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DOI 10.1007/s40656-014-0030-1
ORIGINAL PAPER
Received: 20 April 2013 / Accepted: 2 March 2014 / Published online: 20 September 2014
Springer International Publishing AG 2014
Abstract Twelve years after his famous Essay on Some Problems Concerning the
Normal and the Pathological (1943), the philosopher Georges Canguilhem
(19041995) published a book-length study on the history of a single biological
concept. Within France, his Formation of the Reflex Concept in the Seventeenth and
Eighteenth Centuries (1955) contributed significantly to defining the French style
of writing on the history of science. Outside of France, the book passed largely
unnoticed. This paper re-reads Canguilhems study of the reflex concept with
respect to its historiographical and epistemological implications. Canguilhem
defines concepts as complex and dynamic entities combining terms, definitions, and
phenomena. As a consequence, the historiography of science becomes a rather
complex task. It has to take into account textual and contextual aspects that develop
independently of individual authors. In addition, Canguilhem stresses the connection between conceptual activities and other functions of organic individuals in their
respective environments. As a result, biological concepts become tied to a biology
of conceptual thinking, analogical reasoning, and technological practice. The paper
argues that this seemingly circular structure is a major feature in Canguilhems
philosophical approach to the history of the biological sciences.
Keywords
Concepts are not in your head: they are things, peoples, zones, regions,
thresholds, gradients, temperatures, speeds, etc.
Deleuze (2004, p. 312)
It is not a philosophy of consciousness but a philosophy of concepts that can
provide a theory of science. The generative necessity is not that of an activity but
H. Schmidgen (&)
Fakultat Medien, Bauhaus-Universitat, Bauhausstr. 11, 99423 Weimar, Germany
e-mail: henning.schmidgen@uni-weimar.de
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that of a dialectic (Cavaille`s 1960, p. 78).1 These are the concluding sentences of
the last, posthumously published text by mathematician and philosopher Jean
Cavaille`s (19031944). Together with Charles Ehresmann, Georges Canguilhem
edited Sur la logique et la theorie de la science in 1947. Canguilhems (1955,
1977)2 study of the formation of the concept of reflex in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuriesfrom now on also referred to as his reflex book (and
abbreviated as FR)does not mention Cavaille`s explicitly. But it is obvious that
this book can be read as an extended response to the final sentences of Cavaille`ss
bookeven though (but perhaps also because) this response was given not in the
realm of the history of mathematics but the history of biology. In fact, this way of
reading the reflex book has been suggested since the 1960s,3 not least because
Canguilhem himself intervened in favour of such an interpretation.
The context for his intervention was provided by the heated discussions around
the rise of structuralism in France.4 When he defended Michel Foucaults The Order
of Things against the polemical criticisms of Jean-Paul Sartre and his followers in
1967, Canguilhem, by pointing to Cavaille`s, established a close connection between
the historical study of structures and concepts. At the same time, he positioned
the history of concepts and structures against the French adoption of Husserlian
phenomenology. Canguilhem claimed that Cavaille`s, with his book on the logic and
the theory of science, assigned the phenomenological enterprise its limits even
before that enterprise had exhibited its unlimited ambitions, and at the same time
assigned a task of immediate interest to contemporary philosophy: the task of
substituting for the primacy of experienced or reflexive consciousness the primacy
of concepts, systems, or structures (Canguilhem 1994, pp. 8889).
It is well known that Michel Foucault took up and developed this line of
argument. In 1978, in his introduction to the English translation of Le normal et le
pathologique, Foucault contrasted a philosophy of experience, of sense, and of
subject with a philosophy of knowledge, of rationality, and of concept. With
respect to the history of philosophy in France, he then added: On the one hand, one
network is that of Sartre and Merleau-Ponty; and then another is that of Cavaille`s,
Bachelard and Canguilhem (Foucault 1989, p. 8). Similar to Canguilhem, Foucault
assumed that phenomenology had played a crucial role in the emergence of these
two networks. As heterogeneous as these two traditions or forms of thought
certainly were, he noted that both had grown out of reactions to the writings of the
late Husserl, in particular Meditations cartesiennes (1931) and Die Krisis der
europaischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phanomenologie (1936).
When in 1985, a revised and extended version of Foucaults introduction was
publishedone of the last texts that he would give permission to printthe role of
1
Unless otherwise stated all translations from the French and the German are my own.
