Modern Age - Summer 2014 - 36

MODERN AGE

visible markers that allow us to delineate
scientific from nonscientific knowledge. Or,
as Peter Dews put it when speaking about
the search for clear demarcation criteria, "in
the history of science there is 'case law' but
no 'canon law.' "10
Dews's reference to case law elicits a final
observation about Canguilhem's philosophy
of science, namely, the importance it ascribes
to history and a historical sense for scientific
study. If biological analysis is frequently
riddled with normative judgments, as Canguilhem insisted, then it requires no great
leap of the imagination to see Canguilhem's
next point, namely, that biological ideas
are inherently variable: what is taken to be
normal or pathological changes over time.
This is not the place to review Canguilhem's
detailed and nuanced treatment of the place
of historical change-especially his discussion of "epistemic breaks"-in the evolution
of medical or biological knowledge. Suffice
it to say that a detailed examination of the
historical setting of biological ideas would
go a long way in preventing simplifying generalizations about normality and pathology
from taking root. "Too often," Canguilhem
argued,
scientists hold the laws of nature to be
essentially invariant. They treat singular phenomena as approximate copies,
which fail to reproduce these laws' supposed lawful reality in its entirety. From
this perspective, the singular-that is,
the divergence, the variation-appears
to be a failure, a defect, an impurity.11

A judgment about the normal and the
pathological, then, should always be at least
partly informed by an understanding of
local milieus and temporal circumstances.
Biological judgments, in other words, are not
only normative but historical as well.
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SUMMER 2014

We should not conclude from all this that
Aron was a self-professed vitalist like Canguilhem. Nevertheless, Canguilhem's vitalism certainly reinforced Aron's conviction
that one should not draw a hard line between
facts and values, even in the life sciences. By
softening the distinction between scientific
and nonscientific thinking, Polanyi, Canguilhem, and Aron skirted naturalism's chief
intellectual pitfall, namely, its tendency to
compress the seamless continuities of lived
experience into overly abstract concepts.
Aron's discussion of the distinction that
Max Weber drew between facts and values
is instructive here. By cordoning off the two
realms as sharply as he did, Aron explained,
Weber attempted to protect science from the
reach of ideological and metaphysical thinking; at the same time, by insisting that the
choice of values is arbitrary and subjective,
Weber also liberated the act of choosing
from any sort of scientific or historical determinism. However, Aron wrote,
in affirming an opposition in kind
between procedures that are bound
together in existence, between the discovery of the real and the choice of an
action, [Weber] conferred an appearance
of irrationality on decisions which are
indeed not scientific, but which ought
nevertheless be reasonable.12

In disavowing the existence of any intermediate category between facts and values,
or between science and choice-or between
science and nonscience for that matter-
Weber "finished by presenting, in terms of
sheer choice, what tradition has more appropriately called wisdom." Unfortunately, Aron
added, the very sheerness of choice means
that "there is nothing to prevent it being the
choice of the devil." Morgenthau made a
similar point. "The dualism of rationalism,"
Modern Age - Summer 2014

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