Ideology and Rationality in the History of the Life Sciences 026203137X, 9780262031370

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Ideology and Rationality in the History of the Life Sciences

Georges Canguilhem translated by Arthur Goldhammer

The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, .England

--�

068182 English translation copyright© 1988 Massachusetts Institute of Technology Originally published under the title Ideologie et rationalite dans l'histoire

des sciences de la vie: Nouvelles etudes d'histoire et de philosophie des sciences, copyright© 1977 Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, Paris,

France.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval, without permission in writing from the publisher. This book was typeset by Graphic Composition Inc. and was printed and bound by Halliday Lithograph in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Canguilhem, Georges,

l 904-

Ideology and rationality in the history of the life sciences. Translation of: Ideologie et rationalite clans l'histoire des sciences de la vie. Bibliography: p. Includes index. I.

Life sciences-History.

QH305.C2613

1988

ISBN 0-262-03137-X

2. Life sciences-Philosophy. 574'.09

88-610

I. Title.

Contents Translator's Preface

vii

Preface

ix

Introduction: The Role of Epistemology in Contemporary History of Science I

l

Scientific and Medical Ideologies in the Nineteenth Century

l

2 3

II

What Is a Scientific Ideology? John Brown's System: An Example of Medical Ideology Bacteriology and the End of Nineteenth-Century "Medical Theory"

27 41

SI

Triumphs of Biological Rationality in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

4

The Development of the Concept of Biological Regulation in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

81

Vl

5 6

On the History of the Life Sciences since Darwin The Question of Normality in the History of Biological Thought Sources Index

CONTENTS

1 47

Translator's Preface Georges Canguilhem was born in I904. He studied and began to teach philosophy but while teaching decided to work toward a medical degree. His reasons are worth noting: It is not necessarily to learn more about men�al illness that a professor of philosophy will take an interest in medicine. Nor is it necessarily to practi�e a scientific discipline. What I expected from medicine was nothing other than an intro­ duction to concrete human problems. Medicine seemed to me then, and still seems to me now, a technique or an art at the crossroads of several sciences more than a science in the strict sense of the word. Two problems-that of the relation between science and technology, and that of norms and normality-could, I thought, be more precisely for­ mulated and more fully elucidated by someone with med­ ical training . . . . The present work [his I943 thesis, The Normal and the Pathologican is therefore an effort to in­ tegrate some of the methods and results of medicine into philosophical speculation. Canguilhem with his life's work has admirably ful­ filled this statement of intention. Along with Gaston Bach­ elard he has been one of the primary influences in the reorien�ation of French philosophy in recent years. It was ·Bachelard who introduced.the concept of an "epistemolog­ ical break," a concept whose importance and usefulness Canguilhem has demonstrated in his own way. But Can­ guilhem's work also shows how philosophy can span the

vm

coupure, so to speak, in order to reestablish continuity at

another level. For Canguilhem , error is the truth of the past transcended, and he is able to show in concrete detail why the history of science should be studied not as a steady march toward truth but as a process of formation and re­ formation of concepts and models. His method is more easily grasped in action than through description, and there is perhaps no better introduction to his work than the essay (included here) entitled "Bacteriology and the End of Nineteenth-Century 'Medical Theory.' " In l 95 5 Canguilhem succeeded Bachelard as director of the Institut d'Histoire des Sciences et des Techniques, a position that he held until his retirement a few years ago. Perhaps the most noted of the younger philosophers influ­ enced by his thought was the late Michel Foucault, who wrote of his debt to Canguilhem's pioneering work. Inter­ ested readers may wish to consult Le Normal et le patho­ logique (1966, containing the 1943 thesis and later essays and now available in English), La Formation du concept de re"flexe ( 1955, reissued 1977), La Connaissance de la vie (1952, 1965), Etudes d'histoire et de philosophie des sci­ ences ( 1968), and the volume from which the present translation was made, Ideologie et rationalite dans l'his­ toire des sciences de la vie (1977). Canguilhem also pro­

vided a preface to a recent edition of Claude Bernard's

Le�ons sur les phenomenes de la vie communs aux ani­ maux et aux vegetaux (1966).

