Delaporte, The History of Yellow Fever, Chs. 2 and 3

 (Meeting Date: April 1st)

Questions

1. “…Now we had an object of which it remained to form a concept” (31). What does he mean by concept here? Is “the mosquito” a concept?

2. He is quite keen on the language of analogy. Can we track some of his analogies? What is the methodological function of analogy here?

3. At the end of Chapter 3 he says, “It was necessary to adopt the standpoint of…” Why did he think historical epistemology was necessary to refute "the legend” in question? How to connect his historical epistemology point with the larger context about the importance of Manson, the context of Cuban medicine versus American medicine, etc.?

4.  Is doing historical epistemology like writing a mystery novel? (remembering the publisher's description of this text as mystery and Deleuze’s description of reading philosophy like a mystery novel)

5. What is Delaporte trying to teach us about scientific discovery? If we had to come up with a description of scientific discovery, what would that look like according to him?

6. He uses the word problematic in a really specific way. How does it connect or not with Foucault’s use of the word? 

 

Discussion (and more questions!)

- What is happening such that there is something about the object which allows it to not be a concept prior to it showing up? What is involved in the transformation from object to conceptualization?  

- What is a research object and how does it differ from discipline to discipline?  How do research objects change across scholarly contexts? 

- Page 33. Delaporte makes a claim about the work of historians and then spends the next 10 pages reflecting on how, despite what the literature says, Finlay was actually familiar with Manson’s work. This whole section is kind of odd. Why did Finlay hide his familiarity with Manson’s work? This familiarity might have led him to make the claims that he did, but that doesn’t even seem to be Delaporte’s claim...

- Further on the point of hiding his familiarity with Manson’s work: According to a naïve view of the history of science, no reasonable scientist would have any reason to conceal their indebtedness to another thinker. One reason to make so much about this point might be that it teaches us something about the psychology of science. Perhaps we get a snapshot of scientists as not just driven by the pursuit of truth as some shared goal but as concerned with things like social prestige.

- Delaporte aims to describe the conditions of possibility of Finlay thinking what he was able to think. He is tracking an epistemic problem and the epistemic conditions which make sense of certain kinds of theories. In a way, the historical work is deeper than tracking who cited who.

- In Chapter 2, his methodological approach is to focus on the problems Finlay is trying to solve. But he also considers the problems Finlay isn’t trying to solve…Delaporte reads the inconsistencies in Finlay’s memoir to tease out the problem Finlay didn’t want to go to.

- Some context: Delaporte was a student of Foucault. He was also close to Canguilhem. He went to the US for a while, and there are references to  Kuhn and some other American philosophers in another one of his pieces.

Delaporte, pp. 115-117 + pp. 139-176 (Ch. 7): 3/4 meeting

 

Questions: 

1) Let’s examine the five points addressing methodology on pp. 148-149. Can we make sure we understand each point? How might these points connect with our discussion of method from last week?

2) What does Delaporte mean by “actual practices” (also on pp.148-9)?

3) Given it was not a bacteriological concept, what was the operative conception of germ in 1832? The term “virus" is also mentioned in the text. How were viruses and germs distinguished?

4) Is the methodology outlined on pp.148-9 meant to be specific to the argument of the book or are the points more generalizable in scope? 

5) In reference to point 5 on method:  How is what Delaporte calls a “common matrix” similar to or different from what Foucault called epistemological-juridical processes? Can we unpack the relation between the two?  

6) A group member is interested in the idea of metaphorical space found on page 157. We are given examples such as the stench of dying and morbid (human) specimens which are growing plants. How is metaphor working here? Is it of methodological or theoretical significance?

7) Can we please map out the critique of Ackerknecht’s method? (begins on p. 145)

8) Let’s consider the relationship between practices and seeing elaborated on p. 170. Remembering what we know about seeing from Birth of the Clinic, what about seeing is specific to Delaporte here? What does Delaporte take from or do with BoC insights about seeing/vision and medical history?   

The discussion was structured around the five methodological points on pp. 148-9:

Point 1

- “Motive” is a useful term because it is not as laden with individual intention. But what is the word tactical doing here? Why use the word tactical? Why not just ask about “results”? 

- The pairing of a notion of the repressive hypothesis versus thinking about the production of new categories and concepts comes to mind here. This connects to the distinction between repressive and productivist. Recall Foucault in HS v.1 and his description of the emergent Bourgeoisie as trying to produce themselves. 

- When Delaporte notes that by looking at practices he is not concerned with the subjective intentions of actors, perhaps there is a bit of a productivist lens working which wonders what these intentions produce.

Point 2

- All his methodological points seem to be tethered to the time period he is investigating. This raises questions about the generalizability and/or universalizability of his theory. These are two different things. That is, there is a difference between (1) saying something is useful in other contexts and (2) making a metaphysics of something (e.g. saying these are the methods one needs when doing history).

- Class antagonism is a feature of the analysis but it is not the only explanatory variable. A kind of Foucaultian genealogy pulling from Marx?

 Point 3

- There is an interesting discussion on p.170 about two distinct ways of seeing. City versus rural. The city sees populations and the rural sees individuals. 

- But Delaporte doesn’t seem to want to assert any kind of a priori antagonisms. That is, do not go into looking at rural or urban medicine thinking form the start that there are substantial differences between them. Rather, observe the practical differences between them. 

- This is a methodological point about focusing on difference rather than antagonism when doing social analysis.

Point 4

- “objects defined by types of experience” seem different from practices. What is the relation between (1) objects modeled by experience and (2)concepts?

- Is there a kind of scientific holism operative here?

- It seems like all of these points are basically motivated by the claim that things we normally use to explain stuff in the history of disease should actually be avoided. Do not look at obvious political divisions, do not look personal intentions, do not look at popular accounts of  disease...There are other ways to talk about disease than these meta-categories (also these meta-categories themselves are perhaps what need explaining).

Point 5

- In terms of “this common matrix,” Delaporte seems to be accounting for these changes in a more Foucauldian style of “diagrams.” It is not all power; it is all not knowledge; it is both.

- Recalling the quote discussed last week (“Diseases do not exist, only practices”), what about viruses and instances of disease that are not as obviously socially constructed? There is much to say about this question. Ultimately, though, Delaporte is a hardcore social constructivist in Hackings’ sense.

- Practices are about identifying the epistemological factors necessary to write the kind of history that he (Delaporte) wants to write. In this way, what constitutes a practice is inseparable from the history that he is writing.

- There is much to say about the realism and non-realism debate! Regrettably we did not solve the debate during our session.