ABSTRACT

In this chapter we shall leave the purely philosophical terrain and enter the realm of physiology. However, our discussion of physiology will not be an exegetical or an historical one, it will deal with those elements of Bernard’s physiology which are of relevance to his philosophical position and which are relevant to our analysis of Durkheim. It will not be our object to give a description of Bernard’s scientific investigations, nor will it be our object to place him in the complex history of the biological sciences in the nineteenth century. These questions are beyond the scope of this work and we refer the reader to the specialist literature in the history of science.1 The relevance of Bernard’s physiological problematic to our discussion lies in the break it produces with the terms of the vitalism/reductionism couple. This structure of the idealist reference to essences, on the one hand, and the reductionist application of the normatised procedures of other sciences, on the other, was the predominant epistemological obstacle to the development of a scientific physiology. But it is not confined to physiology or to the biological sciences; it exerts a powerful influence in the social sciences-we shall encounter its effects in our analysis of The Rules of Sociological Method. A consideration of Bernard’s break with and criticism of this structure will serve as a point of reference when we come to discuss Durkheim.