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE

Preface To err is human, to persist in error is diabolical. It is not up to me to decide the degree of error embodied in the texts gathered here. I am surely too old to make public confession of my mistakes, to proclaim my allegiance to newly instituted epistemological authorities at the cost of renouncing methodological axioms that I borrowed some forty years ago and subsequently exploited in my own way and at my own risk, not without emendation, revision, and reorientation. In 1967-68, under the influence of work of Michel Fouc�ult and Louis Althusser, I introduced the concept of scientific ideology into my lectures. This was not simply a mark of my interest in and acceptance of the original con­ tributions of those two thinkers to the canons of scientific history. It was also a way of refurbishing without rejecting the lessons of a teacher whose books I read but whose lec­ tures I was never able to attend. For whatever liberties my young colleagues may have taken with the teachings of Gaston Bachelard, their work was inspired by and built on his. l do not believe, therefore, that the reader of my first Etudes ·d'histoire et de philosophie des sciences (Studies in the History and Philosophy of the Sciences) will fin.cl in

x

these essays signs of change or evolution in my thinking.':­ As for the question whether my indifference to the devel­ opment of a history that would substitute for the distinc­ tion between science and philosophy (or, in other words, between science and literature) a notion of their mutual interpenetration should or should not earn me the distinc­ tion of being a "conceptualist fossil," I must admit I do not much care. When one's own insignificant research has led one to recognize the existence of discontinuity in history, it would be inappropriate to refuse to recognize discontinui­ ties in the history of history. To each his own discontinuity, his own revolutions in the world of scholarship. On the other hand I should like very much to answer a question that has been raised by no one but myself. .Ihe_ author of The Archaeology of Knowledge, whose analysis of scientific ideology I have found quite useful, has aistin­ guished several "thresholds of transformation" in the his­ tory of knowledge: a threshold of positivity, a threshold of epistemologization, a threshold of scientificity, and a threshold of formalization.1 In my published work I am not sure that I have distinguished as carefully as Michel Foucault might wish among the various thresholds crossed by the disciplines I have studied. It seems to me in any case that, the claims of certain geneticists notwithstanding, none of those disciplines has yet crossed the threshold of formalization.2 Un�ike Foucault, however, I do not believe that experimental medicine as practiced by Claude Bernard and microbiology as practiced by Louis Pasteur were equally inadequate in their contribution to making a sci­ ence of clinical medicine. I readily admit that I failed to pay adequate attention to the question of thresholds of *[Etudes d'histoire et de philosophie des sciences was p�blished by Librairie Vrin in 1968. The French edition of the present work bears the subtitle Nouvelles etudes d'histoire et de philosophie des sciences.-Trans.]

PREFACE

x1

transformation. But nineteenth-century medicine and bi­ ology lend themselves less readily than, say, nineteenth­ century chemistry to dissection of the conditions that made "progress" possible. One can still argue, I think, that Ber­ nard's physiological medicine exhibits a case in which "ep­ istemologization," at the hands of a Bernard himself in love with philosophizing, raced far in "advance" even of posi­ tive empirical results. By contrast, Pasteur, a chemist rather than a physician, was primarily interested in making a pos­ itive contribution to research and not unduly concerned with developing a consistent epistemology. 3 It may be, finally, that my analyses are not sufficiently subtle or rigorous. I leave it to the reader to decide whether this is a question of discretion, sloth, or incapacity. Notes l See Michel Foucault, L'Archeologie du savoir, pp. 243-247. 2 Cf. J. H. Woodger, Axiomatic Method in Biology (Cambridge: 1937), and "Formalization in Biology," Logique et analyse, new series, l (August 1 9 5 8 ) ." 3 Cf. F. Dagognet, Methodes et doctrine dans /'oeuvre de Pasteur (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1967), conclusion.

