It is quite evident that Canguilhem relies heavily on Goldstein, even if his studies of medicine and biology allow him to further develop the arguments59, in part by accounting for the historical nature of biological norms. One can find many examples of this influence throughout Canguilhem’s three main works on biology and medicine: The Normal and the Pathological, Knowledge of Life, and Writings on Medicine. This can be seen, for example, when Canguilhem argues that disease, for all living beings, is to be understood as an event involving the ‘whole organism’ (1989, pp. 80, 223, 224), and for humans this also includes a reference to consciousness as part of the ‘indivisible totality of behavior’ (1989, p. 88). Or when he claims that in order to differentiate health from disease, we should look to the ‘total comportment’, the
‘totality of the organism’, or the organism ‘in its entirety’ (2008, pp. 129-131). It is this totality that is qualitatively reduced in disease, when the organism is obliged to live in a ‘shrunken milieu’. These ideas come directly from Goldstein.
In Canguilhem, we can establish two somewhat distinct claims regarding this ‘holism’:
one epistemological or methodological, the other ontological60. On the one hand, he shares Goldstein’s methodological holism in that biological processes, from parts of organisms to whole organisms, need to be situated in their relevant milieu to be properly understood. ‘As a general rule, analytically obtained knowledge can influence biological thought only when it is informed by reference to an organic existence grasped in its totality’ (Canguilhem 2008, p. xx).
This totality refers to all the relations affecting the inner milieu of the organism and the influences coming from its external milieu, from the molecular to the ecological level (2012, p.
48). For example, genetic processes need to be situated in relation to other genes and the cellular system in which they occur, cells being situated in the organ or larger physiological
59 For a thorough description of the concept of individuality in Canguilhem see Gayon (1998).
60 Wolfe (n.d.) stresses this equivocation in Canguilhem, but takes it in a more critical direction by asking whether the ontological aspect leads Canguilhem into problematic metaphysical claims, or what he calls ‘biochauvinism’. As his critique misses the empirical aspects of Canguilhem’s position, it is not very convincing.
systems, to the whole organism dynamically interacting with its environment, etc. It is relative to a whole that the parts can be best understood. Lewontin argues for a similar methodological
‘holism’ in biology:
For biological systems, because of the hierarchy of functions and because of the multiple intersecting causal pathways, the determination of parts is made only after the appropriate “whole” is defined. … In biology we cannot escape from the dialectical relation between parts and wholes (2001, pp. 79, 82).
It might thus be more accurate to argue that Canguilhem’s appeal to the whole organism is not done simply to reject reductionism (i.e. explaining the whole by means of the parts), but is meant to show how the methodology of reductionism presupposes the dynamic relation between the various parts of organisms and their relevant functional wholes. This would explain Canguilhem’s interest in Goldstein’s critique of von Uexküll that was mentioned above.
On the other hand, this ‘holism’ in Canguilhem is not merely epistemological, requiring that the parts of organisms are understood against a background of interactions with other parts, but also appears to entail an ontological claim. What is important here is that this is not justified based on metaphysical grounds, but on empirical grounds, e.g. findings in biology, physiology, and pathology. He argues that based on the self-regulating capacities of organisms, the interrelatedness of physiological processes, and their non-indifferent relations vis-à-vis their environment, not only does the organism function as a whole, but it can only live ‘as a whole’ (2012, p. 72). ‘This is made possible’, he adds, ‘by the existence in the organism of a set [ensemble] of apparatuses or mechanisms of regulation whose effect consists precisely in the maintenance of this integrity, in the persistence of the organism as a whole’ (2012, p. 72).
Examples of such systemic regulation include respiratory movements, the homeostatic regulation of the level of water and chemicals that allow for cellular and organ functioning, thermoregulation, the maintenance of nitrogen equilibrium, as well as the regulation of embryonic development and immunological reactions to and recovering from lesions or infections, etc. (2012, p. 73; 1989, p. 207). It is the existence of such systemic processes that allows Canguilhem, particularly in his later work, to argue that in an organism the ‘totality’ is
‘present to it and to all its parts’ (2012, p. 76). In other words, the whole is the condition of possibility of the parts.
