Canguilhem and the History of Biology Canguilhem Et l'Histoire

8/12/2019 Canguilhem and the History of Biology Canguilhem Et l'Histoire

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Jonathan Hodge

Canguilhem and the history of biology / Canguilhem et l'histoire

de la biologieIn: Revue d'histoire des sciences. 2000, Tome 53 n1. pp. 65-82.

Abstract

SUMMARY. For many reasons Georges Canguilhem is rightly regarded as the most prominent writer, in our time, on the

history of biology. His association of biological history with philosophy was decisive in shaping his legacy for our discipline.Canguilhem had debts to Comtean historicist positivism as well as to Kantian historicist idealism. These Comtean debts make

him closer to English empiricism than many Anglophone historians of science allow themselves to be. Canguilhem 's Kantian

concentration on concepts restricts his agenda as a historian. His reluctance to analyze institutions, interests, intentions and

influences also restricts his agenda. If we are to overcome the limitations in Canguilhem 's historiographic legacy, we must

overcome the limitations imposed by various divisions of academic labor. Only then can we have a pluralistic, holistic

historiography for biology that can give a proper place to Canguilhem's legacy.

Rsum

RSUM. Pour de nombreuses raisons et juste titre, Georges Canguilhem est considr comme l'auteur le plus important

de notre poque dans le domaine de l'histoire de la biologie. Son association de l'histoire de la biologie et de la philosophie fut

dcisive dans la dtermination de son hritage pour notre discipline. Canguilhem tait redevable aussi bien au positivismehistoriciste de Comte qu' l'idalisme historiciste de Kant. Sa dette l'gard de Comte le rend plus proche de l'empirisme anglais

que beaucoup d'historiens des sciences anglophones actuels. La manire dont Canguilhem, comme Kant, se concentre sur les

concepts restreint son programme d'historien. Sa rticence l'gard de l'analyse des institutions, des intrts, des intentions et

des influences restreint galement son programme. Si nous souhaitons dpasser les limites attaches l'hritage

historiographique de Canguilhem, nous devons vaincre les obstacles rsultant des diverses divisions du travail universitaire.

C'est alors seulement que nous pourrons disposer d'une historiographie pluraliste et holistique pour la biologie, d'une

historiographie qui puisse accorder l'hritage de Canguilhem sa vritable place.

Citer ce document / Cite this document :

Hodge Jonathan. Canguilhem and the history of biology / Canguilhem et l'histoire de la biologie. In: Revue d'histoire des

sciences. 2000, Tome 53 n1. pp. 65-82.

doi : 10.3406/rhs.2000.2075

http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/rhs_0151-4105_2000_num_53_1_2075
http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/author/auteur_rhs_847http://dx.doi.org/10.3406/rhs.2000.2075http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/rhs_0151-4105_2000_num_53_1_2075http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/rhs_0151-4105_2000_num_53_1_2075http://dx.doi.org/10.3406/rhs.2000.2075http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/author/auteur_rhs_847


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Canguilhemand the history of biologyJonathan Hodge (*)

RSUM. Pour de nombreuses raisons et juste titre, Georges Canguilhemst considr comme l auteur le plus important de notre poque dans ledomaine de l histoire de la biologie. Son association de l histoire de la biologie etde la philosophie fut dcisive dans la dtermination de son hritage pour notrediscipline. Canguilhem tait redevable aussi bien au positivisme historiciste deComte qu' l idalisme historiciste de Kant. Sa dette l gard de Comte le rendplus proche de l empirisme anglais que beaucoup d historiens des sciences anglophones actuels. La manire dont Canguilhem, comme Kant, se concentre sur lesconcepts restreint son programme d historien. Sa rticence l gard de l analysedes institutions, des intrts, des intentions et des influences restreint galementson programme. Si nous souhaitons dpasser les limites attaches l hritage bis-toriographique de Canguilhem, nous devons vaincre les obstacles rsultant desdiverses divisions du travail universitaire. C est alors seulement que nous pourronsdisposer d une historiographie pluraliste et holistique pour la biologie, d une historiogr phie qui puisse accorder l hritage de Canguilhem sa vritable place.MOTS-CLS. Historiographie ; concepts ; biologie ; positivisme ; histori-cisme ; socialisme ; prcurseurs ; Comte ; Kant ; Hegel ; intentions ; influences ;intrts ; institutions ; holisme ; pluralisme.SUMMARY. For many reasons Georges Canguilhem is rightly regarded asthe most prominent writer, in our time, on the history of biology. His association ofbiological history with philosophy was decisive in shaping his legacy for our disci

pline. Canguilhem had debts to Comtean historicist positivism as well as to Kantianhistoricist idealism. These Comtean debts make him closer to English empiricismthan many Anglophone historians of science allow themselves to be. Canguilhem sKantian concentration on concepts restricts his agenda as a historian. His reluctanceto analyze institutions, interests, intentions and influences also restricts his agenda. Ifwe are to overcome the limitations in Canguilhem s historiographie legacy, we mustovercome the limitations imposed by various divisions of academic labor. Only then(*) M. J. S. Hodge, Division of the history and philosophy of science, School of philosophy, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK LS2 9JT.It is a pleasure to acknowledge my debts to conversations with Jean Gayon, MalcolmNicolson, Martin Kusch and Saied Zibakalam.