G.C. June 1977

PREFACE

Ideology and Rationality in the History of the Life Sciences

Introduction: The Role of Epistemology in Contemporary History of Science To anyone who would examine the relations between epis­ temology and the history of science, one fact stands out above all others: namely, that we possess at present more manifestoes and programs of research than we do hard facts. Statements of intention are numerous, concrete re­ sults meager. Compared with the history of science, a discipline with a history of its own, epistemology at first sight seems to find itself in a false position. Chronologically, the history of science owes nothing to the philosophical discipline that appears to have acquired the name epistemology in 1854.1 Montucla's Histoire des mathematiques ( 175S), Bailly's Histoire de l'astronomie (1775- 178 2), and Kurt Sprengel's Versuch einer pragmatischen .Geschichte der Arzneikunde ( 1792- 1803) were all written without reference to any sys­

tem of critical or normative concepts. No doubt all these works were informed, whether their authors were aware of it or not, by a period consciousness, impersonally for­ mulated in the doctrine of infinite perfectibility of the hu­ man spirit and based on an almost unbroken series of revolutions in cosmology, mathematics, and physiology- · . revolutions associated with the names Copernicus, Galileo, Descartes, Harvey, Newton, Leibniz, and Lavoisier. On

2

grounds of continuity it was therefore legitimate to believe in further scientific progress to come: Although Spr'engel (the date being 1792) explicitly alludes to critical philoso­ phy in the introduction to his history of medicine, he men­ tions it simply as a doctrine in which certain physicians happen to be well versed, just as certain of their predeces­ sors were well versed in dogmatic, empirical, or skeptical philosophy, rather than as a new and effective instrument for judging the validity of scientific methods. ence there is no point in reproaching eighteenth- and ·nineteenth­ century historians of science for not having employed any of the epistemological concepts that today's philosophers are attempting to enforce as rules ·for writing scientific history. Among historians of science, those who dislike _the scrutiny of their discipline by epistemologists have not been remiss in pointing out that epistemology, itself nour­ ished by the history of science, cannot presume to give more than it has received; that is � it cannot pretend to re­ form the principles of a discipline from which it in fact derived. The acrimony of the controversy is not unrelated, however vaguely or loosely, to the ancient view of the re­ lation between the disciplines and the faculties of the soul, according to which history corresponds to Memory. It is hard to say whose ambition is more exorbitant, the histor­ ians' or the epistemologists'. Which i� more pr_!!tentious: to claim memory or judgment? Errors of judgment are acci­ dental, but alteration is of the essence of memory. About reconstructions in the history of science one must make a point that has repeatedly been made about reconstructions in other fields of history-political, diplomatic, military, and so on: namely, that contrary to Leopold von Rank�s dictum, the historian can never claim to represent things as they really were (wie es eigentlich gewesen). D�jksterhuis's comment that "the. history of science . . - forms-not only the memory of science but also its episte-

('fi

I INTRODUCTION

1

3

mological laboratory" has frequently been commented on.2 Since elaboration is different from restitution, one may conclude that epistemology's claim to give more than it has received is legitimate. J;,J?!���mology shifts the foe!!§ of interest from the history of science to scienc� as se�;.; in the light of history. To take as one's object of i�qui� �th: ing other than sources, inventions, influences, priorities, simultaneities, and successions is at bottom to fail �o distinguish between science and other aspects of culture. A history of science free of epistemological contamination would inevitably reduce the state of a scientific discipline­ plant physiology in the eighteenth century, say-to a sum­ mary o� chronological and logical connections among var­ ious systems of propositions pertaining to various classes of problems or solutions. The quality of historical work would then be measured by breadth of erudition and shrewdness in analyzing the connections between the work of different scientists, by skill in ferreting out similarities and differences in their views. But the diverse quality of historical works cannot . conceal the fundamentally identi­ cal relation of the historian to the object whose history is being told. A pure history of eighteenth-century botany would consicl�r "� �!�nic�l" nothing but what botanists of the period took to be within their scope of inquiry. Pure historians are interested only in what scientists thought they were doing and how they went about doing it. But a fundamental question must be asked: Does this science of the past constitute a past for the science of today? Taken �n an absolute sense, the "past of a science" is a vulgar concept. The "past" is a catchall of retrospective inquiry. Whether the question is the shape of the earth, the �'hominization" of man, the social division of labor, or the alcoholic delirium of a particular individual, one turns to the "past" as required by present needs in search of more or-less remote antecedents to some present state of affairs. The. past, moreover, is conceived beforehand as a vessel of

