66 Jonathan Hodge

can 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, aca-demic 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 philoso-phers writing more recently about science, Canguilhem did notfrighten the horses, as we say in English. He did not, that is, threa-ten the 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 dis-ciples 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 natio-nal and other boundaries. For spectators looking from a distance,upon the history of the science of life, Canguilhem's protege 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 achieve-ment as 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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done 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 histo-riography of ideas (originally a German tradition) and Canguil-hem's historiography of concepts. Canguilhem's best known wri-tings 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 philoso-phical ambitions 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 reflexe aux XVII! etXVIIf siecles (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 his-tory of biology quite independently of those commitments. Indeed,it presents an exemplary exhibition of the arts of textual explica-tion and contextual exegesis; while the volume as a whole provi-des, no less, a model of how to place the physiology and psycho-logy of its two chosen centuries within the longue duree from theGreeks to our own time.

This emphasis on the Greek legacy comes naturally to histo-rians 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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a fallacious one. Elite education continued in that century to inte-grate 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 Canguil-hem's philosophical alignments and sympathies should be givenhere before returning to the question of his role as historian.

11. - HISTORY OF SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHICAL TRADITIONS

It is for philosophical commentators and critics to decide whe-ther 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 rea-ding Canguilhem at the opening of this century. But they are notperhaps the questions about Canguilhem's philosophy that a histo-rian will naturally take up initially. Rather, it may be more appro-priate to begin by placing Canguilhem in relation to familiar trendsin the historiography of science, and in relation to the contribu-tions to 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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historian, 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 pre-dominately German for two centuries now. Indeed most of the dif-ferences between French and English philosophy have arisenbecause those two academic cultures have made different uses ofGermanic resources: for instance, the French making, in this cen-tury, 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 naivelyempiricist 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, Koyre and Collingwood,all philosophers with fundamental debts to Kant and Hegel, and allphilosophers offering explicit alternatives to empiricism and positi-vism. The commitment the young historian of science made was,then, to this heritage from Kant and Hegel ; and it was a commit-ment confirmed 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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phone historian of science has learned that history of science nee-ded liberating again, this time from philosophy itself. For it needsto reject Kuhn, Koyre, 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 inhe-rent 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 protege 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 duree, as well as imme-diate 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 preju-dices endemic in their national cultural heritage. And they are toldthat the best way to escape these prejudices is to apprentice them-selves 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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domestic inheritance. Indeed, having been directed to Cassirer,Koyre, Lovejoy and Collingwood and then to Marx and Mann-heim, 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 Canguil-hem, is likely to be. Perhaps, indeed it is the French who need libe-rating 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. Con-versely, 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.

Ill. - 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 interpre-tations of phenomena; with changes in scientific experience, whereexperience requires the active interpretation of what the senses deli-ver. 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, ana-tomy and so on. A preoccupation with concepts can, therefore,bring with it a broad intellectual view of science.

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However, 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 inte-rests 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 ana-lysis 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, institu-tional and so on. Any historical analysis of the Principles of geo-logy cannot succeed if it restricts itself to an analysis of concepts.Again, recall the moment when Darwin in July 1837 opened hisNotebook B by writing as a title Zoonomia, meaning here not hisgrandfather's book, but the very search itself for laws of life. Dar-win's programme, his goal, his project comprises and integratesseveral component projects: to revise Lamarck's system as presen-ted and rejected by Lyell; to introduce a new way of classifyingspecies that incorporates geographical findings, and so allows infe-rences 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. Moreo-ver, whet! we take history into account it is manifest that therehave been radical shifts in the kinds of goals, ambitions and moti-vations 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.

Canguilhem and the history of biology 73

Nor, in any case, is the concept a very suitable unit of analysis andnarration. For a concept is a product, an achievement not a pro-cess or a goal. The concept, then, as a unit of analysis and narra-tion is not adapted to the historian's quest for insight into the pro-cesses 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 pro-claimed 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 phi-losophical 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 disconti-nuity certainly. 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 his-tory impossible, history that is with its traditional concern with his-torical 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

74 Jonathan Hodge

influence 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'Archeologie du savoir (1969), Foucault'ssummary 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 Fou-cault 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 passe. 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 passe? 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. Howe-ver, Canguilhem, with his inhibitions about influences and inten-tions, 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 anti-cipate Darwin. Lamarck had the intentions he had, and to thatextent did what he did, because he was the postcursor of Buffon,Newton, Linne 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 cau-sation. For, to show that Lamarck is a postcursor of Buffon(among others) is not to show that Buffon is the precursor of