Rev. Hist. ScL, 2000, 53/1, 65-81


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66 Jonathan Hodgecan we have a pluralistic, holistic historiography for biology that can give a properplace to Canguilhem s legacy.

KEYWORDS. Historiography ; concepts ; biology ; positivism ; historicism ;socialism ; precursors ; Comte ; Kant ; Hegel ; intentions ; influences ; interests ;institutions ; holism ; pluralism.

I. A DEBT OF GRATITUDE

Today, any historian of biology and medicine must look back toGeorges Canguilhem with a feeling of gratitude. For Canguilhemdid more than anyone else in his day to give our subject public, academic prominence, to endow it with status, respectability, serioussignificance, even with glamour. He was able to do this for at leastfour reasons. First, he pursued these topics with masterly scholarlyability and with intellectual flair and literary panache. Second, heassimilated the history of the sciences of life to philosophy. This wasdecisive because philosophy is an endeavour, even outside France,the home of the philosophes as the rest of the world calls them,that enjoys a peculiar prestige (along sometimes with ridicule) bothwithin and beyond academic culture. Third, unlike many philosopherswriting more recently about science, Canguilhem did notfrighten the horses, as we say in English. He did not, that is, threatenhe claims of science to be knowledge ; he did not, therefore,subvert the biologists' and doctors' own sources of cognitive self-respect and self-confidence. Fourth, he fathered a succession of disciples who in turn became mentors. So, he founded a school, ormore powerfully than that a tradition, that is now well into its thirdor fourth generation and that is spreading its influence across nationalnd other boundaries. For spectators looking from a distance,upon the history of the science of life, Canguilhem's protg MichelFoucault must appear uniquely influential in the dissemination ofthis legacy. But to practising historians of these sciences it is evidentthat this disciplinary success is a collective and institutional achievements well as an individual triumph.Several characteristics of Canguilhem's historical work wouldseem to derive fairly directly from his own philosophical education.First, as far as possible he wished to discern not only how sciencehas moved toward its present doctrine, but to see also how it has


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Canguilhem and the history of biology 67done so by starting from and then progressing beyond its classical,Greek sources. With the Greeks, philosophy and science are in analliance, if not forming a single unity. A philosophical historian ofscience feels at home with the Greeks. Again, Canguilhem choseconcepts as his units of analysis and his subjects for narration.Concepts, according to the philosophers' lexicons, are not exactlythe same as ideas. But there is a close similarity between the historiography of ideas (originally a German tradition) and Canguil-hem's historiography of concepts. Canguilhem's best known writings concern the history of the concept of life, the history of theconcepts of the normal and the pathological and the history of theconcept of reflex action. Historians of ideas might have taken upthese topics as exercises in their historiography without departingvery far from Canguilhem's agenda. Where Canguilhem's philosophical mbitions are decisive, surely is in the choice of concepts.His chooses often, if not always, fundamental concepts, that isconcepts that help found a science or can provide foundations forthe integration of two sciences. The concepts of life, of the normaland the pathological and of the reflex all concern the foundationsof physiology, medicine and psychology as sciences, and as sciencesthat are related to one another. There resulted from Canguilhem'spursuit of these choices historical scholarship of the highest order.The monograph La Formation du concept de rflexe aux xvif etxviif sicles (Paris, 1955) contains at its heart a meticulous andsophisticated study of the formation by Thomas Willis (JohnLocke's English contemporary) of the concept of reflex movement.This study, motivated as it was by Canguilhem's philosophicalcommitments, stands and will endure as a contribution to the history of biology quite independently of those commitments. Indeed,it presents an exemplary exhibition of the arts of textual explicationnd contextual exegesis ; while the volume as a whole provides, o less, a model of how to place the physiology and psychologyf its two chosen centuries within the longue dure from theGreeks to our own time.This emphasis on the Greek legacy comes naturally to historians of the sixteenth and seventeenth century. But historians ofscience who think of themselves as historians of biology, and whothink of that science as one that only emerged in the nineteenthcentury, such historians can often feel little obligation to engageGreek authors. That feeling, as Canguilhem would have insisted, is