Excerpts from FR were published in English in Delaporte (Delaporte 2000, pp. 179187 and 193194).
In addition, one may note that Canguilhem also published a short article on the reflex concept in the
nineteenth century in 1964 (Canguilhem 2002a).
For recent attempts to contextualize the French tradition of history of science, see Bitbol and Gayon
(2006), Brenner and Gayon (2009), Chimisso (2008, 2013).
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H. Schmidgen
phenomenology was played down, however. The separation between the philosophy
of the subject and the philosophy of the concept comes from afar, Foucault now
stated. It can be traced throughout the nineteenth century (Foucault 1985, p. 4):
one line leading from Maine de Biran to Jules Lachelier and Henri Bergson, the
other one from Auguste Comte to Louis Couturat and Henri Poincare. According to
this view, Canguilhem (and probably even Foucault) appeared to be the intellectual
heirs of Comte.5
Ironically, drawing these genealogies has hardly contributed to the understanding
of Canguilhems project to write the history of science as a history of concepts. Gary
Gutting has taken Foucaults scheme as a leitmotif for his introduction to the
prehistory of Foucaults archaeology of scientific reason. Gutting focuses on
Bachelard and Canguilhem and offers an instructive overview of the principal works
of these authors. He also summarizes and briefly discusses Canguilhems reflex
bookone of the very few contributions to the reception of this book in the AngloAmerican context. At the same time, Gutting slightly revises Foucaults (and
Canguilhems) genealogy: The philosophy of concept was developed by Bachelard
and Canguilhem in essential independence of Husserls work (Gutting 1989, p. 12).
In his study on Cavaille`s and Foucault, Hyder (2003) comes to a different
conclusion. Hyder argues that Foucauldian notions such as archaeology and
historical a priori were indeed taken from Husserls writings, although modified
in light of Cavaille`ss criticism of phenomenology. Hyder also states that
Canguilhem applied Cavaille`ss ideas, butin accordance with his topicdoes
not give any details of this alleged application.
More recently, Elie During (2004) has raised fundamental doubts as to the
appropriateness of the scheme suggested by Foucault, in particular with regard to the
role of philosopher Henri Bergson. During claims that Bergsons anti-positivist
attempt to conceive of the history of ideas and science as a history of problems was
taken up in Bachelard and Canguilhem. Again, however, a detailed discussion of
Canguilhems history of scientific concepts is lacking. One may also note that the booklength studies on Canguilhems work that have been published in recent times, e.g. by
Renard (1996) and Le Blanc (2002), place their emphasis on different issues, such as
reconstructing Canguilhems clinical epistemology or investigating the anthropological dimension of his historical and philosophical studies (see also Roth 2013).
It is against this convoluted background that the present paper takes Canguilhems reflex book as a starting point for reconstructing the basic idea of his
conceptual history of science. First, I will introduce the book by summarizing its
central argument. According to Canguilhem it was not Rene Descartes but the
English physician and natural philosopher Thomas Willis who defined and
established the physiological reflex concept. At the same time, I will discuss the
context in which Canguilhem embeds this argument, i.e. the continuing debate
between mechanism and vitalism. It is in this connection that Canguilhem depicts
concepts as laboratory actors that, tied to scientific instruments and other such
devices, are able to produce perceptionsa feature that, however, does not
anticipate on the scientific value of the concepts in question, as we will see later.
5
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As already noted, similar conceptions of life can be found in Max Verworn, Jabob von Uexkull,
Frederik Buytendijk, and Kurt Goldstein, to quote only a few general biologists. As a point of reference in
this connection, see, for example, Verworn (1895).
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H. Schmidgen
1 A gallery of acephals
Read with an eye on the material culture of scientific practice, the reflex book turns
into a gallery of acephals. A frog whose brain was separated from the spinal chord:
stimulation of its feet causes it to contract; a rabbit body that was decapitated: if
artificial respiration is applied it remains able to move in various ways; lizards
without heads: for several days they remain able to walk and even to copulate. An
entire chapter is indeed devoted to Decapitated Animals (FR 89107). But they
surface elsewhere, too. Decapitated and decerebrated vipers, salamanders, and
tortoises, chickens and dogs, and even acephalous fetuses that survived in their
mothers uterus and were able to move their limbs after they were born (FR 96).
