Who killed histological positivism? An approach to Claude Bernard’s epistemology

José Luis González Recio

Resumen


Along with numerous scientific contributions, Claude Bernard left a lucid and detailed defense of the applicability of the experimental method in physiology. Bernard explained that a rational therapeutic was absolutely necessary in clinical work, that this brought a pathology based on critical analysis of empirical data, and that such pathology would reach genuine knowledge when physiology had been freed from dogmatic attitudes. He set up a program, attacked by currents of thought hostile to the suppositions involved. The confrontation usher two tasks: first, to dismask the weakness of such currents; then, to define the role of conceptual-free invention and, likewise, how the methodological and epistemological guarantees of future physiology should act. This article examines such complex task; it enlarges on the reasons which have led Bernard to be seen as a precursor of Popper’s philosophy of science, and it pays special attention to the common factors in the historical context in which both Bernard and Popper developed their thoughts.

 

Key words: C. Bernard, experimental physiology, hypotheses, Positivism, Vitalism, cellular theory, Empiricism, histology, Rationalism, K. Popper.


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Referencias


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