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68 Jonathan Hodgea fallacious one. Elite education continued in that century to integrate ancient with modern thought. Georges Cuvier and LouisAgassiz were not exceptional in keeping faith with Aristotle, andwe misunderstand their responses to Lamarck and to Darwin if weforget how such reading habits persisted for centuries after theRenaissance and Reformation. Canguilhem would not forget.It would be a mistake, therefore, to think that Canguilhem'swork as a historian of biology is so closely integrated with hisambitions as a philosopher that historians can only benefit fromhis histories if they share his philosophical convictions. However, itseems equally true that the responses, made today to his work inthe history of biology, will be strongly conditioned by perceptionsand evaluations of his philosophy. So, some account of Canguilhem s hilosophical alignments and sympathies should be givenhere before returning to the question of his role as historian.

II. History of science and philosophical traditions

It is for philosophical commentators and critics to decide whether Canguilhem has given us a philosophy of science, of reasonand of knowledge that is acceptable and persuasive in our time. Ishe sufficiently liberated from positivist deference to the authorityof science? Is his historicism about reason compatible with hisrationalism about knowledge? Does his demarcation of sciencefrom ideology unhelpfully serve to put the scientific communitybeyond moral and political criticism? Such questions, and manyothers like them, may be of interest to the historian of biology reading Canguilhem at the opening of this century. But they are notperhaps the questions about Canguilhem's philosophy that a historianwill naturally take up initially. Rather, it may be more appropriate to begin by placing Canguilhem in relation to familiar trendsin the historiography of science, and in relation to the contributionso those trends made by diverse philosophical traditions.At this point it might seem only proper to acknowledge that indifferent national academic cultures different trends have beenmanifested. And, yes, the issue of those national differences mustbe confronted eventually. However, it may be useful for an English


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Canguilhem and the history of biology 69historian, trained partly in the United States, and writing hereabout a French author to start with a reflection about German(including Austrian) philosophy. The reflection is simple enough,although not perhaps very agreeable to English or French pride :as we all know, all philosophy throughout the West has been predominately German for two centuries now. Indeed most of the differences between French and English philosophy have arisenbecause those two academic cultures have made different uses ofGermanic resources : for instance, the French making, in this century, more use of Nietzsche, Husserl, Marx and Heidegger, theEnglish more use of Frege, Schlick and Wittgenstein. However,generalisations about philosophy do not themselves provide themappings that we need in understanding the historiography ofscience. To see why this is so, consider for a moment how it wasfor a young historian of science around 1964 in any of the Englishspeaking countries. If inclined to philosophical self-consciousnesss(he)** was expected to make one decisive commitment. On theone hand were the positivistic views of science and its history.These views were shared by most practising scientists and by mostphilosophers of science ; and these views led those scientists andthose philosophers to write history of science that was navelyempiricist and uncritically scripted as so many progressivetriumphs of the rational over the traditional, the religious, themetaphysical and the superstitious. On the other hand were theviews associated with Cassirer, Lovejoy, Koyr and Collingwood,all philosophers with fundamental debts to Kant and Hegel, and allphilosophers offering explicit alternatives to empiricism and positivism. The commitment the young historian of science made was,then, to this heritage from Kant and Hegel ; and it was a commitmentonfirmed by reading in Kuhn or any of the other dissidenthistoricist philosophers of science who offered to liberate historiansof science from empiricism and positivism. Indeed this offering wasonly an exchange. For, at least in Kuhn's case, it was the history ofscience that was supposed to have liberated philosophy of sciencefrom positivism and shown philosophy of science how to draw onthe Kantian and Hegelian heritage.This liberation was itself, however, of short duration. For,within a few years, and certainly by 1970, our maturing Anglo-

(*) S(he) : he or she (N.D.L.R.).


