A Collège de France - CNED coproduction
Abstract
The terms "life and health sciences" or "biological and medical sciences", which are in common usage, are redundant. Medical sciences" are obviously part of the biological sciences. As a species, we are particularly interested in investigating human health and disease, but there are also veterinary sciences and plant diseases. F. X. Bichat, in his Anatomie générale (1800), gave as one of the distinctive characteristics of phenomena in the living world that it presents normal and pathological forms, whereas there is no "pathology" of phenomena in the physical world. An electromagnetic wave doesn't get sick; a louse or a rosebush does.
Iwill, however, take advantage of the advantage given to the medical sciences in the formula to explain the philosophical perspective that approaching the life sciences through medicine gives them. I will then discuss the philosophy of life sciences as a philosophy of knowledge, or theoretical philosophy. Finally, I will discuss the philosophy of life sciences as a practical or moral philosophy..
