SPHERE UMR 7219, CNRS, Paris-Cité University, Paris, France.
, Paris, France.
Hist Philos Life Sci. 2023 Mar 15;45(1):10. doi: 10.1007/s40656-023-00564-9.
Heredity has been dismissed as an insignificant object in Claude Bernard's physiology, and the topic is usually ignored by historians. Yet, thirty years ago, Jean Gayon demonstrated that Bernard did elaborate on the subject. The present paper aims at reassessing the issue of heredity in Claude Bernard's project of a "general physiology". My first claim is that Bernard's interest in heredity was linked to his ambitious goal of redefining general physiology in relation to morphology. In 1867, not only was morphology included within experimental physiology, but it also theoretically grounded physiological investigations. By 1878, morphology and physiology were considered as completely independent sciences, and only the latter was perceived as suitable to experimentation. My second claim is that this reversal reflected the existence of two opposite attitudes towards heredity. In the late 1860s, Bernard was convinced that heredity would soon be accessible to experimental manipulation and that new species would be produced in the laboratory exactly like organic chemistry succeeded to do for raw bodies. Ten years later, he ascertained that this was impossible. My third claim is that Bernard was epistemologically ill-equipped to address the issue of heredity. Bernard was strongly committed to a general reasoning scheme that acknowledged only three categories: determining conditions, constant laws and phenomena. This scheme was a key factor in his successes as a physiologist who was able to capture new mechanisms in living bodies. Nonetheless, it also prevented him from understanding how time and history could be endowed with a causal action that cannot be reduced to timeless parameters.
遗传被克劳德·伯纳德（Claude Bernard）的生理学视为微不足道的对象而被摒弃，这个话题通常也被历史学家所忽略。然而，三十年前，让·盖永（Jean Gayon）证明伯纳德确实详细论述了这个主题。本文旨在重新评估遗传在克劳德·伯纳德的“普通生理学”项目中的问题。我的第一个主张是，伯纳德对遗传的兴趣与他雄心勃勃的目标有关，即重新定义与形态学相关的普通生理学。1867 年，形态学不仅被纳入实验生理学，而且为生理学研究提供了理论基础。到 1878 年，形态学和生理学被认为是完全独立的科学，只有后者被认为适合进行实验。我的第二个主张是，这种逆转反映了对遗传的两种相反态度的存在。在 19 世纪 60 年代后期，伯纳德确信遗传很快就能被实验操作所掌握，并且新物种将像有机化学成功地为原始生物体所做的那样在实验室中产生。十年后，他确定这是不可能的。我的第三个主张是，伯纳德在认识论上无法解决遗传问题。伯纳德坚定地致力于一种普遍的推理模式，该模式只承认三个范畴：决定条件、恒定规律和现象。这个模式是他作为生理学家成功的关键因素，他能够捕捉到活体中的新机制。然而，它也阻止了他理解时间和历史如何能够被赋予一种因果作用，而这种因果作用不能被简化为无时间参数。