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70 Jonathan Hodgephone historian of science has learned that history of science needed liberating again, this time from philosophy itself. For it needsto reject Kuhn, Koyr, Kant and the rest in favour of Marx,Mannheim and a variety of brave new sociologies of knowledgethat brought with them an emphasis on class interests, scientificinstitutions and political ideologies, sociologies of knowledge thatwere allied with socialist and feminist critiques of the power inherent in all knowledge and so, especially, in scientific knowledge.So far, obviously, this tale about the historiography of sciencehas followed standard Anglophone legends. How, then, can thistale aid us in understanding the role Canguilhem might play in andbeyond the borders of his own country France ?Consider next a legend about France itself. The legend beginsby insisting, perhaps uncontroversially, that French philosophicalreflection on science never embraced the combination of Mach andFrege that was consummated by Schlick and others in the Wiener-kreis. Surely, the France of Canguilhem's teacher Bachelard upheldKantian if not Hegelian opposition to positivism. But are we wiseto accept this legend in this form? Are we wise to concentrateexclusively on Bachelard as the main mentor of Canguilhem, andto infer that once we have identified Canguilhem as the protg ofBachelard, then we have done all the philosophical genealogy thatis required in understanding Canguilhem as a historian ?As so often we need to recall the longue dure, as well as immediate precedents. Canguilhem's work is full of explicit debts toComte, the old, historicist positivist, writing in France a centurybefore the new, logicist positivists in Austria. And who were thebrains behind Comte ? In the eighteenth century, Condorcet andCondillac were his decisive sources. And who, in the seventeenthcentury, inspired them ? Well, Bacon and Locke more than anyoneelse. So, perhaps we have a paradox or, at least, an ironic tale totell. Historians and philosophers of science working in England areoften told how they must avoid the positivist and empiricist prejudices endemic in their national cultural heritage. And they are toldthat the best way to escape these prejudices is to apprentice themselves to teachers on the continent of Europe, teachers such asCanguilhem, perhaps. However, the advice may not be so sound inthis case. Canguilhem, as descended from Comte, and so moreremotely from Bacon and Locke, may be too English a teacher fora young English historian of science seeking to transcend his (her)


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Canguilhem and the history of biology 71domestic inheritance. Indeed, having been directed to Cassirer,Koyr, Lovejoy and Collingwood and then to Marx and Mannheim, all in accord with Anglophone routines in the 1960's and1970's, s(he) has been brought by these German teachings to beless English than any French follower of Comte, such as Canguilhems likely to be. Perhaps, indeed it is the French who need liberating from the English Bacon and Locke. And perhaps it is theEnglish historians of science, with their schooling in the GermanKantian and Hegelian legacies, who can offer assistance here. Conversely, perhaps Canguilhem is too English for a generation ofEnglish historians of science who have been learning from Germansources how to not be English. Or, more precisely, learning fromKantian and Hegelian German sources how to repudiate the oneGermanic tradition, logical positivism, that drew extensively, albeitremotely, on the heritage from Bacon and Locke.Maybe, then, English historians have now learned enough fromGermany to help liberate not only themselves but their Frenchcolleagues from English philosophy. Maybe it is the French whoare now more English than the English and so more in need ofGermany.

III. Analysis and narration in the history of science

On one principal issue, Canguilhem is manifestly indebted toKant rather than to Comte. His histories are histories of concepts.For Canguilhem is concerned with the history of changing interpretationsof phenomena ; with changes in scientific experience, whereexperience requires the active interpretation of what the senses deliver. Now concepts come in different sizes, as it were. The conceptsof time, of space, of matter and of cause are very comprehensiveconcepts indeed, not restricted to one science rather than anotherbut relevant to many. By contrast, the concept of valency or theconcept of the gene are plainly less comprehensive concepts. WhenCanguilhem studies the concept of the normal, he is contemplatinga broad spread of scientific thinking in pathology, physiology, anatomy and so on. A preoccupation with concepts can, therefore,bring with it a broad intellectual view of science.


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72 Jonathan HodgeHowever, it is surely true that this preoccupation with conceptsis associated with certain confinements of his agenda as a historian.

For two clusters of enquiries are not strongly represented in Can-guilhem's writing. On the one hand, there is little attention to interests and institutions : commerce or imperialism as an interest forexample, or museums and laboratories as institutions. On the otherhand, there is little investigation into the influences upon scientistsnor of their intentions. Consider, first, this last item. Biographicalstudies of individual scientists, or indeed of groups or schools ofscientists, disclose that their intentions may take a variety of forms.Take two examples. In the work that resulted in his Principles ofgeology (1830-1833) Lyell had a number of intentions, one being toreform the young science of geology. This intention cannot bereduced to one or more intentions about concepts. For the objectof his intention was larger and more unitary than any concept analysis would imply. He was aiming to change the whole of a science,and this change was to satisfy a number of very diverse ideals andconstraints : epistemological, methodological, ideological, institutional and so on. Any historical analysis of the Principles of geology cannot succeed if it restricts itself to an analysis of concepts.Again, recall the moment when Darwin in July 1837 opened hisNotebook by writing as a title Zoonomia, meaning here not hisgrandfather's book, but the very search itself for laws of life. Darwin s programme, his goal, his project comprises and integratesseveral component projects : to revise Lamarck's system as presentednd rejected by Lyell ; to introduce a new way of classifyingspecies that incorporates geographical findings, and so allows inferences about the laws of change in species ; a further enquiry intothe causes of these changes ; and finally an enquiry into how thosecauses arise from the most general laws of life. These ambitions,and others formulated in the months ahead, cannot be reduced toan intention to construct one or more concepts. Nor should thissurprise us. Scientists are like other people : they have all kinds ofgoals, ambitions, motivations, even at one time in history. Moreover hen we take history into account it is manifest that therehave been radical shifts in the kinds of goals, ambitions and motivations people have had ; even if one considers only those peoplewho have sought to explain and understand animals and plants. Ahistoriography for science that concentrates our attention onconcepts cannot do justice to the challenges we face as historians.