Canguilhems main argument is that the concept of reflex was formed under the
sign of a negation of the cerebral privilege in the realm of the sensori-motricity (FR
77). Until the end of the eighteenth century, observations and explanations concerning
the physiological mechanism of involuntary movements inscribed themselves into an
anthropocentric vision of the organism. According to Canguilhem, this vision
displayed some striking similarities with pre-Copernican cosmology:
The heart or the brain were taken to be the respective centres of the animal
body around which it turned. They corresponded to what man, in Ptolemaic
astronomy, was for the stars that rose and set with respect to his earthly being,
to what the King, in monarchical states, was for his obedient subjects. The
Copernican Revolution in the physiology of movement is the dissociation of
the notions of the brain and of the sensori-motor center, the discovery of
eccentric centers, the formation of the reflex concept (FR 127).
The peculiarity of this physiological revolution lies in the fact that, in contrast to
astronomy, it is not linked to a single name, and it did not happen in a short period
of time. According to Canguilhem, the concept of reflex took more than 150 years
to turn the phenomenon it refers to into a biological fact (FR 169). The British
naturalist and physician Thomas Willis (16211675) made the first step in the last
third of the seventeenth century. In contrast to philosopher Rene Descartes
(15961650), Willis assumed a basic symmetry between the centripetal and
centrifugal processes of sensori-motricity. Hence he was capable of conceiving the
relation between sensations and movements as similar to a reflection, a reflux, or an
echo. In addition, Willis was the first to attempt to localize voluntary and
involuntary movements with respect to their anatomical basis, by distinguishing the
structures of brain and cerebellum.
In the eighteenth century, the theory of organic sympathies and the
disconnection of sensation and consciousness gradually contributed to a focus on
the periphery of neuro-anatomical structures and the corresponding psychophysiological processes. Jean Astruc (16841766), Robert Whytt (17141766),
Johann Unzer (17271799), and Julien Legallois (17701814) demonstrated that
reflex movements could not just be localized in the cerebellum, but also in the spinal
chord and even in paracentral nerve tissue. It also became clear that sensations
which triggered reflex actions were not necessarily accompanied by consciousness,
although they could be.
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Eventually, reflex actions were increasingly discussed with respect to their usefulness
for the organism as such. Following Whytt, Georg Prochaska (17491820) in particular
subordinated the peripheral mechanism of the reflex to an instinct of self-preservation, a
principle of organic utility or teleology. In the final stage of these developments, the idea
of a neuromuscular apparatus emerged that was not just a system, but was a system of
systems, and accordingly allows for a certain independence of the partial automatisms
while securing the functioning of the organism as a whole (FR 1278). This meant that
the coordination of sensibility and movement in the organism was not organized similar
to a monarchy of divine righttop down, by delegation of the central powerbut was
structured as in a federal republicbottom up, by integration of local potentates. What
seemed to be a physiology of mere automatism, revealed itself in this sense as a
physiology of autonomy (FR 7).
There are two surprising features of Canguilhems historiography of the reflex. The
first is that it does not go beyond 1800. As is well known, the experimental physiology of
the reflex started only in the first half of the nineteenth century, with the research on reflex
actions conducted by Marshall Hall and Johannes Muller in 1832/33, and the first scheme
of the reflex arc devised by Rudolf Wagner in 1844 (Muller 18331844). What
Canguilhem offers, then, seems to be a prehistory of the reflex conceptor a history of
the pre-scientific reflex concept. Another striking feature is that, save for Astruc, all the
historical actors mentioned by Canguilhem are usually regarded as vitalists. In the
nineteenth century, however, the reflex was considered a basic fact of mechanist
physiology, an achievement of organic physics. Within this context, some mechanist
physiologists, most prominently Emil du Bois-Reymond (18181896), became interested in the history of the reflex concept. In their publications on the topic, the
contributions of scholars such as Unzer and Prochaska, if mentioned at all, are considered
to be extremely poor. Since they were vitalists, they could notper definitionem as it
werecontribute productively to the investigation of reflex phenomena. In other words,
a certain kind of logic (the reflex is a mechanical phenomenon, hence only mechanists can
contribute to its explanation) inspired a specific kind of history (FR 5).
What Canguilhem offers then is not any kind of prehistory, but an authentic
counter-history: he re-introduces a whole tradition of vitalist reflex scholars that
had almost been forgotten and highlights their important, if not crucial contributions
to the progression of physiological science. According to his account, late
eighteenth-century vitalists had already developed a scientific conception of reflex
action. However, this conception was only resurrected in the early twentieth
century, when Charles Sherrington established experimentally that reflexes were not
just simple, quasi-mechanical phenomena, but elementary manifestations of the
integrative function of the nervous system, contributing to the existence of the
organism in its entirety (FR 164; 171).
