Georges Canguilhem's ascription of greater experimental value to the study of pathology over physiology (or normality), as propounded in his 1943 doctoral thesis in medicine, The Normal and the Pathological (expanded and republished in 1966), is not simply a description of the limits of medical perception. It is also a philosophical statement about the nature of life as a ‘struggle against that which obstructs its preservation and development taken as norms’, and the nature of life's knowledge of itself: ‘Disease is the source of the speculative attention which life attaches to life by means of man.’

This interrelation between the knowledge of life and analysis of the diseased state of the living organism recalls and problematises Henri Bergson's analysis in Creative Evolution of the progressive adaptation of human intellect and matter in the evolution of human intelligence. Bergson's aim was to explain the propensity of the human intellect, and the development of its activity in the sciences, to attach itself to artificial, stable forms over against the real, moving continuity of vital and material processes. In these terms, it would be necessary to resist the normal direction of thought in order to achieve an understanding of the living. However, this would pose difficulties for Bergson's critics and proponents alike in his apparent perpetuation of the gulf between the arts and the sciences: since Bergson could be dismissed as anti-scientific and subjectivist, his critics would be left unable to illuminate this thought except by crude generalisations about its place in the history of philosophy, and his proponents unable to participate in discussions on the history and philosophy of science except to malign the sciences for their insufficiencies in accounting for real change or living processes. One of the intentions of the previous chapter was to cast light on the reality of Bergson's attitude towards the sciences, one that is certainly not dismissive, and on the contrary seeks to establish a more productive relationship between philosophy and the sciences by discovering their common origins, pitfalls, and potential for shared endeavours in problem-solving.