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Canguilhem and the history of biology 1Nor, in any case, is the concept a very suitable unit of analysis andnarration. For a concept is a product, an achievement not a process or a goal. The concept, then, as a unit of analysis and narrations not adapted to the historian's quest for insight into the processes of enquiry that Lyell or Darwin, or Bernard or Monod, haveundertaken, or for insight into the aims that inspired and directedthose activities.But now a larger, philosophical issue confronts us. At least inpoststructuralist retrospect, it is tempting to say that Canguilhemdid not bring individual, or group, intentions, motives, aims and soon into his history because his thinking belongs to that decenteringof the subject, that dissolution of the liberal, humanist conceptionof the person, that is central to the familiar shift whereby Frenchthinking moved from the age of Sartre in the 1950s to the age ofFoucault, Derrida, Barthes, Lacan, and the rest, in the 1970s. Tothis reflection, a historian could reply in various ways. S(he) couldattempt a philosophical refutation of the relevant doctrines ofpoststructuralism ; with, surely, very little prospect of publicly proclaimed success. Or the historian can choose instead to declare ameasure of disciplinary independence ; and to insist that for thepurposes of doing history in ways that are not arbitrarily restrictedin scope, nor arbitrarily detached from the way most peoplecontinue to talk, to write and to understand themselves and eachother, for these purposes s(he) will continue undeflected by the philosophic l forces of the age. After all does not the very pluralismproclaimed by poststructuralists, when in postmodernist mood,provide the historian with this license to decline to defer to thephilosophers.The power and authority of the historian's response isobviously limited. However, it may serve well when other issues areengaged. Turn next to influences. Canguilhem's histories do notsay much about influences. They talk of continuity and discontinuityertainly. But not of the influences, the causes, for thesecontinuities and discontinuities. Again, we have to acknowledgehere, also, the transformation of the Zeitgeist between the 1950sand 1970s in France. In 1955 no philosopher had yet declared history impossible, history that is with its traditional concern with historical agents and agencies ; and with its traditional concern withthe origins and influences of those agents and agencies. By 1975,with some help from Nietzsche's writings, indeed under the


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74 Jonathan Hodgeinfluence of Nietzsche, Foucault was proposing that genealogiesshould replace histories precisely because they do not presume toaddress those traditional concerns of historians.After Foucault, therefore, Canguilhem looks, as Sartre doesnot, a suitable sage for our epoch. However, the historian is oncemore inclined to remain unpersuaded. S(he) reads, in Les Mots etles choses (1966) and in L'Archologie du savoir (1969), Foucaulssummary of the traditional historians' tasks that he is not going topursue, and what does s(he) feel ? S(he) feels, perhaps, that thosetasks sound at least as interesting and illuminating as the task Foucault is undertaking. What is more, s(he) may wonder why thechoice has to be made between these two kinds of task. Could theynot be done together and integrated into some larger venture?S(he) is familiar with the rhetorical device that Foucault has inplay ; for s(he) has often seen authors dramatise the significance oftheir innovations by declaring what others are doing as traditional,with traditional implying pass. Indeed, as the new century begins,s(he) is tempted to adopt a variant of this same rhetorical play.The 1970s have been running now for nearly three decades, s(he)observes. Are the 1970s not themselves a little pass ? Is it not timeto move on ?

Returning to the business of the historian, one sees that theissues about influences and intentions have an especial pertinencefor the historian of science. One challenge for historians of sciencewas rightly emphasised by Canguilhem. Myths and fallacies aboutprecursors must be rejected and replaced, he would declare. However anguilhem, with his inhibitions about influences and intentions, has surely made it difficult for himself on this matter. Forthe study of influences and intentions, and especially the study ofthe influences conditioning intentions, is one of the best antidotesto myths and fallacies about precursors. Obviously, trivially,Lamarck was not influenced by Darwin, nor did he intend to anticipate Darwin. Lamarck had the intentions he had, and to thatextent did what he did, because he was the postcursor of Buffon,Newton, Linn and so on, the postcursor of those who influencedhim and with whom he was agreeing and disagreeing. A postcurso-rist historiography of intentions and influences is a good cure forprecursorism, because it respects the asymmetries in time and causation. For, to show that Lamarck is a postcursor of Buffon(among others) is not to show that Buffon is the precursor of


