Jean Gayon | Scholar Profile | Peter Wall Instute

Contents:

• INTRODUCTN: JEAN GAYON (1949–2018), PHILOSOPHER AND HISTORIAN OF THE LIFE SCIENC
• PHILOSOPHY, HISTORY AND BLOGY: ESSAYS HONOUR OF JEAN GAYON
• JEAN GAYON
• JEAN GAYON, HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF BLOGY: A NEW SYNTHIS
• FROM HISTORIL EPISTEMOLOGY TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF BLOGY: A LOOK AT JEAN GAYON’S INTELLECTUAL JOURNEY

INTRODUCTN: JEAN GAYON (1949–2018), PHILOSOPHER AND HISTORIAN OF THE LIFE SCIENC

Profsor of History and Philosophy of Science at the Universy of Paris 1–Panthéon-Sorbonne sce 2000, former director of the Instute of History and Philosophy of Science and Technology (IHPST) of the CNRS, Jean Gayon (1949–2018) died on April 28th 2018 followg a long illns that he faced wh termatn and Gaston Bachelard and Ge Canguilhem, the foundg figur of the French tradn history and philosophy of science, Jean Gayon add to his philosophil trag a scientific tn to analyze his subject matter serly: the blogil scienc. 31), Canguilhem directed him towards his former stunt, François Dagog, then an fluential profsor of philosophy Lyon and Print of the jury of the “agrégatn”, who was maly known for his wrgs on Louis Pastr (1967) and on the history of natural history (1970) the tradn of Bachelard and then, Gayon had not yet turned his back on a reer blogy; he even add to his trag a Diplôme d’étus approfondi (DEA) evolutnary geics. Among many other thgs, Gayon has tght that sce Menl, the notn of heredy, which was first a legal (“herance”) and a medil term (“heredary diseas”) was brought to blogil science: no longer a “force” that fluenc om the distant past, heredy has bee a statistil phenomenon (Gayon, 2000) Darwism’s Stggle for Survival (1998), Gayon explored the major crisis Darw’s hypothis of natural selectn unrwent before was progrsively rroborated the 1930s–1950s by the batn of populatn geics, statistics, and experiments on laboratory fli.

Fally, and perhaps most importantly, Gayon has tght that to unrstand a ncept clus not only havg a clear-cut fn of , but also graspg s history and , reactivatg the ntroversi that animate , and intifyg who lays claim to and to what the history of science self, Gayon’s rearch on the French school of geics, iated wh Richard Burian and Doris Zallen, and ntued wh Lrent Loison, has shed new light on the succs of the school of molecular blogy led by François Jab, Jacqu Monod, and André Lwoff. Gayon and his lleagu have shown that stead of a French mystery, whereby the succs of Jab, Monod, and Lwoff bunked a mistaken legacy of Lamarckism, was the tellectual and stutnal legacy of Cl Bernard and Louis Pastr’s experimental physlogy that enabled French rearchers to draw on emergg molecular blogy as a major tool, even though classil geics had th far remaed margal.

In fact, although Jean Gayon never rolved ( a way that would have satisfied him) his dual herage—Gaston Bachelard and Thomas Kuhn, Ge Canguilhem and David Hull, which also extends beyond those fluential figur, as this volume monstrat, his own reer as a historian and a philosopher go a long way toward guidg the time to Gayon left far too soon; but his ntributns will long rema an sential reference pot to unrstand ntemporary velopment the life scienc for philosophers, historians, and sometim, blogists. Usg the example of Darw’s theory of pangenis, which Gayon rarely examed spe his tert the history of heredy, Loison argu that one of the reasons for this omissn may be that did not f wh the “stcturalist approach” Gayon expound, an approach spired by the exampl of Imre Lakatos and Pierre Duhem and which, acrdg to Loison, set Gayon’s work apart om both philosophy of blogy and French historil send sectn of the book (“Perspectiv on Jean Gayon’s Contributns to the History of Evolutnary Theory and French Geics”) turns to Jean Gayon’s ntributns to the history and philosophy of evolutnary theory and to the emergence of French geics. In so dog, Hodge provis a different readg of Wallace and lls to qutn Gayon’s attributn of a group-selectnist view to the third sectn (“Case-studi on Blogil Concepts and Theori”) ncerns issu blogy and philosophy om the eighteenth to the neteenth century, to which Jean Gayon has ntributed several of his publitns.

