full text:  Ideology and Rationality in Canguilhem’s Epistemology

in examining Canguilhem’s Ideology and Retionality in the History of Life Sciences I intend to demonstrate that his epistemological reflections upon historiograhphical issues in the history of life sciences suffers heavily from: 1) a naive version of positivist verificationism: 2) his incorporation of the, otherwise superfluous, consept of scientific ideology proves highly problem-generating at best. Finally, his work of his fails to address any of the multi-dimensional issues of the contemporaneous epistemological debates centred around the concept of rationality, and the role it plays in scientific knowledge, anthropological researc and historical reconstruction of past episodes in any area.