For Canguilhem, then, the organism can be understood as a whole because (1) the properties and functioning of the parts are influenced by the whole to which they belong such
that it is their relation to the whole that determines their function, and (2) the organism exhibits systemic self-regulating processes that dynamically interact with changes in the environment: ‘Living systems are open, non-equilibrium systems that maintain their organization both because they are open to the external world and in spite of being open to the external world’ (1988a, p. 141). An appeal to the ‘whole’ is an appeal to the fact that organisms exhibit some degree of closure/autonomy regarding their relation to the environment, but this is never total since it is precisely this relation that will determine the norms of a given organism. This ontological ‘whole’ thus simply implies relationality and organized complexity61. The need for ‘organismic’ explanations, putting ‘the total organism and its behavior again into the forefront’ (1989, p. 219), ultimately reflects these two aspects of Canguilhem’s holism: understanding biological processes in terms of whole-part relations and studying the systemic organizational properties as properties in their own right, as the conditions of possibility of the living being.
After clarifying his holism, two further questions need to be answered so as to better assess Giroux’s critique. How does this holism clarify ‘biological individuality’ and what is at stake when we move to the level of societies?
Canguilhem’s holism pertains to individuality such that individuality ‘does not describe a being but a relation’ (Gayon 1998, p. 319). In his essay on the history of cell theory, Canguilhem briefly defines the concept of the individual as ‘what cannot be further fragmented without losing its proper characteristics. It is a minimum of being. Yet no being is in itself a minimum. In itself, the individual necessarily presupposes its relation to a greater being’, a
‘background of continuity against which its discontinuity stands out’ (Canguilhem 2008, p. 49).
He adds that individuality is ‘a term in a relation’, the other term being the milieu (2008, pp. 49, 50). What this definition suggests is that when trying to understand biological individuality, we should keep in mind that living beings do not function as a mere collection of parts (since this totality is constantly being renewed), nor do the parts themselves function indifferently to their relation to the whole organism. An organism’s individuality consists in a unique totality of integrated causal relations that constitute it and are constituted by it: it is its relationality that makes it an indivisible being.
61 As I will show in chapters 4 and 6, Canguilhem’s views come quite close to what is now called ‘complexity theory’ in terms of the adaptability of living systems (Davis & Sumara 2010, p. 42). Moreover, Morange (2000) argues that while Canguilhem might have overestimated the importance of cybernetics for understanding the then contemporary views in biology, his appeal to holism remains pertinent in light of various findings in biochemistry, genetics and network theory.
Moreover, the individual organism, functioning as a whole, establishes itself as a center around which the milieu is constructed in relation to its needs: ‘To live is to radiate; it is to organize the milieu from and around a center of reference, which cannot itself be referred to without losing its original meaning’ (Canguilhem 2008, p. 114). In a famous essay on ‘The Organism as the Subject and Object of Evolution’, Lewontin62 expresses the same idea as follows:
Just as there is no organism without an environment, so there is no environment without an organism. … The organism is, in part, made by the interaction of the genes and the environment, but the organism makes its environment and so again participates in its own construction. Finally, the organism, as it develops, constructs an environment that is a condition of its survival and reproduction, setting the conditions for natural selection (1985, pp. 99, 105f)63.
A center is only a center in relation to what is centered, just as an organism’s individuality is only determined in relation to what it organizes: its milieu. As the two cannot be separated, holism clarifies biological individuality64.
There is, however, one complication to this, which is that Canguilhem only seems to have considered cells65 and ‘organisms’ to be the two main candidates for being called individuals since they alone are organized or unified as a whole in relation to their milieu (Gayon 1998). While a population or society of individuals has a kind of organization and does have a relation to a milieu, it does not have the same kind of self-regulating organization observed in living beings and therefore is not an individual, according to Canguilhem (2012, p.
77). As Giroux points out (2008, p. 175), it is here that Canguilhem equivocates between
‘biological individuals’ and ‘organisms’. Canguilhem only describes cells and organisms as individuals and thereby seems to prevent any extension of biological individuality to levels
62 This essay, written by Lewontin, first appeared in 1983 in the journal Scientia and then was republished in a book of essays written with Richard Levins in 1985. My references are to the 1985 publication.
63 In a later development of this same idea, one finds a passage that could easily appear in a book by Goldstein or Canguilhem: ‘An environment is something that surrounds or encircles, but for there to be a surrounding there must be something at the center 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, p. 48f).