PHILOSOPHY, HISTORY AND BLOGY: ESSAYS HONOUR OF JEAN GAYON

21, Hans-Jörg Rheberger brgs this volume to a close wh a personal note about his first enunters wh Jean Gayon the ntext of a nference of the Internatnal Society for the History, Philosophy, and Social Studi of Blogy, an Internatnal Colloquium honor of Marjorie Grene, and the “Cultural History of Heredy” project at the Max Planck Instute for the History of Science Berl.

JEAN GAYON

Jean Gayon and the Morn SynthisJean Gayon and Historil EpistemologyJean Gayon and the Philosophy of BlogyHistory and Philosophy of BlogyHistory of French GeicsInterdisciplary Methods Philosophy of BlogySocial Studi of the Life SciencJean Gayon on Cultural EvolutnHistory of Molecular BlogyFrench History and Philosophy of Science.

JEAN GAYON, HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF BLOGY: A NEW SYNTHIS

2 The Lack of Thematic Diversy Philosophy of BlogyIn 2009, Jean Gayon published a text entled “Philosophy of Blogy: An Histori-Cril Characterizatn” (Gayon, 2009), which he exam the origs, central them and boundari of the field of “philosophy of blogy” as veloped om the 1960s to the 1970s, maly English-speakg untri.

Third, there is no signifint change the reprentatn of the different fields of blogy over time (over a perd of sixteen years), which suggts that philosophers of blogy are not particularly sensive to the evolutn of blogy their chapter is a particularly nvcg illtratn of what might be lled the method of “cril taxonomy” favored by Jean Gayon, which nsists g scriptn and classifitn tools (cludg statistics) to lead the rear to a bold ncln. Moreover, if a field such as the philosophy of nroscience had taken on a tly major importance the philosophy of blogy, seems very likely that Blogy & Philosophy would have been impacted by this (albe wh some lay or wh perhaps younger or ls prtig thors) therefore seems to me that the two objectns, however pertent they may be, do not validate the general observatn ma by Jean Gayon and then by myself that the philosophy of blogy has remaed for the most part nfed to one field among others of the life scienc.

3 History of Science as an InspiratnFaced wh this observatn of the thematic narrowns of the philosophy of blogy as has been nstcted over the last thirty years, I would like to suggt that the history of science, and pecially the history of science as practiced by Jean Gayon, n be a major source of spiratn for the philosophy of, whout beg myself a specialist the history of blogy, seems to me that this field has been able to avoid the two pfalls that we have intified wh regard to the philosophy of blogy: pared to the philosophy of blogy, the history of blogy is terted a greater diversy of fields the life scienc (e.

FROM HISTORIL EPISTEMOLOGY TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF BLOGY: A LOOK AT JEAN GAYON’S INTELLECTUAL JOURNEY

The Nobel Prize Chemistry was award 2020 to Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier for the disvery of CRISPR-Cas, so hopefully more philosophers of blogy will pay attentn to, the history of blogy—and even more so the approach of “epistemologil history” (Gayon, 2003) illtrated by Jean Gayon and Michel MorangeFootnote 10—seems to be able to functn as a mol and a source of spiratn for the philosophy of blogy, om the double pot of view of s thematic diversy and s sensivy to current chang the life scienc. Although the philosophil qutns raised by evolutnary blogy are fascatg, I have tried to show, followg Jean Gayon, that the philosophy of blogy would be well advised, today, to open up to other fields of the life scienc, which would plement and enrich the problems formulated until now maly the light of evolutnary blogy.

Footnote 2 “After beg slightly sceptil the 1980s wh rpect to the ‘philosophy of blogy’—he wr Knowledge of Life Today, a llectn of terviews nducted by Victor Pet—I fally nclud that this type of rearch was perhaps more tertg than everythg I had seen my own untry unr the label of ‘philosophy of the life scienc’” (Gayon & Pet, 2018, p. Durg his reer, Gayon went back and forth between historil epistemology and philosophy of blogy, between his French masters and his Anglo-Saxon mentors, and between the historil method and nceptual beg, I will e back to several aspects of his tellectual journey, showg why Jean Gayon naturally appeared to many of his lleagu as a Canguilhemian, a view agast which he fends himself.