This book builds on recent scholarship highlighted in the edited collections, Philosophie, histoire, biologie: mélanges offerts à Jean Gayon (Merlin & Huneman, 2018) and Knowledge of Life Today (Gayon & Petit 2018/2019). While honoring the career and the thought of Jean Gayon (1949-2018), this book showcases the continued relevance of Gayon’s interdisciplinary work and illustrates his central place in the community of historians and philosophers of the life sciences.

Chapters in this book address Jean Gayon’s intellectual trajectory from historical epistemology to the philosophy of biology, the nature and scope of his philosophical approach to the history of science, and his unique contributions to the history and epistemology of biological concepts and theories. Drawing on published and unpublished sources, the book explores some of Gayon’s most significant contributions to the philosophy, history, and social studies of biology.

Pierre-Olivier Méthot is Professor of Philosophy and History of Science at Laval University, Quebec City, and holds the Canada Research Chair in Medical Humanities and History of Biological Thought. His research is in the philosophy and history of medicine and biology and in the history of historical epistemology. He has translated and edited Mirko Grmek’s Pathological Realities: Essays on Disease, Experiments, and History (Fordham University Press, 2019) and is the editor of a new collection of essays on Georges Canguilhem, Vital Norms: Canguilhem’s The Normal and the Pathological in the Twenty-First Century (Hermann, 2020). He is also the coeditor of a recent volume in the philosophy of medicine on Le normal et le pathologique : des catégories périmées ? (Éditions Matériologiques, 2022). He currently serves as an Associate Editor of History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences. He is also a member of the Centre interuniversitaire de recherche sur la science et la technologie (Montréal) and the Centre nutrition, santé et société (Québec) as well as an associate researcher at the Institut des humanités en médecine (Lausanne).