A tribunal for science: Reading Georges Canguilhem through his archives

当前的新型冠状病毒大流行表明，科学和政治在本质上是相互交织的。虽然政治策略经常在科学主张中寻求合法性，但科学越来越多地基于政治观点被接受或否定。一个试图理解这种关系的哲学探索必须回答一些基本问题：科学是一种自主的活动吗？科学真理的价值是什么？科学能否因其对人类生活的影响而受到道德和政治上的评判？本文通过对乔治·坎吉勒姆的科学史的重新评价来探讨这些问题，其目的是揭示社会政治价值观在科学概念形成中的作用，并追溯科学概念获得自主性的过程。此外，通过将科学视为一种不断质疑其自身结果的活动，Canguilhem展示了科学真理有效性的历史本质，他称之为“最近的错误”。因此，科学不是发现的逐步积累，而是科学知识不断修正的暂时结果。最后，通过活力主义者对生命的定义，即生命体无意识地创造与环境相关的方式，Canguilhem对所有正常化过程进行了伦理批判（包括科学），它强加给人类一个独特的规范，限制他们在表达自己的创造性潜力。由于许多坎吉扬的著作发表在默默无闻的渠道，他的思想的发展已经变得更加清晰，直到最近，由于他的全集仍在出版中。然而，学者们仍然忽视了他的科学史核心的伦理批判。通过对其中一些被忽视的文本的分析，以及进一步的未发表的档案材料，我将探索坎吉扬的批判活力论在他的科学史中的作用，从而阐述一种哲学历史方法来解决和伦理评价当代科学与政治的关系。

The current coronavirus pandemic demonstrates that science and politics are intrinsically intertwined.While political strategies often seek legitimation in scientific claims, science is increasingly accepted ordenied based on political views. A philosophical inquiry seeking to understand this relation must answersome fundamental questions: Is science an autonomous activity? What is the value of scientific truths?Can science be ethically and politically judged for its impact on human lives?My research will address these questions through a reappraisal of Georges Canguilhem's history ofscience, whose purpose is to reveal the role of socio-political values in the formation of scientificconcepts and retrace the process through which they acquired their autonomy. Furthermore, byconceiving science as an activity that constantly questions its own results, Canguilhem shows thehistorical nature of the validity of scientific truths, which he calls 'the most recent errors'. Therefore,rather than the progressive accumulation of discoveries, science is the temporary result of a constantrectification of scientific knowledge. Lastly, through a vitalist definition of life as the living being'sunconscious creation of ways to relate to its environment, Canguilhem grounds an ethical critique of allprocesses of normalisation (including scientific ones) which impose on humans a unique norm that limitsthem in the expression of their creative potentialities.Since many of Canguilhem's writings were published in obscure outlets, the development of his ideas hasbecome clearer only recently, thanks to the still ongoing publication of his complete works. However,scholars have continued to overlook the ethical critique at the heart of his history of science. Through theanalysis of some of these neglected texts, and of further unpublished archival material, I will explore therole of Canguilhem's critical vitalism in his history of science, thereby elaborating a philosophical-historical method to address and ethically evaluate contemporary relations of science and politics.