the growth of an aggrt"gate whose parts remain unchanged with that

in The Philosophical Uf1tings of Descartes, vaL I, p. 319).

of an individual through transformation

13. "Treatise on Man" (AT X1.165 ), in The Phdth·ophical Wntings of Desc
val. l,p. \04. 14. "Traite- dt> l'homme" (AT Xl.173-90), in Charles Adam and Paul Tannery, eds., Oeuvres de Descartes (Paris: Vrin, 1974 ), vaL II, pp. 173-90; also in Andre Bridoux, rd., Oeuvres et lettres (Paris: Gallimanl, 1953). [This passagt' is

ofit~ part~.

24. ••'[0 More, 5 February 16-lq" (AT V.277-71i). in /he Philosophical

oj Descortes, vol. 3. p.

~6&.

25. "Principles of Philosoph~" (AT VlliA.326), in ibid., vnl. I. p. 21'!8. 26. "Meditations on First Philosophy" (AT Vll.84), in ibid., vol. 2, art. 6,

p. 58.

omitted from the English translation of"Trt'ati<>e on Man" in The Ph1luwphical

27. Cueroult, Descartes scion l'ordre des raisons, p. 181.

Writings of Descortcs.]

28. Ibid, p. 193.

15. "Traitl- de l'hommt'" {AT Xl.\93), in ibid., vo\. II, p. 193: Bridoux,

24. Ibid.

30. Ihid., p. 194.

p. 867. 16. Ibid.

31. Auguste Comte, Cours de philosophic positive (P.uis: Schleicher, 1908),

17. "Traite de l'homme" (AT Xl.l92), in ibid., vol. II, p. 192; Bridoux,

p. 866.

vol.6,pp.150-51.

32. Albrecht von Haller, R1h/Jotheque anatomique, vol. 2, p. 583.

18. "Primae cogitationes circa generationt'm animalium" (AT XI 5lq). in

33. Auguste Comtt',

~;·stime

,/c politique positil·e (Paris: l'resses

Universitaire~

de Fr,wce, lq75). vol. 1. p. 5!:14.

ibid., vnl. II, p. 519. 19. Marti.ll Gueroult, Descartes scion f'ordre des raisons, vol. 2: 1'.-tme et le

~4.

Comtc, (ours, vol. 6. Prefact', p. xvii.

35. Comte, Cours, fOrtieth lewm, vol. 3, p. 151.

corps(Paris: Anbier, 1953), p. 248. 20. See section 85 of this volume, above.

36. Comte, S~stCmc de polirique positive, val. I, pp. 574, 592,650.

21. Descartes, "To Mer5ennc, 28 Octobt'r 1640" (AT 111.213), in "/he Philo-

37. Comte, Cours, forty-fir~t lesson, vol. 3, p. 280.

sophical Writin9s

~lfit­

of Dt'scartes, vol.

I, p. 15 5; Bridoux, p. 1088.

22. "Bruta nul lam habent notitiam commodi vel incommodi, sed quat·dam

3/i. Comte, ~vstCme de pohtit.Jlll' positive, vol. I, p. 440.

39. Ibid., vol. I, pp. 571:!-80.

ip~i~ in utero existent ibm obvia fuerunt. quorum ope creverunt et a quibus ad

40. Ibid., vol. I, p. 602.

certos mutus impulsa ~unt: uncle, quoties ill is postea ~imile quid on:urit, ~cmper

41. Ibid.

eosdem motus edunt" ("Primae cogitationn circa generationem animalium"

42. Comte, Cours, fortieth lesson, vol. 3, p. 243n.

472

473

A

VITAL

N 0 T E S

RATIONAL!ST

66. "Transrational i~nw," I a Phdoi"Ophrc po1itin' 4 ( 1HHO). p. I 5 tl.

+3. Comtc, .SystCmc d,· politiquc positJVl", vo!. I, p. 661. 4-1-

67. Littn~, .A!Mcn"llc <'I mdcYim. pp. 26Cl-70.

Comlt..', Coun, t~ntieth les~on, vo!. ~. p. 171.

