Foucault - Curviers Position in the History of Biology

8/3/2019 Foucault - Curviers Position in the History of Biology

1/7

http://coa.sagepub.com/Critique of Anthropology

http://coa.sagepub.com/content/4/13-14/125.citation

The online version of this article can be found at:

DOI: 10.1177/0308275X79004013101979 4: 125Critique of Anthropology

Michel FoucaultCuvier's Position in the History of Biology

Published by:

http://www.sagepublications.com

can be found at:Critique of AnthropologyAdditional services and information for

http://coa.sagepub.com/cgi/alertsEmail Alerts:

http://coa.sagepub.com/subscriptionsSubscriptions:

http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.navReprints:

http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.navPermissions:

at Aalborg University Library on July 1, 2011coa.sagepub.comDownloaded from
http://coa.sagepub.com/http://coa.sagepub.com/http://coa.sagepub.com/content/4/13-14/125.citationhttp://coa.sagepub.com/content/4/13-14/125.citationhttp://coa.sagepub.com/content/4/13-14/125.citationhttp://www.sagepublications.com/http://www.sagepublications.com/http://coa.sagepub.com/cgi/alertshttp://coa.sagepub.com/cgi/alertshttp://coa.sagepub.com/subscriptionshttp://coa.sagepub.com/subscriptionshttp://coa.sagepub.com/subscriptionshttp://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.navhttp://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.navhttp://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.navhttp://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.navhttp://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.navhttp://coa.sagepub.com/http://coa.sagepub.com/http://coa.sagepub.com/http://coa.sagepub.com/http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.navhttp://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.navhttp://coa.sagepub.com/subscriptionshttp://coa.sagepub.com/cgi/alertshttp://www.sagepublications.com/http://coa.sagepub.com/content/4/13-14/125.citationhttp://coa.sagepub.com/


2/7

125

CUVIERS POSITION IN THE HISTORY OF BIOLOGY*

by Michel Foucault

I would like initially to specify what I mean by the phraseepistemological transformation and will illustrate this bythe use of two examples.

The first concerns biology, and biological concepts of theindividual and individual variation. Cuvier could be

characterised as the one person who actually believed inthe species, as the one person who was totally unconcernedwith what existed below the level of the species, who gotentirely caught up in the notion of the species, who wasable to focus on what existed below the level of the speciesand to apply biological knowledge to the individual. Hebelieved that everything was organised from the level ofthe species, for the species, up to the species. We allknow what Darwin said in contrast to this on the species.For Darwin the species was not the originally prior and

analytically the ultimate reality, as it was for Cuvier.Darwin found it difficult to distinguish species from

variety and cites several examples which demonstrate thatin botany and in zoology it is not possible to say thatthis is a species and that a variety. Darwin did on theother hand admit that there was progressive consolidation

of individual variations. Even within the species he saysthst small variations occur which are endlessly accentuatedand which finally break through the definition which had,a posteriori, been given to the species. Finally individuals,variations of variations, link up with each other beyondand above the boundaries of the definition which had been

given to the species. In fact Darwin admits that all thetaxonomic definitions which had been proposed for theclassification of plants and animals were, up to a certain

point, abstract categories. For him there was thereforeone reality; which was that of the individual, and another

whichwas

the variability of the individual - its capacityto vary. All other categories (species, genus, order etc)were kinds of constructions built on the basis of the onlyreality: the individual. In this respect we can say thenthot Darwins position is directly opposed to Cuviers.However, odd as it might seem, it also in fact reflectsan aspect of classical 17th cnd 18th-century taxonomy.The methodists, especially Lamarck for example, questionedthe whole notion of the reality of the species, and since

they felt that the continuity in nature was so well

integrated, and contained so few interruptions, they thusbelieved that the

specieswas

perhapsan abstract

category.So in Darwin we can see a kind of return to theories suchas these which are found not only in Lamarck but also inthe work of the methodists in the Lamarckian period. We

might then ask (in the history of the biology of the

* First published in the Revue dHistoire des Sciences,23, 1970, pp63-69.

http://coa.sagepub.com/http://coa.sagepub.com/http://coa.sagepub.com/http://coa.sagepub.com/


3/7

126

individual) whether or not we could trace a directconnection between Jussieu or Lamarck to Darwin and

bypass Cuvier entirely. In this version of historyCuvier would be entirely enucleated. Such an analysisis however neither adequate nor entirely justified. As

often happens in situations like this, or return, repeti-tion, reinterpretation, underlying them is a complexphenomenon, a highly charged process of transformation.

I would like to show how in the work of Lamarck and his

contemporaries the individual, or rather the criticismof the concept of the species, is not entirely the iso-

morphism of, nor is it superimposed on the criticism ofthe species that is found in Darwin. In fact Darwinscriticism of the species could only occur as a result ofthe transformation, reorganisation and redistribution in

biological knowledge which was achieved through the workof Cuvier. So in what does such a transformation exist?

