The variations of use of the concept of milieu, between the 18th and 20th centuries, according to the history of science of Georges Canguilhem.

• Grant number: 12/16022-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: March 01, 2013
• End date: August 31, 2014
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Philosophy - History of Philosophy
• Principal Investigator: Márcio Alves da Fonseca
• Grantee: Claudio Vinícius Felix Medeiros
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Comunicação, Letras e Artes. Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo (PUC-SP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This research protocol is supported by the analysis of Georges Canguilhem, in his writing "Le Vivant e son Milieu", where are reconstituted the historical steps for the construction of the concept of milieu, comprehending the 18th and 20th centuries. This study's object is the understanding of the inference, found in Lamarck's Philosophie Zoologique (1809), which assumes that the organic mutations and appearance of new individuals are products of stimulus caused by conditions of the milieu. However, since Canguilhem's history of science does not operate by the abstraction of the concept of milieu, which would be like taking it as universal, it is up to this work situate and introduce the arising of this object in a historical succession of scientific facts. This facts, in accordance with Canguilhem, trace back to the publication of Newton's Optica (1704) and Buffon's Historie Naturelle (1749). Therefore, once it's aimed to understand how Lamarck explain some organic reactions by influence of the milieu, it is necessary to localize in Newton and Buffon the other two variation of the respective concept's use, within the 18th century.