Canguilhem and the Logic of Life
Abstract
In this paper we examine aspects of Canguilhem’s philosophy of biology, concerning the knowledge of life and its consequences on science and vitalism. His concept of life stems from the idea of a living individual, endowed with creative subjectivity and norms, a Kantian view which “disconcerts logic”. In contrast, two different approaches ground naturalistic perspectives to explore the logic of life (Jacob) and the logic of the living individual (Maturana and Varela) in the 1970s. Although Canguilhem is closer to the second, there are divergences; for example, unlike them, he does not dismiss vitalism, often referring to it in his work and even at times describing himself as a vitalist. The reason may lie in their different views of science.
Keywords
Canguilhem; Vitalism; Biology; Logic of life; Autopoietic/Heteropoietic; Analysis/Synthesis; Living individual
Full Text:
PDFDOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.24117/2526-2270.2018.i4.06
Refbacks
- There are currently no refbacks.
Copyright (c) 2018 Transversal: International Journal for the Historiography of Science
ISSN: 2526-2270
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Connect with us
Indexing and Abstracting
Transversal: International Journal for the Historiography of Science is indexed and abstracted in the following directories and databases: