Abstract

In this paper we intend to analyze the devices and conceptual strategies fielded by Claude Bernard, trying to figure out what was the contribution of the physiologist to the life sciences and vitalistic metaphysics of our time. The basic idea is that the originality and importance of his work consists not so much in the experimental method applied to living organisms, but rather in having inserted old and new concepts within an epistemological framework expertly re‐determined. The analysis will focus on a few key points – the re‐ positioning of the dichotomy vitalism/mechanism, the question of heredity and individual variation, the analysis of the level of “latent life” and the relationship between physiology and morphology – and the horizon within which will be included will be that of the dialectic between conditions and expressions.