Classical taxonomy was essentially the science of the

species, in other words of the definition of the differ-ences which separate each species from the others; theclassification of these differences; the construction ofthe general categories of these differences; and thehierarchy involved in the relations between them. Inother words the whole structure of classical taxonomydepends on differences between species and the attemptsto define differences at a

higherlevel than that of

species difference.

I think that we have evidence of the fact that biologicalclassification chooses the difference between species asits minimal element - that it is unable to go below these

differences. Linnaeus for example says that knowledgeof individuals and of varieties is the knowledge ofdifferences necessary to a florist, not a botanist. Healso said that the knowledge of varieties was importantfor economics, for medicine, and for cooking. But hegoes further than this. He adds that the knowledge ofvarieties was practical knowledge. In contrast to thisscientific theory begins with the species. The existenceof this threshold between the individual and the specieshas important consequences.

First, the difference between species difference andthe individual difference - which involves a break, a

leap, a threshold. This threshold marks the point fromwhich scientific knowledge can begin. Individual differ-ence is not relevant to science. There is an epistemo-logical threshold between the individual and the species.



4/7

127

On the other hand it is true that what is given as theprimitive object of science is the species and the differ-ence between species, everything which is constructed onthe basis of the difference between species, in otherwords the difference between differences, or the similar-ities between differences, more general differences thanthose relevant to species and as a result the categorieswhich are broader than those of the species, categoriessuch as these are the constructs. These constructs,produced through knowledge, do not, unlike the definitionof the species, depend on data that are in effect givento consciousness, they are hypotheses that can be moreor less verified, hypotheses which are more or less wellfounded, hypotheses which will perhaps coincide with thefacts. Thus everything above the level of the specieswill not belong to the same ontological category as what

relates to the species or the the individual below thespecies level. So between the species and the genus anew threshold is created which this time is not epistemo-logical but ontological.

This means that it is at the level above that of the

individual that knowledge can be organised. From thelevel of the species onwards, knowledge is not given butconstructed, while below this level a whole range ofreality exists which is in effect given to experience.

It is on this issue that the problems of classical tax-onomy originate: how is it possible to establish genuswhich are real or at least - since they are never real -well defined and well established? In this we can see

the basis for the

antimonyand the

oppositionbetween the

systematicians and the methodists. The former said thatat any rate beyond the level of the species, we cannotdirectly achieve reality. A classificatory techniquehas to be established which might be arbitrary but mustbe effective and convenient. The methodists stated incontrast to this position that classes and classificatoryconstructs which have to be established had, up to acertain point, to be adjusted to the overall resemblanceswhich were given in experience. A salad and a fir treeshould not be classed together. Both debates, whether

they depended on the natural method or on the arbitrarysystem, are always conducted the other side of thisontological threshold.

The problem is to understand how this form of classicaltaxonomy was transformed. How was it possible to re-discover in the individual, which from now on would besubsumed under the species and the genus, the one andonly thread of reality (for Darwin the thread was



5/7

128

genealogy). How was Darwin able on the one hand toestroy the epistemological threshold and to demonstrate

how in fact it was necessary to begin with the individual,with individual variations; and on the other hand to show

how, starting from the individual, it was possible to

establish what the individuals species, order or classwas and that this was the reality of its genealogy, the

sequence of individuals. It would thus be possible tohave a uniform table without the double threshold system.

This transformation became possible through the work ofCuvier.

Comparative anatomy as practised by Cuvier was firstlyresponsible for the introduction of comparative anatomyas the instrument for the taxonomic organisation and

classification of the species. It also resulted inconferring the same ontological form on the species, the

genus, the order, and the class. The first effect of

comparative anatomy was therefore to have eliminatedthis ontological threshold. What comparative anatomydid demonstrate was that all the categories which existedabove the level of the species, superior to the species,were not simply, as in the classical taxonomy, kinds of

regions, areas of resemblances, groups with analogouscharacteristics that could be established either on an

arbitrary basis according to a system of signs, or at a

gross level, accordingto the

general configurationof

plants and of animals. Rather, they were seen as typesof organisation. From now on to belong to a genus, anorder, a class did not mean that things were consideredas sharing with other species fewer characteristics thanthose which were specific to that thing. It did notimply a generic characteristic or the characteristics ofa class; it meant to have a precise form of organisation,that is lungs and a valved heart or a digestive systemwhich was situated above or below the nervous system. In

short, then, to belong to a genus, a class, or an order,to belong to all the categories which lie below that ofthe species, means that each thing possesses, in itself,in its own anatomy, its own functioning, in its physiology,its form of existence, a certain perfectly analysablestructure, and one which as a result of this has itsown positivity.

