Poznávání života

French epistemology represents a distinctive line of thought within philosophy, represented primarily by Gaston Bachelard with his theory of epistemological breaks, Georges Canguilhem with his history of scientific concepts and Michel Foucault with his archaeology of knowledge. While Bachelard’s and particularly Foucault’s works have been popular in the Czech scientific environment, Canguilhelm’s epistemology is almost unknown here. However in the French and Anglo-Saxon tradition, the latter is considered to be one of the important landmarks in the history of philosophy and currently, many scholars who are trying to formulate a new definition of live nature and overcome a mechanistic concept of an organism use it as their starting point. The presented collection of papers, published by Canguilhelm under the title of Knowledge of Life, presents in a comprehensive manner the most important spheres of thought which Canguilhelm explored. The reader can see to what extent Canguilhelm’s original philosophical stance was formed through his study of scientific works written by scholars from the past, who would otherwise have fallen into oblivion. His intensive coming to terms with scientists such as Claude Bernard, Pierre Jean George Cabanis and Georges Louis Leclerc de Buffon, allowed Canguilhelm to address the most important themes of the philosophy of life and philosophy of science, which include questions of a revision or possible rehabilitation of vitalism, the importance of environment in the shaping and learning about organisms, the definition of normality and pathology and the nature of the history of biology.