Élodie Giroux (2021). History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 43(4), article 111. DOI 10.1007/s40656-021-00463-x, PMC8527978.
Key takeaways
From the reading, NOTE-1452.
- Canguilhem’s health is normativity. Health is “the possibility of transcending the norm, which defines the momentary normal, the possibility of tolerating infractions of the habitual norm and instituting new norms in new situations” (Canguilhem 1991, pp. 196–197, quoted in note 8); disease is “the emergence of a ‘new individual norm’” (p. 194).
- It is individual by his lights. Normativity belongs to the organism as an organic totality; a society “is not an individual, because it is not an organism endowed with a purpose and a totality that are obtained by a specialized system of devices of regulation” (Canguilhem 2012, pp. 76–77).
- Biology has loosened the tie. Units-of-selection debates, species as individuals and superorganisms detach individuality from the organism.
- Epidemiology gives three arguments for population health. Population comparisons reveal associations invisible within a population; integral variables such as herd immunity have no individual analogue; and Rose’s “causes of incidence” differ from “causes of cases”.
- A relative, not a strong, autonomy. Populations are not to be given “an ontological unity as strong as that of the individual organism”.
Standing in the record
Filed on 2026-10-30 for CLAIM-018, which reads Canguilhem’s normativity as a capacity for norm-changing adaptation. The record cannot read Canguilhem’s book (LIT-817); this paper quotes his definition of health and his reason for refusing it to collectivities. It carries no instruction for machine-learning practice.