45. Ibid., forty-fir'it !r-<;son, val. 3, p. 2kl.

n8. ibid., pp. 276-77.

46. Comte, ~rstCmc de politiquc po1·it1H', vol. I, p. 641.

(-.9. In German in 1866, in French in IH74. [The Oxf;Jrd l:nglish Dntiona~r gives 1896 as the date or the fir<>t use of"ccology" in English.-

47. Comte, Cours, fortieth lesson, vol. 3, p. 163.

THt\:-.JS.l

4S. Ibid.

70. Ibid., p. 2S4.

49. Set' tht..• Compt,..; w1dus de Ia .Sr•tufr.! de Biologic 40 ( lRC!9 ). The report is

71. CJ~ton Baclw\anL The Nc1> .\t !Cntl/1( .'\pmr, tran'>. :\rthur Co\dhammn

n·printed in F.milc Cley, Essais de philosophic ct d'histoirc de lo bioloaic (Paris:

(Boston: Beacon, !984). p. 136. 72. The first two fOrmulations arc to be fnund in Bernard\ I a Science cxpdri-

ivtasson, 1900).

SO. (;eorgcs Pouchet published an interesting biographical not<" and bibliography of Robin's work in the Journal de l'anotomie

cl

de fa phvsiolofJie in

mcntole (Paris: Librairie

J.B.

Bai\liCre, 18/R), p. 45, and the third in hi~ Pcm·dn:

notes d~;cochdes, ed. L. Dellwume (Paris: Librairic ].B. Bai!lii-rc,

7 ). Bnnanl, I ''\OnY wr In phtfnomCncs de Ia

\Xi'\6.

51. Emile I ittn·· . .tlddccinc ct mCdarm (2nd ed., Pari~: Didier, 1872), p. 433:

and La Science au point de

FUC

rdw;ruu1· (Paris: I ibrairi,· J.B. Bail lit-re. [!-)79), vo!. I, p. 40.

75. Bt•rnard.lntroduction

Sl. ibid., p. 4H7. )4. Ia Philosophic podrirr, 2nd ser.. n>l. 2/, Jul.-ike. 1~8!. \'UC

J.B. B
phi/osophiqut>, p. \ii.

J M.

a/'Ctudc de Ia 11/(:damc C\pdrimcnwh· (Pari<;: Librairie

Robson, ed.,

77. Bernard, Lc(ons sur lcs phdnomCncs d,· !d vJc, ml. 1, p. 34_:J.

Collc·ctcd W(irks of John Stuart Mill (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1969).

7~.

vol. 10, pp. 2H4-92.

79. fkrnard, Pnmipcs, p. 71.

Ibid .• vol. 2, p. 524.

57. Littni, I a Sucnu>, p. 230.

1\0. \hid., p. 52.

)8. Ibid., p. 2H.

81. Bernard, fntroductiun, p. 70.

59. Ibid., p. 260.

82. Bernard, Principcs, p. 26.

60. Ibid., p. 261.

83. Ibid., p. 152 n.2.

01. LittrC, Midcun~·

l"l

84. Ibid., p. 156.

midccm<;, p. 170.

h2. Charln R11hin, "De !a biolog.ie, snn ohjct ct son but. St'~ relatiom

J\l'C

k~ alltrc~ '>Cicnccs," l.u Philosophic positi1c 4 (May-June 1869), p. 3 31.

h3. I ittrl·, /.a S(icncc, p. 340; this te"t originally appeared as an article in

tlw January IH70

i~~m· nf/.a Philowphic po511i>'c.

64. LittrC, Jkdccinc

<'I

mddccim, p.

14~.

D), p. 36.

Fumcc(Paris: lmprimerie Imperiale, 1867), n. 211.

52. Littr£·. MddcuM et mddccins, p. 4?:!11.

)). LittrC, Lo Socncc au pmnt de

[tJ

communs rill.\ ommou.\ cr rill.\

74. Bernard, Rapport wr lc1· prowC~ ct Ia marchc de !o ph_r.'>iologic gCndralc en

philowphiquc (Paris: Didier, 1873), p. iii.

