The two texts by Georges Canguilhem compiled in this volume revolve around the history of two concepts that are also significant for the examination of contemporary life sciences: regulation and life. In the articles of the same name, which Canguilhem contributed to the Encyclopaedia Universalis in the mid-1970s, a genealogical interest in the origins and normative revaluations of these terms is combined with a philosophical stance that understands life as a value-generating process. Canguilhem's methodological originality is evident in the way he addresses the question of the intrinsic norms of the vital not as something detached from the history of concepts and science, but rather as something understood from its own dynamics. Thus, he dismisses a false dualism between philosophy and the history of science, bringing both disciplines to a point where they inform each other.