Ideology and Rationality in the History of the Life Sciences - Tapa blanda

" The essays in this collection give a sensitive account of the history and ideology of the life sciences... It should prove most welcome to philosophers and historians of science." -- "Times Higher Education Supplement" " Take away Canguilhem and you will no longer understand much about Althusser, Althusserism, and a whole series of discussions which have taken place among French Marxists; you will no longer grasp what is specific to sociologists such as Bourdieu, Castel, and Passerson and what marks them so strongly within sociology; you will miss an entire aspect of theoretical work done by psychoanalysts, particularly by the followers of Lacan." -- Michel Foucault & quot; The essays in this collection give a sensitive account of the history and ideology of the life sciences... It should prove most welcome to philosophers and historians of science.& quot; -- Times Higher Education Supplement & quot; Take away Canguilhem and you will no longer understand much about Althusser, Althusserism, and a whole series of discussions which have taken place among French Marxists; you will no longer grasp what is specific to sociologists such as Bourdieu, Castel, and Passerson and what marks them so strongly within sociology; you will miss an entire aspect of theoretical work done by psychoanalysts, particularly by the followers of Lacan.& quot; -- Michel Foucault "Take away Canguilhem and you will no longer understand much about Althusser, Althusserism, and a whole series of discussions which have taken place among French Marxists; you will no longer grasp what is specific to sociologists such as Bourdieu, Castel, and Passerson and what marks them so strongly within sociology; you will miss an entire aspect of theoretical work done by psychoanalysts, particularly by the followers of Lacan."--Michel Foucault "The essays in this collection give a sensitive account of the history and ideology of the life sciences... It should prove most welcome to philosophers and historians of science."--"Times Higher Education Supplement"

Georges Canguilhem is one of the most distinguished French epistemologists and historians of science of our time. His influence on Michel Foucault and Camille Limoges is well known, and his work in the history of the biological sciences, particularly the nineteenth century, is regarded as seminal. Throughout his long career Canguilhem has been concerned with the way in which ideas originate and become transformed in scientific discourse, and with the role played by ideological factors in determining the direction if not the results of scientific work. This book collects his published essays of the 1970s.Here Canguilhem convincingly demonstrates the extent to which theorists and laboratory scientists alike are influenced by the compulsion to achieve results that will be consistent with distinctly nonscientific concepts. The role of ideology and the relationship between epistemology and history of science are confronted directly in a wide range of examples drawn from the history of the life sciences, from the scientific revolution to post Mendelian genetics. Canguilhem's writing is always clear and accessible. Balancing internal and external approaches and theory and example, he reveals as few other philosophers of science can the way in which scientists really work.