64 His position could also be described as stressing the relation between particularity (spatio-temporally located, material instantiations) and individuality (unique biological information and ontogenetic history). Cf. Ruiz-Mirazo et al. (2000).
65 Since only the organism ‘as a whole’ can be sick, a cell, such as a white blood cell, if considered as a living organism ‘in a defense and reaction situation vis-à-vis an environment’ could be considered an individual and thus could legitimately be called sick (Canguilhem 1989, p. 224). Part or whole thus depends partly on perspective.
above the organism. However, while ‘organism’ usually denotes a causally integrated whole,
‘individual’ need not, thereby allowing the latter concept to be applied to various levels, such as a species (Wilson 1999, p. 62). As such, all organisms are individuals, but not all individuals are organisms66.
While it seems that Canguilhem was short-sighted here in not distinguishing individuals and organisms, does this problem capture what was really at stake for Canguilhem and can his insights regarding individuality be retained? In fact, in the main essay where Canguilhem tackles the problem of understanding the organization involved in societies, ‘The Problem of Regulation in the Organism and in Society’, his concern is with the ‘permanent comparison of society to an organism’ (2012, p. 68; emphasis added). While he traces this idea of
‘organicism’, typically associated with August Comte, all the way back to the Greeks, his main target in this essay is Walton Cannon’s 1932 book: The Wisdom of the Body. There, Cannon drew an analogy between an organism’s homeostatic mechanisms and some sort of ‘social homeostasis’ established by the body politic that reacts to social disorder (Canguilhem 2012, p.
75). Canguilhem argued that, with human societies, the complexities of human behavior and social structures, as well as the nearly continual presence of social unrest and crisis, make referring to any society as an integrated whole rather difficult (2012, p. 71). Canguilhem is thus not concerned with the claim that societies or populations could be individuated by means of their having norms or causal properties, as this is a trivial claim. Instead he is rejecting the claim that societies can be viewed as self-regulating organisms67.
Thus, while Canguilhem can be criticized for having problematically conflated the concepts of individual and organism, the focus of his analysis should be specified. Moreover, even for those biologists open to viewing populations or species as ‘units of selection’, the idea that such populations could be ‘self-regulating’ is considered highly problematic, both epistemologically and empirically (Lewontin 1970, p. 13). If some organisms can be defined as
‘populations’, then Giroux could be justified, at least for those organisms. It is true that many, if not all, organisms involve some symbiotic relationship with other organisms, e.g. with bacteria, and that some organisms seem best individuated on the level of a community (cf. Janzen 1977), but it is another claim entirely that human societies are organisms. While Giroux is correct to
66 For more recent accounts of biological individuality see Clarke (2013) and Bouchard & Huneman (2013).
67 Canguilhem has a lengthier critique of Comte’s organicism in the second part of The Normal and the Pathological (1989, pp. 250-257). See also the translators’ introduction to Writings on Medicine for a good discussion of the political nature of Canguilhem’s critique of social ‘self-regulation’ (2012, pp. 18-22).
point out that populations can also be individuals (e.g. Millstein 2009), if she is to truly challenge Canguilhem, it is this latter claim that she has to substantiate. I will return to this issue in the next chapter.
What was at stake, then, in Canguilhem’s various descriptions of biological individuality was not how all individuals are organisms, but what constitutes organismic individuality and how this individuality complicates biological and medical norms. Following Goldstein, his holism helps to show how individuality is inescapable, both epistemologically and ontologically: as organisms are complex systems interacting with changing environments, what will be normal for one, need not be normal for another. The contingencies of life make every organism unique, and what it is capable of in terms of its normativity – its ability to create new norms – is determined by the multiplicity of forces that never cease to act upon it and issue from it throughout its life.
While his holism might seem to run counter to how biological knowledge is produced, Canguilhem’s point is that it is relative to this systemic self-organization and self-maintenance, properties that largely distinguish biological entities from physical ones, that concepts like normality, health, and disease take on meaning (1988a, p. 143). To this end, his approach was meant to illustrate that geographical, biological and social factors thoroughly shape the individuality of organisms68, especially humans, and that, as a result, individuality remains a problem for medical judgment. In the next section I will show that it is by situating organisms in their complex environments that his approach is actually more open to various levels of analysis than Giroux suggests.