A Vital Rationalist Selected Writings from Georges Canguilhem

Georges Canguilhem is one of France's foremost historians of science. Trained as amedical doctor as well as a philosopher, he combined these practices to demonstrate to philosophersthat there could be no epistemology without concrete study of the actual development of the sciencesand to historians that there could be no worthwhile history of science without a philosophicalunderstanding of the conceptual basis of all knowledge. A Vital Rationalist brings together for thefirst time a selection of Canguilhem's most important writings, including excerpts from previouslyunpublished manuscripts and a critical bibliography by Camille Limoges.Organized around the majorthemes and problems that have preoccupied Canguilhem throughout his intellectual career, thecollection allows readers, whether familiar or unfamiliar with Canguilhem's work, access to a vastarray of conceptual and concrete meditations on epistemology, methodology, science, and history.Canguilhem is a demanding writer, but Delaporte succeeds in marking out the main lines of histhought with unrivaled clarity; readers will come away with a heightened understanding of thecomplex and crucial place he holds in French intellectual history.Georges Canguilhem is ProfessorEmeritus at the Sorbonne and former director of the Institut d'Histoire des Sciences et desTechniques de l'Université de Paris. His works include La Connaissance de la Vie, Ideology andRationality in the History of the Life Sciences, and The Normal and the Pathological. FrançoisDelaporte is a Research Associate at the Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Medicalein Paris. He is the author of Disease and Civilization and The History of Yellow Fever.