Notes

• [1]
  In Canguilhem et la vie humaine (Canguilhem and Human Life) (2002), le Blanc discusses some further philosophical aspects of normativity in Canguilhem by looking at Goldstein, Merleau-Ponty, and the question of vitalism. While helpful, his work still does not sufficiently address the link between the life sciences and Canguilhem’s project of conceptual renewal. On Canguilhem’s vitalism, see the chapter by Wolfe, Penoncelli, and Wong, this volume.
• [2]
  “That the individual organism is the level of organization upon which natural selection acts allows Canguilhem to establish the idea of a close link, even an identity, between normativity and individuality” (Giroux 2008, 176 [my translation]). For more on individuality in Canguilhem, see Gayon (1998). See also the chapter by Etxeberria, this volume.
• [3]
  From unpublished lecture notes reprinted in the 1994 collection of Canguilhem’s writings edited by François Delaporte.
• [4]
  The question of life’s specificity as non-indifference, as valuation, while mainly elaborated in The Normal and the Pathological, was already prepared in earlier essays and unpublished notes (Limoges 2015). See also Etxeberria (2016) for a discussion of “vital normativity” and its relation to normativity in medicine.
• [5]
  On this course, see the chapter by Méthot, this volume.
• [6]
  “Si les genres logiques sont une réalité (réalisme des essences) et si les espèces sont une réalité (fixisme) la généralisation d’individu à individu est possible est légitime. Mais l’être vivant présente un caractère fondamental qui est la variabilité, c’est à l’heure actuelle un des faits biologiques les mieux établis. L’existence des fluctuations est donc le premier obstacle à l’extrapolation concernant une collection or une population d’individus. Mais c’est aussi pour un même individu, aux divers moments de sa vie, ou aux divers stades de son développement, que l’extrapolation est aléatoire. En effet, aucun individu ne reste identique à ce qu’il était, dans l’intervalle de deux opérations de mesure successives. Vivre c’est se changer. Il y a donc à tenir compte non pas seulement d’une variabilité dans le cadre de l’espèce, mais aussi d’une variabilité propre à l’individu. La conséquence en est qu’aucune mesure en biologie, visant à déterminer des relations applicables à une collection et même à un individu, n’a de signification si elle n’est accompagnée d’un calcul d’erreur probable, si elle ne comporte une interprétation statistique” (GC.11.2, 28).
• [7]
  “[c]e sont moins des faits rigides que des normes fonctionnelles. Il est très remarquable que l’introduction des mathématiques dans les sciences biologiques ait fait apparaître le caractère normatif du fait biologique très loin de le faire disparaître, comme on aurait pu attendre en raison de la loi générale de quantification des qualités” (GC.11.2, 38 [emphases in original]).
• [8]
  “Tous les individus ayant les mêmes propriétés héréditaires, l’existence d’un polygone de variations traduit seulement l’influence complexe des conditions externes. Les variations individuelles présentées par les représentants d’un même génotype sont des variations phénotypiques ou encore fluctuations (De Vries) ou encore somations (Weismann)” (GC.11.2, 31).
• [9]
  This is similar to the concept of reaction norm (Reaktionsnorm in German) first developed by Woltereck in 1909 and which shaped how Johannsen understood the concept of genotype, with Johannsen ultimately viewing them as compatible concepts (Johannsen 1911; see Sarkar 1999).
• [10]
  Some might argue that here species-level “plasticity” refers to what is now called “evolvability” (Pigliucci 2008a, b). I will return to this issue in the next sub-section.
• [11]
  It can also be argued that his views on variation were influenced by theories of “mutationism” (Canguilhem 1991, 143, 263), i.e. mutations produce phenotypic and developmental alterations that are then open to selection. This was made popular by the late-nineteenth century botanist Hugo de Vries and also advocated by Richard Goldschmidt, William Bateson and others in the twentieth century.
• [12]
  Philosopher Antonine Nicoglou argues that Driesch’s work was the first to experimentally support the embryological, rather than genetic, view of the plasticity of living matter (2011, 38).
• [13]
  For an excellent discussion of these examples, see the chapter by Arminjon in the current volume.
• [14]
  Huneman (2010) points out that one of the main authors of this new synthesis, Ernst Mayr, was critical of this stress on gene frequency to understand evolution. Evolution, for Mayr, is a matter of maintaining adaptedness, which in turn results in changes in gene frequency.
• [15]
  This essay was first published by Lewontin in 1983 in the journal Scientia and was later republished in a book of essays written with Richard Levins in 1985. My references are to the 1985 republication.
• [16]
  In a later text, one finds a passage that could easily have been written by Canguilhem: “An environment is something that surrounds or encircles, but for there to be a surrounding there must be something at the centre to be surrounded. The environment of an organism is the penumbra of external conditions that are relevant to it because it has effective interactions with those aspects of the outer world” (Lewontin 2001, 48). I will set aside the difference between the concepts of environment and milieu.
• [17]
  Morange (2008, 161) also mentions Canguilhem’s similarity to niche construction, but goes on to lament the proximity of Canguilhem’s ideas with Lamarckism. As has been suggested, such lamentation seems unwarranted. See the essay by Méthot, this volume.
• [18]
  Interestingly, while Lewontin (2001, 48) argues that this organism-environment dynamic is not at all meant to support the Lamarckian idea of acquired characteristics, if the characteristics of the niche that have been made relevant by the organism also factor into processes of inheritance, then there might be a different way to understand Lamarckism.