56. John Stuart Mill, Au,qustc Comtc and Positi~·ism, in

l"fl'

H). Bnnard, /n!n>dtJtlion, p. 365. Hh. Bernard, Princir,·s, p. 171.

87. Hernard,lntroduction, p. 401. HK. Bernard, Principe,·, p. 139.

8Y. Ibid., p. 165. 90. The full !itll' ol rhe work is "La N.:~run· oppriml'l' par b ml·dccirw

h). Ibid., p. _:J4o.

474

471

A

VITAL

RATIONALI~,T

moderm·, ou Ia nCcessite de recourir

NOTES

a Ia methode ancienne et hippocratique

5. Julien Pacotte, /_a Pemr!c rnhniquc (Paris: Alean, 1931). 6. Franz Reuleaux, Thcorcrischc Kinemarik: Grund/iige einer Thcorie des

dans le traitement des maladies" (Paris: Dehure, 1768). 91. Bern.ml, Principes de medecine exphimcntalc (Gene,·a: Alliance Culturellc

.Haschimvesen (Braunschweig: Vie\Yl'g. 1~75).

7. According to Marx, tools arc moved b~ human strength, whereas rna·

du livre, 19b3), p. 181n. 92. Bernard, Introduction, p.151.

chint:'~ are moved

93. Bernard, Principcs, pp. 51tf.

Edward Avtding (New York: lntern,ltional Publi~her5, 1967), vol. 1, pp. 37-t-79.

94. Ibid., p. 53.

by natural

/(lrtT~; .~ee his

Capaal, tram. Samuel Moore and

8. For example, trochleJ. (from the Greek for a block ofpulle).;;), thyroid

95. Ibid., p. 392.

(li·om the Greek lOr shield), ~c<~phoid (boatshdpl·d), hammer (in the ear),

96. See the paper by Marc Klein and Mmc Siff~:rlen in the Comptcs rendus

duct, trompe (the French for fallopian tube, so called because of its resemblance

\M_·,

of the CongrCs National des SociCtes Savantes, Strasbourg and Colmar, 1967,

to a horn), thorax (from the Greek for chest), tibia (originally, .1 kind of flute),

Sn:tion des Sciences, vol. 1, pp. 111-21.

cdl

98. Mirko Drazen Grmek, "Rif>flexions inedites de Claude Bernard

~ur

Ia

pratiqut'," Midecine de France 150 (19h4), p. 7.

99. Bcrn.ud, Cahier de notes, ed. MirL.o Dra:1.en Grmel.. (Paris: Gallimard,

d'histoirc et de philosophic des >cicnc.:.> (Pari~: Vrin, 1968 ), p. 306.

10. Aristotle l'Xplained th~, Jk,ing and extension of the limbs hy ,malogy with a catapult: see Dt>

mtl/11

anun
ton, NJ: Princeton Univer~it~ Press, 1978), 701 h9.

1965). p. 126.

100. Puhlhhcd in Paris by V. rvtas.;;on

so on.

9. See my "Modt>les et analogie5 dans Ia decouverte en biologic," in f.wdcs

97. Bernard, Principcs, pp. 95 and 125.

mt~dccine

~and

<~nd

Son. The work fir~t <~ppe<~red a~

.1n
11. DncJ.rtes, "To

,\1t:r.~t·nm·,

20 Fcbru.uy Hi

~9"

in (AT 11. S25 }, I he Phllrl-

wphical ~Vritini)S of DcSc·arus, tr
IOI. Ibid., p. II7.

Dugald 1\turdoch (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1984~91 ),

102. Bernard, Principcs, p. 117.

\'()I. 3, p. 134.

103. Bernard, Pensies: notes dritachies, p. 76.

12. Claude Bernard,lntrdduuion (1865), pt. 2, ch. 2, sec. I. 13. Kant, Cntiquc

PART fiVE: PROBlEMS

I. Emanuel Radl, Gcschichte der biolonischcn Thl·orien in der Ncuzdt (2nd ed., Ldp,.ig: W. Engelmann, 1913), vol. 1, chap. 4, ~ec-. 1.

