Abstract

This present study addresses the problem of assimilability between models of the physiological body and socio-polítical organization, based mainly on the homologous use of the concept of regulation in both the medical-scientific and polítical fields. The works of Georges Canguilhem (1904-1995) in philosophy and the history of science permit an approach to the use of models in the life sciences and an analysis of informational transit between the socio-polítical and medicalbiological contexts, according to the structural, functional, and normative levels of each. From this, the "prosthetic" bias of life and biological bias of technique are discussed. Canguilhem's considerations converge to make his work an interaction between the four categories: politics, science, life, and technology. Organic individuality and the way human societies are organized are discussed by the author in the light of the sociology of Auguste Comte and Emile Durkheim, the physiology of Claude Bernard, René Leriche, François Broussais, and Xavier Bichat, and the technological philosophy of Alfred Espinas, A. A. Cournot, and other scientists and philosophers in France in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Georges Canguilhem is usually classified in what as known as historical epistemology, along with Michel Foucault, Gaston Bachelard, and Jean Cavaillès. In conclusion, here we call attention to the theoretical support extracted from Canguilhem's work as a contribution to the search for philosophical methods to consider the entanglement between art, politics, and life sciences, fields that are seen to interact in the production of knowledge and action.