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H. Schmidgen
Around 1800 the concept of reflex is without any doubt a good concept, but
it is not yet good for anything. It is discussed, but one knows nothing about it,
because one does not make something out of it. It is only inscribed into the
books. In 1850, the concept of reflex is inscribed into the books and the
laboratory, in form of exploration and demonstration apparatuses that are
assembled for it, that would not be there without it. The reflex ceases to be a
mere concept in order to become a percept. It exists because it gives existence
to objects that it makes understandable. (FR 161, emphasis added)
It is true that nineteenth-century laboratories of physiology were full of instruments
and devices for exploring and illustrating involuntary movements in organisms or
parts of organisms: various stands and fasteners for demonstrating the effects of
decerebrations in frogs and rabbits, devices for dissecting and stimulating the spinal
chord, du Bois-Reymonds contraction telegraphs and frog pistols (Schmidgen
2004, pp. 502505), and complex frames for investigating the knee jerk reflex in
human test subjects (Fig. 1).
However, this arsenal says little about the significance, or meaning, of the
mechanist reflex concept. It is undeniable that this concept (the reflex 1850, as
Canguilhem calls it) was coupled in multiple ways to the laboratory and explained a
large number of phenomena found and created in the lab. However, according to
Canguilhem, these facts do not essentially contribute to the scientific value of the
concept in question. According to him, the scientific value of the concept does not
derive from the possibilities of connecting it to instruments, but from the number of
research perspectives it opens and suggests. In this connection, Canguilhem quotes
Paul Valery who, in his Introduction a` la methode de Leonard de Vinci, argues that a
theory proves itself only by virtue of its theoretical and experimental deployment
(FR 74). As Canguilhem himself says elsewhere, the theoretical efficiency or the
cognitive value of a concept lies in the possibilities that it creates for the
development and progression of knowledge (Canguilhem 2002b, p. 360).
These statements are informed by a pragmatist perspective on the question of
concepts in science. When Canguilhem draws a parallel between concept and
percept, he implicitly alludes to William Jamess discussion of these notions in
Some Problems of Philosophy, originally published in 1911. James assumed that
concepts not only develop from perceptions, from which they are distilled, as he
put it, but are fed back into perceptions that are then altered and transformed. In
other words, the full potential of concepts manifests itself only when recombined
with perceptions: Concepts not only guide us over the map of life, but we revalue
life by their use. Differently put: With concepts we go in quest of the absent,
meet the remote, actively turn this way or that, bend our experience, and make it tell
us whither it is bound (James 1996, p. 71). Canguilhem says something very
similar about the role of concepts in scientific practice. Similar to James, he
underscores the constructive character of concepts. Concepts do not (only) represent
perceived realities, nor do they only depict these realities. They also make visible,
produce realities and perceptions, and stimulate future activity (FR 161).7
7
A similar conception of concepts can be found in the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze. On this issue see
Schmidgen (in press).
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Fig. 1 Reflex multiplicator according to Robert Sommer. This device was used for investigating the
knee jerk reflex by means of the graphical method. Reproduced from E. Zimmermann, Psychologische
und physiologische Apparate. Liste 25, Leipzig-Berlin: Zimmermann, 1912, 4
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H. Schmidgen
the ready-made organs of the human body, but the needs, desires, and
manifestations of will in a vital organism that responded to these needs by means
of technological fabrications (Canguilhem 1937, p. 84). In this quasi-biological
vision of technological activity, the failures of technology, its collapsing, leads to
the call for science. In other words, the resistances encountered by the human arts
stimulate human thought to consider the obstacle as an object that is independent
of human wishes (Canguilhem 1937, p. 84). It is in this sense that Canguilhem
describes the relation between action and knowledge in his 1937 article Descartes
et la technique and the relation of medicine and physiology, the clinic and the
laboratory in his famous Essay on some problems concerning the normal and the
pathological in 1943. The rashness of technology anticipates the prudence of
knowledge (Canguilhem 1989, p. 105).
For the very reason that technology is a primary mode of human interaction with
the milieu, it cannot be the last word when it comes to science. The couplings
between the concept of reflex and exploration instruments were certainly productive
for nineteenth-century physiology. Still, they could only be a first step toward the
proper scientific understanding and explanation of reflex phenomena. Only by
overcoming the firm alliance between conceptual and instrumental mechanism did it
become possible to conceive of the reflex as an authentic biological phenomenon.