2. Walther Riese, L'ldie de l'homme dans Ia ncurobioh>,qic contcmporaine (Paris: Alcan, 19 3f\ ), p. 8; sec alsop. 9. 3. Ari~tntle. Politics, in The Ra~ic WMh vj ,.-lnstotlc. l'd. Richard McKeon (New York: Random House, l447),1.ii.11. 4. ThCophile de Bordeu, Rech<'f
of judHmcnt, tr
1951),sec.65. 14. Bernard, IntroductiOn, pp. 356-57.

IS. Ibid., pp. 359-60. 16. Auguste Comtt:, Cour~ de phdo~oph1c pMitire (Paris: Schleichn, 1907-24 ). mi. 3, l(Jrty-first les~on. 17. See my La Connamancc de lo ric (P.1ris: Vrin, 191)5), on cell theor)· :\ppn1di\ 11 ot'th.u 1\ork

tr<'
thv n·!.1tiom hetween cell tht'or)' and the phi-

lmophy ofleihni1. 18. Etienne \Volt't', "Le~ Culture~ d'nrgane~ embryonnaires 'in vitro,''' sdentif/que(May-June 1952), p. 189.

477

Rt'\'lk'

A

VITAL

N l:'TE S

RATIO~JALIO,T

19. Bernard, Cahicr de notes, cd. Mirko Dra1en Grmck (Paris: Gallimard,

41. Jean Rostand, !Iamme> de vCritC: Pal'tcur, Ranord, 1--ontencl!e, Lo R,,Lhc-

jiiUWvld (Paris: Stock, !942), P· %.

1%1). p. 171.

10. Aristotle, Maaph_tsics, in The Ra~ic HOrh {'/Aristotle, art. 966a, p. 718.

21. See Kant's Appcndh to the Transccntlt•nt,ll Dialectic in the

CrilhjUt'

of

42. Bernard, Introduction ti I'Ctudc de Ia midecinc t'lpCrimcnwlc (Paris: Lihrairic J.B. Baillit~re, 186S ), tram. by llcnry Copley Grt·enL' a~ Introduction to the Stud!

oj' F IP<'rimcntof .1-!cdn me ( Nl'\\ Yrnk: i\'1Jcmi)lan,

Pure Rca~(ln (New York: Doubled,ly, 1966), p. 425ff. 22. llemy E. Signi,t, Man dnd Medicine: :In lmroJuaion to ,t!ediL·u/ J.:.no,,·l-

Cnllin, ) 961 ), p. 46.

4-3. Alfred North \Vhitl'hcad, ;'-.ialllrc and L1jr.' (Cdmbridgc, UK: Prt"s~.

cdgc, trans. Margaret Galt koisc (New York: Norton, 1932), p. 102.

]9~7;

l9H), p. 5. Quoted b) Alexandre Koyr£· in

J

Univ~·r,ity

n·porl in Recherches ph!/o-

sophiqucs4(1934-35), p- 398.

23. ibid., pp. 117-42. philosophi{[U~'" .,ur ['ensemble de Ia ~ciencc

44. Xavier Bichat, Anatomit' ftCnCralc appliquie d lu rhrsioltlf!ie ct d !d mCdccinc

hiologique" (1838), fortieth lecture of the Cours Jc philosophic p05itirc (Paris:

(Pari~: Brnsson and Cha1Jdt-, \HOI): new ed. by Bt-clard. IS21. Tram. by Gt"WI_!L'

Sch/eirhl:'r, !908), ,.oJ. 3, p. !69.

llap\'ard
24. Comtc, "Considi:ratiom

R i( hwl~on and l.ord, \8 ~2 ), vol. I, pp. 20-21.

25. Ibid., p. 175.

4S. B{·~ides, Hegelundcr~tood this pnlt-ctly wt"ll· ~ee IVi.Hmschajt dcr

26. Ibid., p. 179.

chs. I and L

27. Sigcrht, Jian and .HeJicinc, p. 109.

46.