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Canguilhem and the history of biology 75Lamarck. Understanding people as postcursors replaces understandinghem as precursors. Canguilhem denied himself this subversionf the precursor temptation, because he ignored influences andintentions in order to focus on similarities and differences, focusingtherefore on the conceptual dissimilarities between Lamarck andDarwin, in order to show that Lamarck was not a precursor ofDarwin. But such a strategy is less than satisfying to a historian ofbiology. For a historian may want to ask how and why Darwinwas deeply influenced by reading about Lamarck, in Lyell's exposition nd yet, also, how and why Darwin's theorising could eventually depart markedly from the structure of Lamarck's system.In answering these questions, judgements about the identities, similarities and differences among concepts may be insufficientlyenlightening and discriminating. Continuity and influence do notalways coincide. Darwin was deeply influenced by Lyell even whilebreaking with his views.

IV. Individuals, institutions and interestsIf we allow interests, economic interests especially, into our history of science, and if we allow institutions and the interests of in s

titutions then we raise questions about the relations of history ofscience to philosophy on the one hand and to social theory on theother. To raise these questions is to raise, in turn, questions aboutthe relations between philosophy and social theory. Those relationshave obviously changed from one period to another, and from oneplace to another. In Germany in the 1870s they were very differentfrom what they were in France in the 1970s.If one likes to study the history of science in a pluralistic, eclecticnd holistic manner, then one regrets any disjunction betweenphilosophical and social approaches to the subject. Canguilhem'swork is curious in this regard. In his life, a life of political courageand commitment, the role of social ideals is manifest. And yet inhis history of biology the political and the economic are keptalmost entirely out of the picture. The reasons for this may lie indivisions of labour familiar in French academic life, where philosophical nd social studies are often separated. But perhaps other


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76 Jonathan Hodgeinfluences are at work as well. Canguilhem, notoriously, was notabove dismissing sociological approaches to the history of scienceas tainted with Marxist associations. The whole topic of Marxismin French philosophical life in the middle decades of the last century is impossibly complex and controversial for quick encapsulation.owever, one question can hardly be avoided in any appraislf Canguilhem's legacy to the history of the life sciences. Wecan ask why was the entire enterprise of sociological history uniquely associated with Marx ? If a historian does not find the Marxist historiographical tradition congenial, as Canguilhem plainlydid not, then why not look to other traditions within sociologicalhistory, perhaps those associated, say, with Weber, a social theoristoften committed to refuting or at least replacing Marxist legaciesrather than perpetuating them ? This question has a special pertinence today. In the shift from the age of Sartre to the age of Foucault, French philosophy appears to have displaced Marx from thecentre of the philosophical stage ; for the scientistic treatment ofMarx by Althusser can be read as contributing to this tendency,rather than countering it. Canguilhem's resistance to sociologicalhistory of science, as too closely associated with unacceptable Marxist istory, may seem, then, to make Canguilhem a very appropriate teacher for the current, postMarxist philosophical age. Butto accept this verdict is to avoid the larger question about the responsibilities historians of science have to disciplines other thantheir own. Perhaps, historians of science today should view philosophical culture as impoverished in so far as it has repudiated Marxist r any other social theory, and so perhaps they should conclude that historians of science cannot live by philosophy alone,but must draw on additional academic cultures for historiographic lesources and inspiration.

To this reflection, it could well be replied, especially by youngerhistorians of science outside France, that they have long ago turned away from philosophy and toward social theory. However, todescribe this tendency in this way may be misleading. If one questions what is involved in making this turn, it can be surprisingwhat one is told, today, in reply. For, one may be told that theemphasis now is on bodies, spaces and practices (or praxes). Andthis does indeed sound very distant from any older, non-Marxist,approach to the history of science such as one finds in Canguilhem.However, further questioning reveals that the current inquiry is


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Canguilhem and the history of biology 77into what people were doing and the spaces wherein they weredoing it, and in correlating the actions and the spaces. All references to motives and interests, any psychological and economicaspects of the individuals and institutions, are regarded as marginalto the historian's business, perhaps excluded entirely. So, eventhough we have here a commitment to scientific knowledge associally constructed, a commitment directly contrary to Canguil-hem's teachings, there is a continuity with Canguilhem's disinclinationo look to biographical, social and economic analyses asresources in formulating causal and explanatory insights into scientific ctivity. Anyone who thinks that the new historiography ofbodies, spaces and praxes is unduly narrow, indeed timid and cautious, in its programme should not, therefore, expect to find a corrective in Canguilhem.