;

THE ROLE OF EPISTEMOLOGY

4

infinite capacity. Consider again the example of plant phys­ iology. In the broad sense just defined, its past would in­ clude everything that people called botanists, physicians, chemists, horticulturists, agronomists, or economists might have written in regard to conjectures, observations, or experiments with a bearing on the relation between structure and function in objects variously termed herbs, plants, or vegetables. An idel:i. of the abundance of such source material, even allowing for selection based on chronological and political criteria, can be had by consult­ ing the very useful catalogue of the works of French bota­ nists who belonged to the Academy of Sciences compiled by Lucien Plantefol to commemorate the group's three hundredth anniversary.3 But a catalogue of prior works is, at the time it is compiled, a history of botany in the sense that botany is itself a history, by which I mean an ordered . description, of plants. The hist�ry of a science is thus a summary of readings in a specialized library, a repository and conservatory of knowledge produced and expounded from the time of the tablet and papyrus, parchment and incunabula to that of the magnetic tape. This is, to be sure_, an ideal library, a library of the mind, which by defi'tiiti�n contains a record of everything ever said about the subject. The totality of the past is represented here as an unbroken expanse. Within this expanse it is easy to locate places from which it is possible to trace a line of progress to what­ ever one's current object of interest happens to be. Some historians are quite bold in loc1ating these antecedents, while others are more cautious. But it is simply boldness or prudence that distinguishes their work. One can argue, however, that the history of science is entitled to expect from epistemology a set of ethical criteria, by which I mean a set of criteria for judging which moves within the vast expanse of the past are legitimate and which are not. After much rigorous argument this is the conclusion reached by Suzanne Bachelard in her Epistemology and History of SciINTRODUCTION

5

·ence.4 In·her words: "The fact that the historian's work is

retrospective establishes limits but also bestows certain powers. The historian constructs his objects in an ideal space-time. It is up to him to make sure that this space­ time is not imaginary." To return to my example, the eighteenth-century bot­ anists who undertook to do research in plant physiology looked to contemporary animal physiology for models. Some were physicist-physiologists like Stephen Bales, while others were chemist-physiologists lik� Jean Senebier and Jan Ingenhousz. Yet simply because contemporary plant physiology uses analytical methods from chemistry and experimental techniques from physics, it would be au­ dacious to say the least to construct a history in which a continuity of intention was allowed to c-0nceal a radical discontinuity of object, for biochemistry and biophysics have made substantial innovations in the nature of plant physiology. Between the chemistry of oxidation and the biochemistry of enzymatic reductions, plant physiology first had to become cellular physiology (and cellular theory of course met with tremendous opposition) and then had to rid itself of its early concepts of the cell and protoplasm in order to study metabolism at the molecular leveL n his remarkable History of Biochemistry Marcel Florkin,5 bor­ rowing Gaston Bachelard's concept of an "epistemological break," shows how an enzymatic theory replaced a proto­ plasmic theory as a result of Eduard Biichner's discovery (in 1897) of noncellular fermentation, which for a long time was m�sunderstood and rejected by proponents of Pasteurian biology. 6 It should by now be clear why the past of a present­ day science is not the same thing as that science in the past. In order to understand the sequence of research, experi­ mentation, and conceptualization without which it would be impossible to comprehend the work of Gabriel Bertrand (1897) on the necessary presence of metals in the molecules