28. Comte, Couts, pp. 175, 176.

Tci~sier,

''Intervention."

47. Thl·odore de

29. Ibid., p. 169. )I).

L',•!d·,

C/,wdc Rnnard, l.c,-ons wr !c dit~bh.· ct Ia H~'-wHcml;;<' animdlc ( Parh:

Sam~ure, f_,·

.tfiraclc !JfCL

(Pari~: ])l'

not> I, 1939).

4k. PI .~to, The S(lrhist, 2lYb, in lhc ),,ph ill an,/ che Stotnman,

tr.Irl\.

inrro. ;\.~.. Taylor, cd. R. Klihamky and F. Anscotrlht• (I ondon: Nelson, 14h] ).

Libr
[Onholo_gy: the art of u.~ing words correctly ( Wcb.ucr'> l'/cw International

32. Ibid., pp. 65-66.

tionon, 2nd eel., 1958)- TH,\NS.J

49

33. Ibid., p. 181.

l-r.1!K(',

34. !hid., p. 132.

36. Bernard, Lerons wr Ia chdleur animah· (Pari~: I ibrairie J.B. Railliert•,

(Pari~: Pn·~~e~ Universitaire~

dl'

!951'\), p. 109.

preLlct•.

51. l:stablishment ofconKription and the

1876), p. l9L 37. J.M. Cuardia, Histmrc de Ia midi'Linc d'Hippocratc d Brouswi> ct

sC5

wc-

script~: establi~hrnent

medic~!

examination ol C(Jn-

of national stud farm~ J.nd remount depot...

S2. Cuiraud, L(/ CrammaJrr, p. \09.

ccsseurs (Paris: Do in, I HX4 ), p. 311.

(Pari~:

See Pierre Guiraud, /11 Crammain'

[)1(-

50. C[
35. !hid .• p. 3Ml.

1H. Victor Pru~. f)c l'lrril<1f11•n ct de Ia ph!t•f}masic.

and

tlU

nvtivcllc doctrint• midiwlc

P.Inckouckc, !H25), L.

39. Cicorges '!Cis .. ier. "Intervention," Une C.'ntrovcrse sur l'C\•olut!cl!l, Rerue tnmntricllc de l'f:ncycfopCdiL' jron~aisc 3.2 ( 19 3H ).

+0. Fmi[e GuyCnot, /.o Variation ct l'Cvo/mion, 2 voh. (Paris: [)oin, 1930).

53. Set· ].lcc!lit:'S Maily, L<J NtYmtllisation (Pari~: Dunod, 1946), pp. 15711.

,\lv hrid .lCCoum of nonnaliJJtion

(J\\CS

much to this work, which is useful for

it~ clarity qfanalysis and hi~lonlal inli>rmation as well ,l'll()r

ih

referenu·~ to

d

study ol Dr. I IC'!Imich, ~Om lt~·1c der ..\/ormuny ( 1427 ). 54. Jean de [a Fontaine, 1-ablcs, 6.4, "jupiter t"t le Mi·tayer" (jupiter and

479

A

VITAL

RATIONALIST

"L'Histoirc des scienc-e,s de ]'organisation de Blainvi\Je ct l'AbhC Maupied,"

the Share Cropper).

55. llans Kelst~n. Rcinen Rcchtshhre (l-eipzig: E Deuticke, 1934; 2nd ed.,

Revue d'histoire des sciences 32 (1979), pp. 75-82 and 90-91.

J960), trans. as Pure Theor.v of Law (Berkeley: Univt'r~ity of CalifOrnia Press,

"Vie," Encyclopaedia

16 (1973), pp. 762a-b6b, 767<J-69c.

"Physiologic animale: Histoire," Encyclopaedia universa/i<; 12 (1972), pp.

1967). 5b. Julien Freund, [_'Essence du pohtiquc (Paris: Sirey, 1965), p. 332.