Canguilhem and the history of biology 75

Lamarck. Understanding people as postcursors replaces understan-ding them as precursors. Canguilhem denied himself this subver-sion of 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 exposi-tion, and yet, also, how and why Darwin's theorising could even-tually depart markedly from the structure of Lamarck's system.In answering these questions, judgements about the identities, simi-larities 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 INTERESTS

If we allow interests, economic interests especially, into our his-tory of science, and if we. allow institutions and the interests of ins-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, eclec-tic and 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 philoso-phical and social studies are often separated. But perhaps other

76 Jonathan Hodge

influences 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 cen-tury is impossibly complex and controversial for quick encapsula-tion. However, one question can hardly be avoided in any apprai-sal of Canguilhem's legacy to the history of the life sciences. Wecan ask why was the entire enterprise of sociological history uni-quely associated with Marx ? If a historian does not find the Mar-xist 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 perti-nence today. In the shift from the age of Sartre to the age of Fou-cault, 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 Mar-xist history, may seem, then, to make Canguilhem a very appro-priate teacher for the current, postMarxist philosophical age. Butto accept this verdict is to avoid the larger question about the res-ponsibilities historians of science have to disciplines other thantheir own. Perhaps, historians of science today should view philo-sophical culture as impoverished in so far as it has repudiated Mar-xist or any other social theory, and so perhaps they should con-clude that historians of science cannot live by philosophy alone,but must draw on additional academic cultures for historiographi-cal resources and inspiration.

To this reflection, it could well be replied, especially by youngerhistorians of science outside France, that they have long ago tur-ned away from philosophy and toward social theory. However, todescribe this tendency in this way may be misleading. If one ques-tions 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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into what people were doing and the spaces wherein they weredoing it, and in correlating the actions and the spaces. All refe-rences 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 disinclina-tion to look to biographical, social and economic analyses asresources in formulating causal and explanatory insights into scien-tific activity. Anyone who thinks that the new historiography ofbodies, spaces and praxes is unduly narrow, indeed timid and cau-tious, in its programme should not, therefore, expect to find a cor-rective in Canguilhem.

v. - BROAD VISTAS AND INTEGRATIVE PROSPECTS

Duhem famously contrasted the broad and shallow thinking ofEnglish 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 diffi-culty in doing this arises, once again, from disciplinary and otherdivisions and hostilities. A quarter of a century ago, a young histo-rian of biology visiting France was vexed, even intimidated bywhat he encountered. His reading convinced him that France excel-led in grand masters of his subject - Roger, Foucault, Schiller,Canguilhem, Grmek, to name but a few - no other nation presen-ted such 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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sides; 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 pessimis-tic mood he might have concluded that the best scholarship in afield often requires abandoning the ideals of cooperation and co-ordination. 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 admi-ration 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 indi-vidual 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 isola-tion on the grounds that Darwin and Bernard themselves had pro-grammes of enquiry and explanation that involved very little enga-gement with each other's endeavours. One might try to draw upsome comprehensive generalisations about the longue duree 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

Canguilhem and the history of biology 79

established 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 grou-pings to suit a particular historiographical occasion. For the pur-poses of understanding Canguilhem's work, there may be a casefor invoking one rather simple contrast, if only with a view to set-ting 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 Ber-nard 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 naturarerum, 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 Canguil-hem's writings 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 lega-cies of both those sources for both categories of enquiry wouldrequire an integrated treatment. In this integrative endeavour, cer-tain limitations in Canguilhem's work would have to be circumven-ted. There 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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from 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 appro-priate 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 rewar-ding career. It is a mark of the value and significance of that careerthat, in commemorating it, one needs to assemble a team of com-mentators 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.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BOWKER G. and LATOUR Bruno1987 A booming discipline short of discipline: (Social) Studies of

science in France, Social Studies of science, 17, 715-748.CANGUILHEM Georges1955 La Formation du concept de reflexe aux xvtr et xvur siecles

(Paris: Vrin).1966 Le Normal et le pathologique (Paris: PUF) ; this is the expanded

edition consulted here of Essai sur quelques problemes concer-nant le normal et le pathologique (Clermont-Ferrand : Impr. LaMontagne, 1943), Publications de la faculte des lettres del'universite de Strasbourg, fasc. 100.

1968 Etudes d'histoire et de philosophie des sciences concernant levivant et la vie, 2nd ed. - consulted here - (Paris : Vrin, 1970) ;1st ed. (Paris, 1968).

1977 Ideologie et rationalite dans l'histoire des sciences de la vie(Paris: Vrin, 1977); English transl. consulted here: Ideologyand rationality in the history of the life sciences, transl. byA. Goldhammer (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1988).

Canguilhem and the history of biology 81

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