�

THE ROLE OF EPISTEMOLOGY

6

of enzymes and on the role of what he called "co­ enzymes," 7 there is no point in going all the way back to Theodore de Saussure ( 176 5- 1 84 5) and his work on plant nutrition. By contrast, there is good reason to look at the work of Saussure's contemporary Brisseau de Mirbel (1776-1 8 5 4) and the origins of cellular theory in botany, which can shed light on the heuristic value of the localiza­ tion within the cell of object.$ th�t figured in the early work on enzymatic biochemistry. (�n other words, events situated at the same point in historical time may or may not have theoretical significance. What matters is the overall line of scientific discourse. A particular end point may be related to one or more conceptually homogeneous points of de­ parture. Each such trajectory has its own characteristic nature. Well, then, the historian of science may object, why should the role claimed by the epistemologist not be filled by the scientist? Who but the scientist has the competence to say, based on his instinct about the direction of future developments, which end points are of scientific interest and therefore worthy of historical reconstruction? Such an appeal to a third party can only surprise or embarrass the epistemologist. He is well aware that there have been, and are, scientists who, as respite from their scientific labors, have turned to writing the history of science, and that there have been, and are, scientists who, with the aid of episte­ mological concepts borrowed from philosophers, have written critical histories not without constructive influence on the subsequent course of scientific progress. Ernst Mach's Die Mechanik in ihrer Entwicklung (The Devel­ opment of Mechanics, 1 8 83) is a celebrated case in point, whose influence on the work of Einstein is well known. Marie-Antoinette Tonnelat has given us a historical and epistemological case study in her History of the Principle of Relativity. 8 What epistemologist would not subscribe to

INTRODUCTION

·,,

..

7

'her .introductory statement, which dismisses a certain ap­ proach to the writing of history: At the risk of disappointing certain specialists, I shall argue that there is no authentic and unsurpassable principle of relativity whose earliest development in scientific theory it is the job of the historian to describe. No imperfect but promising first approximation lurks behind the veil of ig­ norance and prejudice awaiting anointment. The very idea is antirelativistic . . . . Born in the confusion of late Aristo­ telianism, made over by contradictions inherent in the elu­ sive concept of the ether, the idea of relativity in each case

appears to have been associated more with what followed it than with what preceded.9 An innovative vision, it

lighted its own way and to a large extent even determined the meandering of its path and the plumbing of its depths.1 0 ' It is one thing to recognize the existe�ce and value of an epistemological history written by scientists.11 It is an­ other, however, to argue that the epistemologist must therefore concede that he has no special relation to the his­ tory of science on the grounds that a similar relation can be established between the scientist and the history of sci­ ence, to the great benefit of the latter. Or that the episte­ mologist must remain an outsider, because while his relation to history may appear similar to that of the scien­ tist, his motivation is fundamentally different. Jean-Toussaint Desanti, having noticed the widening gap between science and philosophy, questions the rele­ vance of the questions that philosophers-epistemolo­ gists-have posed to scientists concerning the ways and means by which knowledge is produced.12 Smee;: p�­ ical discourse does not produce knowledge, is philosopJi.J: disqualified from discussing the conditions of its produc­ tion? "Must one resolve to say nothing about the s � ·�nless one produces scientific knowledge? Hardly. It is true that the task of criticism, which is to counter internalist

THE ROLE OF EPISTEMOLOGY

8

and mimetic accounts of the work of science, requires adopting a standpoint within scientific utterance. That this necessarily involves practicing science is a part, by no means the least important part, of Gaston Bachelard's teaching. "One must either say nothing about science or speak from the inside, that is, by practicing it." 13 But there is practice and there is practice. If the word is used in the sense in which Descartes said