I075-77a. "La Phy~iologie animale au XVI! it ~ii"cle," in R('ne Taton, ed., Hmoirc

57. Ibid., p. 293. 58. See lienri Bergson, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion: "Whether human or animal,

univmvfi.~

J.

society is an organization; it implies a coordination and gen-

gt?nirale des sciences, vol. 2 (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1958),

pp. 593-98, 601-603,618-19. "La Physiologic en Allemagm•," in Taton, ed., Histoirc ntn,;role dn

erally also a subordination of elements; it therefore exhibits, whether merely

Klf'nCCS,

embodied in life or, in addition, specifically formulated, a collection of rules

tome Ill: La Science contemporaine, vol. I, Le XIX~ siCcle (1->aris: J.lrcssc~ Univer~i­

and laws" (trans. R. Ashley Adura .1nd Cloudcsley Breton [Garden City. NY:

taires de France, 1961),

pp. 482-84.

"L'ldCe de naturt> dam Ia rheorie et Ia pratique mCdicak~." MCdecin,· de

Doubleday. 1954], p. 27).

59. Claude LCvi-Strauss, Tristes Tropiques, trans. John and Doreen Weight-

l'homme 43 (March 1972), pp. 6-7.

"Les Maladies," in Andre Jacob, cd .. Encyclopedic phdowph1que univer.lcl!c:

man (New York: Atheneum, 1g81), p. 387.

60. Friedrich Nietzsche, I ctter of february 1870 to Paul Demscn, in NietzSche Rrie{wechsel (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1977), p. 100.

L'Univcrs philosophique, vol. 1 (Paris: Presse~ Universitaires de hance. 19~9),

p. 123S
61. Nietzsche, The 81fth of fn1_qedy, trans. Walter Kaufman (New York:

uf the

Life Sciences 10 (suppl., 19H8), pp. 15-29.

Vintage, 1967).

La Connaissance de Ia vte (Parh: Vrin, 1989), pp. 47-50, 52-56, 58-6L 6'!-71,

73-76,79,86-87,88-89,91-92, !02-104, 110-15.

Sources The f()Jlowing publi~hers have granted permission to use excerpts from copyrighteJ works: Etudes d'hisroire et de philosophic des S(iences (5th ('d., Paris: Vrin, 1989),

"Dncartes et

phte ConwCs Deswrtes, tome II (Paris: Hermann, 1937), pp. 79-85. "Hi~toire de l'hommc ct nacure de~ cho;e5 selon Auguste Comtc dan~

Jdcolof!y and Ratwnality in the History uf the Life Sciences (Cilmbridge, MA:

Plan de.\ travaux scienrifiquet nCce.uoires pour rCorganiser lo socihi, 18R2," /_es fiUdcs

"Emile Littn~. philosophe de

binlogie et de Ia medecine," Centre inter-

1981 (PJ.ris: Albin Michel, 1982), pp. 271-77 and 279-HO.

"Un Phpiologiste philmophe: Claude Bernard," {)iulo[Ju~· 5.4 (1967), pp.

556-57, 560-62, 566-68. "Preface," in Claude Hernard, f_e(Ons sur les phinomCncs de fa vic communs

Vein. 1977). pp. 3-6. l0-32, 34-35, 41. 52-56, 60-63, 65-66, 68-69, 130-31. 138-42, !55-16.

!J.

national de synthese, Acte5- du Co!loque Emile l.ittri 1801-1881. Poris, 7~9 octobre

,\ll!T Press, 1988 ), pp. 10-37, 52-55, 58-61, 6 5-70, 12 5-44.

Ia Formation du concept de rCf1exc aut XV If" et XVl/1" siCclcs (2nd ed., Paris:

le

philowphJques (I 974 ), pp. 194-97.

pp. 12-:n, 55,63-73, 75-79, 131. 135-41, 144-46, 147-51. 158-60,226-27, 231-3H, 260-71,296-304.323-27,329-33.336-45.

Ia technique," Travau,- du /Xc ConwCs internmional de philoso-

QU_\

ammau.r ct au.r

ViiJt:hlU\ {P.lri~:

Vrin, 1966),

r·

lJ.

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