Médecine, philosophie et révolution scientifique. Une étude bibliographique

Abstract

This article examines the place that has been reserved for medicine in the historiography of the sciences. More precisely, it focuses on the motifs that have lead historians of science to grant only a minor role to medicine within the movement commonly designated by the notion of the “scientific revolution”. Among those motifs, the persistent and late application of teleological schemas in the thinking of the biological and the difficulties in “mathematizing” anatomy are often invoked. Starting with an overview of the critical literature on the topic, this bibliographical essay shows how the situation has changed over the last decades. The opposition between, on the one hand, the physical sciences founded on a model of mechanistic explanation of nature and, on the other hand, the life sciences that remained guided by a finalist mode of thinking are today much put into question. What we find today is more open reflection on the diversity of “models” for understanding the living, and on how to integrate them into more complex schemas than those that simply oppose mechanism and teleology. The essay is finally based on discussions and debates among medical doctors and philosophers in the modern period, and insists on the importance of studying this “medico-philosophical” tradition in order to avoid reconstructing a posteriori a mythical history that trends to consecrate a single model of rationality.