This line of argument paves the way for Canguilhems redefinition of vitalism in
the reflex book. He no longer identifies vitalism with specific topics or themes (vital
force, vis vitalis, vis insita, etc.), but describes it as a practical attitude and
epistemological virtue in biological research. For him, vitalists are not metaphysical
thinkers, but rather cautious positivists (FR 113), not least because they envision
the interrelations between technology, science, and life from a specific angle:
[E]very attempt to reduce organic functions to mechanical systems simply
neglects the fact that this is not the ultimate form of knowledge in this area.
Perhaps vitalism is merely the sentiment of an ontological, i.e., chronologically irreducible anticipation of life with respect to mechanical theory and
technology, to intelligence and the simulation of life. (FR 123)8
Mechanist physiology does not leave technology behindwhich, according to
Canguilhem, is necessary in order to reach scientific concepts that are appropriate
for the ultimate object of biology, i.e. life. In other words, in the laboratory sciences
of life it is not sufficient to turn concepts, by means of machines, into percepts. A
further step is required by means of which machine-based percepts are transformed
into authentic biological observations.
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contemplate a stone ax. There are others that you open like you use a
microtome. But where is the border-line between the museum and the work
shop? Who traces it? And when does it move? (FR 156)
The library that Canguilhem alludes to in this passage is the library of the
physiological institute in Strasbourg (Fig. 2). Large parts of the reflex book were
written in this library. What Canguilhem once noted with respect to the famous
German physiologist Johannes Muller and his home town Koblenz might also be
said about this library and the city of Strasbourg: To someone faced with quickly
shifting political and linguistic borders it is sometimes enough to stay in place in
order to become cosmopolitan (Canguilhem 2002c, pp. 248249). In 1885, the
Strasbourg institute was founded by German politicians and scientists, the founding
director being physiologist Friedrich Goltz; in 1918 the institute was re-appropriated
by the French; the Nazis took hold of it in 1940; in 1945 Charles Kayser was
reinstated as director of the instituteand its library.9 Even today, many of the
historical texts that Canguilhem quotes and references in the reflex book can be
found in this library, e.g. Georg Prochaskas Lehrsatze aus der Physiologie des
Menschen (Prochaska 1797), Robert Whytts Essay on the Vital and other
Involuntary Motions of Animals (Whytt 1751) and, of course, Johannes Mullers
Handbuch der Physiologie des Menschen (1833/40).10
Regarding the question as to who traces, for the historian of science, the
borderline between the library-museum and the library-workshop, Canguilhem
offers a clear answer: the present. Quoting Bachelard, he presents the reflex book as
shedding light on the current past of a science, and not as a quasi-palaeontological study of a scientific project that has long since vanished:
In writing the history of the formation of the reflex concept for the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries, we wanted to contribute to something that, with
Bachelard, we call in reference to biology a recurrent history, a history that is
illuminated by the finality of the present. (FR 167)
It is important to note that Canguilhem derives this finality of the present not only
from the current state of physiological research. The principal goal of his conceptual
history does not consist in criticizing the reflex physiology back then in light of
the reflex physiology of now. The starting point for his investigation is a different
one. It is the observation that the concept of reflex has become part of the
vernacular. In 1950s France, the reflex has turned into a fact of public utility and
general knowledge, says Canguilhem, and he adds: Insofar as his work or his way
of life depends on it, everyone knows today or would like to know if he has good
reflexes or bad ones (FR 163). This state of affairs is not only caused by the fact
that examining reflexes had become a routine in medical hospitals and practices.
Around 1950, the reflex in that sense was complemented, perhaps even out-dated by
a generalized understanding of reflexes. According to Canguilhem, the cultural
preference for the ideals of industrial civilization was decisive in this regard.
9
10
I would like to warmly thank the Strasbourg physiologist Bernard Canguilhem for having shown this
library to me.
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H. Schmidgen
Fig. 2 The Physiology Institute at Strasbourg in 1885. When Canguilhem was working there, the library
was situated on the second floor in the left wing of the building. Today, the physiology institute and its
library are located in the central research building on the Strasbourg medical campus. Reproduced from
Friedrich Goltz, Das physiologische Institut. In Festschrift fur die 58. Versammlung Deutscher
Naturforscher und Arzte. Die naturwissenschaftlichen und medicinischen Institute der Universitat und die
naturhistorischen Sammlungen der Stadt Strassburg, Strasbourg: Heitz, 1885, 7175, here p. 71
On Walters tortoises, see Hayward (2001); and, more generally, Pickering (2009).
