ABSTRACT
Unlike most science discussed in this volume, immunology is the scientific progeny of the twentieth century, and its history spans hardly more than one hundred years. The name ‘Immunology’ appeared in most Western languages by the turn of the century. It only emerged after August Comte had completed his famous classification of sciences in which an important place was given to the new biology and sociology. Though it developed in the wake of triumphant positivism, it still had to find a place in the encyclopedic order of knowledge and by turns oscillated between expansion and recession, variously solicited by its two poles, biology and medicine. 1 More medical than other biological disciplines, yet holding the key to many biological phenomena, how can this late-born science be described?
