Foucault - Concepts

episteme  (Order of things c.f. wholism, system)


 Foucault argues that these conditions of discourse have changed over time, from one period's episteme to another. (Aside: Jean Piaget, in "Structuralism" (1968/1970, p. 132), compares Foucault's episteme to Thomas Kuhn's notion of a paradigm


 >Systems of thought and knowledge (epistemes or discursive formations, in Foucault's terminology) are governed by rules, beyond those of grammar and logic, that operate beneath the consciousness of individual subjects and define a system of conceptual possibilities that determines the boundaries of thought in a given domain and period.


Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy


Foucault maintains that the great “turn” in modern philosophy occurs when, with Kant (though no doubt he is merely an example of something much broader and deeper), it becomes possible to raise the question of whether ideas do in fact represent their objects and, if so, how (in virtue of what) they do so. In other words, ideas are no longer taken as the unproblematic vehicles of knowledge; it is now possible to think that knowledge might be (or have roots in) something other than representation. This did not mean that representation had nothing at all to do with knowledge. Perhaps some (or even all) knowledge still essentially involved ideas' representing objects. But, Foucault insists, the thought that was only now (with Kant) possible was that representation itself (and the ideas that represented) could have an origin in something else.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/foucault/




OT
We must remember this is written in 1970, during F's "political turn." He's backing away from archaeology, hence he will limit his claims about its scope. He lists 5 points.
    1) his object, the "soft sciences," had been neglected; they were error-ridden and evidence of mere "world views"; F's wager: what if they were rule-bound, even in their errors, as well as in their truths?
    2) here is a notorious backpedalling: F claims he is only doing a "regional study," yet he tosses around terms like "Classical age" or "Western episteme" quite freely. See 168 ("only one episteme for all knowledge"). he also mentions here his critique of history of ideas, which looks for "precursors": this is continuist history, of which Bachelard and Canguilhem had disabused F by insisting on a history of concepts, which distinguishes different experiences under superficially similar terminology.
    3) here F defines "archaeology" as different from history of science, which goes after scientific cness, and its negative unconscious, what eludes it. F goes after positive unconscious: underlying productive rules to "define objects, form concepts, build theories." Again, here we see Bachelard and Canguilhem. object = data produced by experiment (e.g., Galileo: same speed of different weights); concept = interpretation of that data that allows questions of how to explain it (Galileo: point mass: center of gravity); theory = attempt to explain the data (Descartes: vortices; Newton: gravity). thus concepts are "theoretically polyvalent."
    4) F asks that the book be read as an "open site", that is, as posing questions and problems rather than as setting forth a doctrine. F mentions three problems: change, cause, subject.
        a) change: F proposes three levels which must be respected:
            i) w/in individual science;
            ii) appearance of new fields of study;
            iii) overall shift in relations between sciences.
    b) causality: F brackets this question, claiming to have addressed it earlier in MC and BC.
    c) subject: F does not contest validity of study of scientific cness in intellectual biography, but doubts it's enough to account for the "immense density"of scientific discourse: he asks about the rules that determine the "situation, function, perceptive capacity, and practical possibilities" of individual scientists: what rules did they have to fulfill to be recognized at the time as scientific discourse of a particular type? Here F explicitly rejects phenomenology as theory of "transcendental consciousness" (central active point responsible for all meaning and historicity [as reactivation of sedimentation]) in favor of a "theory of discursive practice."
    5) F sharply rejects the term "structuralist", though he admits there may be "certain similarities." As we will see, ever since Classical times, the recognition of similarities is only the start of analysis that leads to knowledge; if left by itself, such recognition leads to error (this seems also part of modern episteme).

[have someone read the passage aloud]. Before the laughter dies down, F asks us to specify the otherness: what is the impossibility here, since each category by itself makes sense? In fact, F shows that there is no categorial miscegnation here; what is unthinkable is that they are all in the same series, on the same level, in an impossible "common ground." What Borges destroys is the "site," the "mute ground upon which it is possible for entities to be juxtaposed."

Here F touches on a profound philosophical point. The impossibility of Borges' encyclopedia is the impossibility for a certain thought to think difference in itself, with no relation to identity: in Hegelian terms, diversity with no relation to opposition, contradiction and finally ground. Deleuze and D/G will pursue just this difference: D in DiffRep; D/G in the heterogeneity of desiring-production, the weird collisions on the plane of consistency, "where a mustache collides with a differential equation..."

Rather than describing diversity positively, F concentrates on its disturbing of identity thought: he calls it the "heteroclite" and the "heterotopia," and connects it to aphasia: loss of what is common to place and name: Atopia. Shifting gears, F cites the place of China in W cultural imaginary: "the privileged site of space": the frozen culture, the place of tables (orders) different than ours.

F now moves to thematize the "pure experience of order." F begins with the table as a "grid of identities (Classical), similitudes (Ren), analogies (modern)": a coherence that is neither a priori and necessary, nor based on immediate perception. This coherence is that of "a system of elements": 1) definition of elements to be compared; 2) types of variation to be noticed; 3) thresholds of difference, which is needed for the simplest "order."