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tortoises that populated Walters living room and participated in his family life.
Special issues of journals such as Esprit, La Pensee, and La Nouvelle Revue
Francaise discussed the perspectives and consequences implied in the emergence of
such reflex machines (Fig. 3).
In 1954, psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan made reference to Walters tortoises in his
seminar in order to further develop his theory of the imaginary. In a striking
experiment, Walter had placed one of his turtle robots in front of a mirror. A light
beam emitted by the robot, in combination with a light-sensitive receptor, served the
purpose of orientation. When it was reflected it caused the turtle to react to its own
imagean effect evocative of the mirror stage of the human infant described by
Lacan (Lacan 1991, pp. 5152). Even the young Foucault was impressed by the
reflex 1950, albeit in a slightly different manner. In 1954, in his first book
Maladie mentale et personnalite, he writes affirmatively about Pavlovian reflex
theory. In his eyes, this theory provided the basis for a holistic psychiatry firmly
grounded in Marxism (Foucault 1954, p. 109).
Canguilhem quotes Walters tortoises, when reinforcing his criticism of
mechanism with respect to current developments in cybernetics (FR 122). To
him, the importance attributed to reflex machines symbolized the lack of an
authentic biological comprehension of the organism. In this connection, he criticizes
Norbert Wieners programmatic book Cybernetics (1948) for treating vitalism as
resulting from attempts to answer a badly posed question. Against this cybernetic
point of view, Canguilhem highlights the specificity of biological beings, in
particular their specific temporality (FR 123). In addition, he ironically observes that
important questions have to appear as badly posed, since they are not meant to
anticipate easy or predictable answers.
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H. Schmidgen
reflex phenomena (FR 164).12 Against the background of clinical and experimental
findings, Goldstein criticizes the doctrine of the reflex structure of the organism
and repeatedly questions the current concept of reflex. According to him, it is
impossible to directly observe the phenomena that correspond to the strict reflex
concept. In his eyes, these phenomena are a result of extremely artificial
experimental situations. Goldstein even goes so far as to claim that the mechanist
concept of reflex is almost completely preventing the progression of knowledge
(Goldstein, 1995, p. 78 and 82). With Canguilhem one could rephrase this judgment
by saying that the cognitive value of the reflex concept is poor, since it does not
allow for the productive development of biological research.
It is possible that Canguilhem directly used another text for his study, namely the
two lectures on Reflexes et comportement published by the director of the
Strasbourg physiology institute, Charles Kayser, in 1947. Kayser introduces his
topic by way of an historical overview that, according to Canguilhem, is the best
(FR 154) that was published by a physiologist in the twentieth century. In the
systematic part of his lectures, Kayser mentions Merleau-Ponty and refers to the
scientific work of scholars such as von Uexkull and von Weizsacker.13 As has
already been noted, Canguilhem repeatedly relies on these authors in the reflex book
as well as in Knowledge of Life. Thus, he quotes at length from von Weizsackers
introduction to the historical study of the reflex published by his former student
Ernst Marx in 1938:
12
On Canguilhem and Goldstein, see Gayon (1998), Debru (2004) and Metraux (2005). On
p.344 Metraux has published one of the letters by Canguilhem to Goldstein, written on 28 May 1954,
at the occasion of the publication of La connaissance de la vie.
13
It should be noted that Kayser (1947), at the end of his second lecture, credits Canguilhem for his help
in conducting the historical research that was required for preparing his presentation.
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14
For reasons of genealogical completeness one may add that von Weizsackers chef doeuvre, Der
Gestaltkreis (1940), was published in a French translation established by Michel Foucault and Daniel
Rocher in 1958.
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H. Schmidgen
Cavaille`s).15 His point is that Descartes does not offer any explanatory sentence apt
to fix the sense of the phenomenon in question (FR 3042).