V. Broad vistas and integrattve prospectsDuhem famously contrasted the broad and shallow thinking of

English physicists in the last century with the narrow and deepthinking of their French contemporaries. National chauvinist thathe was, Duhem's contrast was intended to be to the advantage ofthe French. But if we set aside national chauvinism, surely the idealof combining breadth and depth has much in its favour. The difficulty in doing this arises, once again, from disciplinary and otherdivisions and hostilities. A quarter of a century ago, a young historian of biology visiting France was vexed, even intimidated bywhat he encountered. His reading convinced him that France excelledn grand masters of his subject - Roger, Foucault, Schiller,Canguilhem, Gnnek, to name but a few - no other nation presenteduch an array of authority and accomplishment. And yet hehad to learn that there was very little cooperation going on. On thecontrary, some ignored others, some disliked others, some spokevery uncharitably of others, and for reasons that were sometimespersonal, sometimes ideological, sometimes institutional and so on.In an optimistic mood, he might have concluded that it was easierto learn from the French historians of biology if one was notFrench. For an outsider could read all of them without taking


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78 Jonathan Hodgesides ; whereas a young French student would be expected toassume that valuing and learning from some was inconsistent withappreciating and benefiting from the work of others. In a pessimisticood he might have concluded that the best scholarship in afield often requires abandoning the ideals of cooperation and coordination Perhaps French history of biology has moved awayfrom that phase of a quarter of a century ago. Perhaps, it will nowbe thought that a good way to benefit from the work of Canguil-hem is to integrate it, rather than isolate it, from the work ofothers.On a larger scale, a foreign historian of biology looked in admiration upon the French historians, especially the Annales school,and upon the philosophers' writing about science. But the foreignerobserved, with regret, that there seemed no willingness or ability inthese two academic communities to learn from one another or tocollaborate in contributing to his own field. Again, in an optimisticmood, he might hope today that one way to benefit from the workof Canguilhem would be to attempt to integrate it with the work ofBraudel.All such integrative prospects call for collective as well as individual efforts, and these efforts require us to overcome divisions ofacademic labour within as well as beyond the history of biology.The chronological divisions, and their professional corollaries, arefamiliar enough. A specialist on Aristotle's biology is likely to havea philosophical or classical education rather than a historical orscientific training ; whereas a specialist on early molecular biologywill have been trained quite differently. No less significant are thedivisions among historians of biology studying the very sameperiod. Darwin specialists and Bernard specialists often know littleof each others' studies. Indeed, they may feel justified in this isolation on the grounds that Darwin and Bernard themselves had progr mmes of enquiry and explanation that involved very little engagement with each other's endeavours. One might try to draw upsome comprehensive generalisations about the longue dure of thesciences of life, generalisations designed to make sense of the gapbetween Darwin and Bernard. But it is widely agreed that phrasessuch as the sciences of life or the biological sciences are asproblematic as biology itself. One can certainly doubt whetherbiology exists before the nineteenth century. Indeed one can doubtwhether any single, unified science of life has successfully been


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Canguilhem and the history of biology 79established even in our own century. In the absence, therefore, ofany simple identity for all the enquiries into plants and animalssince ancient times, one can only formulate distinctions and groupings to suit a particular historiographical occasion. For the purposes of understanding Canguilhem's work, there may be a casefor invoking one rather simple contrast, if only with a view to setting it aside later. The contrast is between two clusters of enquiries.On the one hand are enquiries into the structure and function inhealth and disease of individual living organisms. Galen and Bernard on the liver or Hippocrates and Sherrington on epilepsy fallinto this category. On the other hand are enquiries into kinds ofplants and animals, their structural designs and habitual activities.Plato's Timaeus, the opening of Genesis. Darwin's Origin andMonod's Chance and necessity (together with Lucretius's De nturarerum, Monod's model) fall into this category. Investigations in thefirst category are, in recent centuries, more closely connected withmedicine and microscopes than are those in the second. Those inthe second are, in these centuries, more closely connected withmuseums and voyages. In the middle of the nineteenth century thefirst category included physiology, the second natural history, atleast in some senses of these terms. Now, although he did writesome memorable essays on Darwin and on other authors withinthe second category, the most detailed and influential of Canguilhem s ritings deal with those in the first. And when he wrote ofAristotle, whose work falls into both categories, it was Aristotle'scontribution to the first rather than the second that was paid mostattention.

A comprehensive history of enquiries into plants and animalswould obviously seek to do justice to both these categories. Thiswould require, in turn, doing justice to the Hebrew as well as theHellenic sources of western scientific culture, and to the relationsbetween the legacies from those sources. It would require us tolook at the new integrations made by Albert and Thomas, in thethirteenth century, integrations of Genesis and of Aristotle on thediversity and designs of plant and animal kinds. In sum, the legacies of both those sources for both categories of enquiry wouldrequire an integrated treatment. In this integrative endeavour, certain limitations in Canguilhem's work would have to be circumventedhere is little of the Biblical in Canguilhem and there is littleon the parts of biology (to speak anachronistically) that lie furthest


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80 Jonathan Hodgefrom medicine. Nor is that surprising ; with his philosophical andmedical commitments it was natural for him to concentrate on theGreeks rather than the Hebrews, and on physiology, anatomy andpathology, rather than palaeontology, biogeography or populationgenetics.Here, therefore, as elsewhere, it seems evident that we can makethe best use of Canguilhem's legacy to the historical study of the lifesciences by trying to clarify as accurately as we can, what it doesand what it does not do. Canguilhem himself had no illusion that hewas providing a framework that encompassed the entire history ofall of the life sciences throughout all of the centuries. The appropriate way to measure his contribution is not by comparison withsome Utopian ideal for the course of future endeavours in this field.Rather, we should ask how his contribution to our discipline took itbeyond where it stood before Canguilhem began his long and rewarding areer. It is a mark of the value and significance of that careerthat, in commemorating it, one needs to assemble a team of commentators from a wide array of academic disciplines and cultures ;and that they find themselves taking up an extraordinarily broadrange of issues. Historians of biology owe a great debt to the manwho has associated their subject with these issues.

BibliographyBowker G. and Latour Bruno1987 A booming discipline short of discipline : (Social) Studies ofscience in France, Social Studies of science, 17, 715-748.Canguilhem Georges1955 La Formation du concept de rflexe aux xvif et xvilF sicles

(Paris : Vrin).1966 Le Normal et le pathologique (Paris : puf) ; this is the expandededition consulted here of Essai sur quelques problmes concernante normal et le pathologique (Clermont-Ferrand : Impr. LaMontagne, 1943), Publications de la facult des lettres del universit de Strasbourg , fasc. 100.1968 tudes d histoire et de philosophie des sciences concernant levivant et la vie, 2nd d. - consulted here - (Paris : Vrin, 1970) ;1st d. (Paris, 1968).1977 Idologie et rationalit dans l histoire des sciences de la vie(Paris : Vrin, 1977) ; English transi, consulted here : Ideologyand rationality in the history of the life sciences, transi, byA. Goldhammer (Cambridge : mit Press, 1988).


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Canguilhem and the history of biology 811994

Caron J. A.1988Gutting Gary1989Kusch Martin1991

A vital rationalist : Selected writings from Georges Canguilhem,ed. by Franois Delaporte, transi, by A. Goldhammer with anintrod. by Paul Rabinow and a critical bibliography by CamilleLimoges (New York : Zone Books). Biology in the life sciences : A historiographical contribution istory of science, 26, 223-268.Michael Foucault Archaeology of scientific reason (Cambridge : Cambridge Univ. Press).Foucault s Strata and fields : An investigation into archaeologicaland genealogical science studies (Dordrecht-Boston-London :Kluwer Academic Publishers).

Nicolson Malcolm1991

ZlBAKALAM S.1996

The Social and the cognitive : Resources for the sociology ofscientific knowledge [a review of the English translation of LeNormal et le pathologique], Studies in the history and philosophyof science, 22, 347-369.Ideology and rationality in Canguilhem epistemology, Physis,33, 266-287.


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Fondation Pour la science - Centre international de synthseDirection : Michel Blay, ric Brian

evue de synthseRevue trimestrielle fonde en 1900 par Henri Berrdacteur en chef: ric Brianecrtaire de rdaction : Agns Biard

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Pierre-Antoine Fabre et Antonella Romano. PrsentationStphane Van Damme. criture, institution et socit. Le travail littraire dans la Compagnie de Jsus en France (1620-1720).Denise Aric. Les yeux d Argos et les toiles d Astre pourmesurer l univers. Les jsuites italiens et la science nouvelle.Florence Hsia. Some observations on the Observations. The declineof the French Jesuit scientific mission in China.Charlotte de Castelnau-L'Estoile et Carlos Alberto de Moura RibeiroZeron. Une mission glorieuse et profitable. Rforme missionnairet conomie sucrire dans la province jsuite du Brsil au dbutdu xvne sicle.Marie-Lucie Copete et Federico Palomo. Des carmes aprs leCarme. Stratgies de conversion et fonctions politiques des missionsintrieures en Espagne et au Portugal (1540-1650).Ruth Olaizola. Les jsuites et l utopie du comdien honnte auxvie et xvne sicles.

Questions poses Louis Chtellier, Luce Giard, Dominique Julia etJohn O'Malley.

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