There are thus positive systems of correlations. To thisextent one cannot say that the genus is less real than

the species, or the class than the species. From thelevel of the species to the most general category thereis one and the same reality: biological reality, that

is to say the reality of anatomo- physiological functioning.

The ontological threshold between the species and thegenus thus disappears. Ontological homogeneity from nowon therefore encompasses the individual and the species,the genus, the order, the class in an uninterruptedsequence. Furthermore the interlocking of the categorieswas in classical taxonomy quite appropriate for the



6/7

129

classificatory table. But in the work of Cuvier we havean anatomo-physiological interlocking of all the categorieswith their internal support. We have this in each

individual; in other words it is the individual in itsreal functioning which carries in itself, and in the

depths of its mechanism, all the layers, the determinations,the orders, regulations and correlations which can existbetween the different levels of the table. For Cuvier

the individual was to be constructed from an interlockingof the anatomo-physiological structures which were toconstitute its branches, its class, its order and itsgenus. These structures, taken as a whole, which are ineffect present in each individual, which are patientlyorganising it, which physiologically control it, will thusto a certain extent define its conditions of existence.

By conditions of existence Cuvier means the meeting of

two things:on

the one hand the set of correlations whichare physiologically compatible with each other, and onthe other the context in which it lives; in other wordsthe nature of the molecules which it has assimilated

either through breathing or by eating. Thus, at thebeginning of The Revolutions of the Globe, we find apassage in which Cuvier shows in what way these conditions

of existence operate. The individual in its real exist-

ence, in its life, is nothing more than the sum total ofthe structures which are both taxonomic and anatomo-

physiological. It is also this totality which is presentin some

wayin the individual within a

givencontext.

, There are as a result two series: one in which the

individual lies outside the level of knowledge and inwhich the species, the genus, the order etc are allontologically connected to each other; and the other withthe real life of the individual and the milieu in whichits specific generic characteristics are found and function.Two different kinds of knowledge can therefore be estab-lished : comparative anatomy, which allows the most generalcharacteristic and the most universal structures of the

individual to be considered, and which enables the class,the order, the genus, and the species to which they belongto be selected; and paleontology, which starts with whatcan be directly observed in the individual and leadsultimately to the level below the individual, that ofan organ. Then, through the study of the organ, it canalso consider the species, through taking into considera-tion the milieu in which it operates or through takingaccount of both the anatomical and the contextual. In

this way two epistemological lines can be established,one for comparative anatomy and the other for paleontologyand both these are entirely different from classicaltaxonomy. The ontological and epistemological thresholds

are thus eliminated. We can also understand how Darwinswork was possible. To understand this possibility doesnot mean that after Cuvier there were no other transform-

ations nor that Darwin himself did not have to add various

other transformations.

In fact what really constitutes the specificity and thelimits of Cuviers transformation is the fact that, in



7/7

130

order to accommodate the two lines to each other, he hadto admit some kind of teleology, an end which impliedthat class, order, genus and species were created so thatthe individual could live. Thus through this there is akind of predetermination of the real conditions of exist-ence of the individual. On the other hand the individual,according to Cuvier, bears in himself all the character-istics of the species, of the genus which for him arethe inescapable determinations. His static view resultsfrom this position. It is both this and the notion ofsome ultimate end which are the additional theoretical

.conditions that Cuvier has to maintain so that his systemcan hold - the system which underlies his whole system of

knowledge. This form of analysis of comparative anatomy,which is connected by its teleology is, by Cuvier himself,called the unity of the type. In contrast to this process

through which Cuvier, starting from the given individual,analyses the notions of the species, the genus etc, inthe conditions and in the context in which it functions,itself entails the analysis of the conditions of existence.It could be said that Cuvier could only maintain the unityof his system through subordinating the conditions ofexistence to the unity of the type. What Darwin had todo was to modify the very meaning of conditions ofexistence, since for Cuvier these depended on the confront-ation of these conditions and the anatomo-physiologicalstructure which characterises an individual and which

incorporatesin the individual the

taxonomyto which it

belongs, and the context in which it lives.

From Darwin on, these conditions, having been freed fromthe concept of the unity of the type, become the conditionsof existence given to an individual living in a particularcontext. We can also in this way describe the transforma-

tion through which the problem of the relations betweenthe individual and the species in the classical periodchanged into Darwins understanding of this relationship.It seems to me that the movement from the one to the

other was only made possible through a complete re-construction of the epistemological field of biology ywhich can be seen to operate in the work of Cuvier.

Whatever the errors that Cuvier can be seen to have made,we can claim that there was a Cuviean transformation.

(translated by Felicity Edholm)


Date post:	06-Apr-2018
Category:	Documents
Upload:	kevinturner4767
View:	217 times
Download:	0 times

Foucault - Curviers Position in the History of Biology

Documents