As Canguilhem explains, the reason for this lack of explicitness lies in
Descartess assumption that the centripetal and the centrifugal mechanisms of
sensori-motricity are essentially heterogeneous. Descartes conceived of the sensory
stimulation as an authentic pulling of the nerves, whereas he understood the motor
reaction as being triggered by the transport of fluids (esprits) through the nerves to
the muscle. The first process resembled the tolling of a church bell, the second was
similar to blowing air into an organ pipe. According to Canguilhem, this asymmetric
conception of sensori-motricity explains why Descartes uses the term reflected
only once in his physiological texts. It is a word suggesting an analogy that in
Descartess physiology had no extended explanatory function (FR 412).
Strikingly different is the case of Willis. Willis almost constantly uses the term
reflex in his writings. The word reflection, reflected, and reflex action are
in fact so frequent in Willis that, as Canguilhem says, an inventory would be
boring (FR 66). In addition, Willis uses other words that convey the same idea, e.g.
retortion, reflux, echo, etc. Canguilhem adds that in De motu musculari
(1670) Willis uses the word reflected, elaborates the specific sense of this word
and at the same time refers to the example of the scratch reflex. The decisive
passage reads: [] the motion [] is reflected, to wit, which depending on a
previous sense more immediately, as an evident cause or occasion, is presently
retorted; so gentle titillation of the Skin causes a rubbing of it [] (Willis 1681,
p. 34). The conclusion is that, with respect to the concept of reflex, Willis provides
the word, the thing, and the definition. As a consequence, Willis, not Descartes, is
the originator of the reflex concept (FR 609).
If the history (Geschichte) of concepts seriously takes into account this
stratification (Schichtung) of concepts, it is confronted with a rather complex sets
of relations. As we have seen, a certain word can be used, the thing in question can
even be described, but the definition may still be lacking. Or: the thing is described
and appropriately defined, but the word is missing. Precisely such relations cause
the difficulties and misunderstandings in identifying the originator of a concept.
According to Canguilhem, those historians of physiology who have identified
Descartes as the originator of the reflex concept mistook a description for a
definition and a word for a concept. Following du Bois-Reymond, they have treated
the concept of reflex as a merely textual element that only served one purpose: to
establish an immediate connection between their mechanist present and the
mechanist past. The result is not providing an account of history, but telling a legend
(FR 367).
The option to separate the components of concepts from one another and to use
them independently has another aspect, however. It allows scientists to cultivate
their concepts on different theoretical terrains (FR 6 and 171). Because of their
stratification, concepts are theoretically polyvalent (FR 6). In other words, they
15
On p.41 of FR Canguilhem presents the following quotation from Lebesgue (1905, p. 169 ): Un objet
est defini ou donne quand on a prononce un nombre fini des mots sappliquant a` cet objet et a` celui-la`
seulement. The same quotation can be found in Cavaille`s (1938, p. 15).
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are relatively independent of specific theoretical territories or contexts. By the midnineteenth century, the concept of reflex is certainly embedded in mechanistic
physiology. At this point, however, it is almost forgotten that it has its origins in the
vitalist thought of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Only toward the
beginning of the twentieth century does the concept of reflex become transplanted onto different theoretical grounds. At this point, Canguilhem can almost
literally speak of conceptual filiations and different generations of concepts
that have to be dated and localized. On top of that, his genealogical approach
demonstrates that the history of concepts has its own kind of humour (FR 171)
what seemed to be an obvious product of mechanist physiology was, in reality,
invented by vitalists.
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H. Schmidgen
place where the prehistory of the reflex concept is located. In Foucauldian terms one
could say that history of science here opens itself to a history of knowledge.
Returning to Willis, Canguilhem highlights the fact that the formation of the
reflex concept initially is not the result of experimental work in the laboratory.
Rather, it stems from speculative modifications (FR 62) of older theories and
above all from the use of analogical imagination (FR 170). The most general
prerequisite for this speculative and imaginative practice is the existence of forms
that can be related or assimilated to one another. With regard to Descartes and
Willis, Canguilhem mainly addresses the assimilation of two kinds of forms:
biological and technological. Basically, the concept of reflex relies on assimilating a
biological phenomenon to an optical phenomenon (FR 6). The implication seems to
be the following. Before the proper formation of the concept can take place, the
phenomena themselves have to be endowed with a certain contour or delineation.
In other words, Willis was able to formulate the concept of reflex because he took
the assimilative comparison of the involuntary with a reflection of light much more
seriously, and he further developed this assimilation, by teasing out all of its
consequences (FR 66). The analogies on which Willis based his descriptions and
explanations are indeed often optical and at the same time technological. He
repeatedly refers to light machines and ballistic devices: glowing mirrors, Greek
fire, canons, gun powder, etc. Willis conceives of the phenomena of sensorimotricity as explosions or detonations of animal spirits in the muscles, where they
cause contractions and subsequent movements. He also sees the anatomical
arrangement of nerves with respect to the brain as a system of light beams.
Insofar as life is movement, it resembles light for Willis, or more precisely fire,
and for that reason he recognizes in the laws of light and fire an archetype (FR
72) for the laws of life. As a consequence, his physiology extends into a chemistry
and energetics of the living body, whereas Descartes remains within the framework
of elementary mechanics. The analogies preferred by Descartes are the lever, the
winch, the tackle block, the clockwork, the organ and the fountain system in the
garden of Saint-Germain en Laye. As a result, one might say it was also a specific
material culture that prevented him from formulating the concept of reflex.
7 Epilogue
Even for an amoeba, living means preference and exclusion, Canguilhem (1989,
p. 136) writes in an almost programmatic manner in the Essay of 1943. He is
certainly not the first and not the only author who attempted to ground the
intellectual judgment function of human beings in the elementary behaviour of
lower organisms and, eventually, in life as such. Before him, Nietzsche and Freud
did the same, and Bergson proceeded in a similar manner.16 Bergson in particular
attempted to refer the formation of concepts to the relation between organic
16
For the experimental background of this mode of thought, see (Johns and Schmidgen 2002,
pp. 640645).
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individuals and their milieu. In the second (1922) introduction to his book La pensee
et le mouvant, he explains, for example,
that any being, perhaps even any organ and tissue of a living being
generalizes, or one could also say, it classifies, because it knows, within the
milieu where it resides, to abstract from the various substances those parts or
elements that can satisfy this or that of its needs; the rest is being neglected.
(Bergson 1959, p. 1295)
In other words, living beings isolate in their milieu features that they are interested
in, that appear to them as problems, and in this sense they already judge and
abstract, they form concepts even before they think consciously. According to
Bergson, this also holds true for human beings. Initially, they live and perceive the
general, rather than think it. Even without consciousness explicitly involved, man is
capable of subducting similarities from various objects, so that these objects can be
grouped and handled in a quasi-conceptual way. As Bergson adds, the general
concept that is created in this manner relies more on automatic reactions than []
proper thought (Bergson 1959, p. 1296). In this sense, one could even say that the
concept is a reflex before the reflex is a concept. Canguilhem avoids this kind of
dramatization. However, he does insist that [t]he thought of the living must take
from the living the idea of the living (Canguilhem 2008a, p. xx). With von
Weizsacker, he could also have said: For studying the living, one has to participate
in life (von Weizsacker 1958, p. 33).17
The reflex book is certainly grounded in this kind of vitalism. It aims at
participating in life in order to improve the scientific study of the living. What the
book actually does, is something slightly different, however. It uses historical and
philosophical tools in order to relate one kind of biology to another. The role of the
reflex concept in Physiology is embedded in and considered against the background
of a General Biology of the concept. Seen from this angle, it is no surprise that
Canguilhem explicitly describes his book as a product of Kaysers laboratory in
Strasbourg (FR 2)and not as a work of pure history.
Despite the fact that Canguilhem refers to, as well as relies on, similar authors
and findings as Merleau-Ponty and other phenomenologists, he has clearly separated
the history of concepts from Husserlian thought in his intervention in favour of
Foucaults structuralism. To be sure, Canguilhem is not a structuralist in the sense of
Ferdinand de Saussure or Claude Levi-Strauss. Concepts are smaller and more
mobile entities than linguistic or anthropological structures, and even if they display
an interior stratification they keep a certain sedentariness and palpability, especially
when compared to the complexities of the signifier/signified-relation in linguistics.
Against this backdrop, the meaning of Canguilhems (and Foucaults) genealogical scheme becomes clearer, however. Read from a historical perspective, the
reflex book reconstructs a rather complex structure of historical actors, an extended
17
It seems to be this thought that Foucault has rephrased with regard to Canguilhems contributions to
the history of concepts: Through the elucidation of the knowledge of life and from the concepts which
articulate this knowledge, Canguilhem gets to the question of the concept in life (Foucault 1980, p. 60). I
follow here a different, at times more pertinent translation of Foucaults Introduction to The Normal
and the Pathological than the one which was published with Canguilhem (1989).
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H. Schmidgen
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