F now locates the "pure experience of order" (the il y a de l'ordre ) between the 1) "empirical" realm, the things exposed to the "already 'encoded' eye" (coded by the fundamental codes of a culture): e.g., the difference between human and animal, between animal, vegetable and mineral, between living and dead; 2) philosophical reflection on order: its origins, utility, laws, etc. The pure experience of order occupies the "middle region" between these two "extremes of thought," between perception (non-reflective use of ordering codes) and logic (reflection on order itself).

http://www.faculty.umb.edu/gary_zabel/Courses/Spinoza/Texts/Foucault%20-%20Order%20of%20Things%20I.htm

Habermas: Knowledge Types

1 Instrumental/Technical : Concerned with How? (Scientific-Technical)
c.f. Kuhn T , Maxwell N. (From Knowledge to Wisdom)
2. Practical/Social: Concerned with Why?:  extending Social Knowledge  uses quasi scientific techniques?
c.f Discourse Analysis?
3. Emancipatory:? Value to Humanity, Liberation (re Identification)
c.f Meta Knowledge




c.f Performativity (Butler J)


re Representional Knowledge  <> Performative

Ontology: Kant Kuhn

Kant’s picture vs. Kuhn’s picture

Kuhn’s picture is Kantian because the worldwe know and love is 

constitutedin part byhow we organize and conceptualize what 

happens. 

Kuhn’s picture is Kant modernized because where Kant has timeless, 

transcendental mental categories, Kuhn has changingtheories, that 

are themselves part ofthe empirical world. 

MIT lecture notes Reason Relativity and Reality

Kuhn: Science Paradigm

Kuhn turns attention from the “product” of science to the “process” 

of science. 

He seems to denythat 

(1) Rationality is the drivingforce behind scientific change. 

(2) New theories represent “the world” more accurately than old theories do.

Normal vs. revolutionaryscience 

Kuhn says there are two kinds of science: 

Normalscience is “researchfirmlybasedupon one or more 

scientific achievements, achievements that 

some particular scientific community 

acknowledges for a time as supplying 

the foundation for its future practice” (10). 

Revolutionaryscience occurs when normal science breaks down, 

because the exemplaryachievements of the 

past no longer give enoughguidance 

about what should happen next. 

Normal science andparadigms

A paradigm that is successful (for a time) has “attract[ed] an 

enduringgroupof adherents awayfrom competingmodes of 

scientific activity” and is “sufficientlyopen­ended to leave all sorts 

of problems for the . . . groupofpractitioners to solve” (10). 

Anomalies 

Anomalies are ways that “nature has somehow violated the 

paradigm­inducedexpectations that govern normal science” (53). 

Phlogiston theorysays burning“liberates” phlogiston that had 

been bonded with“ash.” But then whydo some things gain 

weight when burned? 

Roentgen’s discoveryof X­rays: “Though X­rays were not 

prohibited byestablishedtheory, they violated deeply 

entrenched expectations. . . Perhaps those rays . . . were 

implicatedin behavior previouslyexplained without reference 

to them” (59). 

Crisis

“[E]arlyattacks upon the resistant problem willhave followedthe 

paradigm rules quite closely. But withcontinuingresistance, more 

andmore of the attacks upon it will have involved some minor or 

not so minor articulations ofthe paradigm, no two ofthem quite 

alike, each partiallysuccessful, but none sufficientlyso to be 

acceptedas paradigm bythe group” (83). 

Example: competingsystems of epicycles. 

The breakdown ofa paradigm

“Through this proliferation of divergent articulations (more and 

more they willcome to be described as adhoc adjustments), the 

rules of normal science become increasinglyblurred. Thoughthere 

is still a paradigm, few practitioners prove to be entirelyagreed 

about what it is. Even formerlystandardsolutions of solved 

problems are calledin question” (83). 

Revolution

“The resultingtransition to a new paradigm is scientific revolution” 

(90), suchas the transition to special relativityin the earlypart of 

the twentiethcentury. 

The crisis is “terminated, not bydeliberation and interpretation, but 

bya relativelysudden and unstructured event like the gestalt switch 

[e.g., the change from seeingan illustration as a rabbit to seeingit as 

a duck]. Scientists then often speak ofthe ‘scales fallingfrom the 

eyes’ or ofthe ‘lightningflash’ that ‘inundates’ a previouslyobscure 

puzzle, enablingits components to be seen in a new waythat for the 

first time permits its solution” (122). 

Kuhn’s descriptive picture, in a nutshell

Normal science consists of solvingpuzzles that the dominant 

paradigm guarantees have answers, until an anomalyis discovered. 

Certain anomalies cause a crisis. Generally, crises bringabout the 

development and adoption ofa new paradigm. 

Note: this is all technical vocabulary—and the interpretation of 

much ofit is controversial! 

MIT lecture notes Reason Relativity and Reality

Limits of Positivism : Kuhn T

Kuhn has made several important contributions to our understanding of the progress of knowledge:

• Science undergoes periodic "paradigm shifts" instead of progressing in a linear and continuous way
• These paradigm shifts open up new approaches to understanding that scientists would never have considered valid before
• Scientists can never divorce their subjective perspective from their work; thus, our comprehension of science can never rely on full "objectivity" - we must account for subjective perspectives as well

defense Kuhn gives against the objection that his account of science from The Structure of Scientific Revolutions results in relativism can be found in an essay by Kuhn called "Objectivity, Value Judgment, and Theory Choice."[6] In this essay, he reiterates five criteria from the penultimate chapter of SSR that determine (or help determine, more properly) theory choice:

1. - Accurate - empirically adequate with experimentation and observation
2. - Consistent - internally consistent, but also externally consistent with other theories
3. - Broad Scope - a theory's consequences should extend beyond that which it was initially designed to explain
4. - Simple - the simplest explanation, principally similar to Occam's razor
5. - Fruitful - a theory should disclose new phenomena or new relationships among phenomena

He then goes on to show how, although these criteria admittedly determine theory choice, they are imprecise in practice and relative to individual scientists. According to Kuhn, "When scientists must choose between competing theories, two men fully committed to the same list of criteria for choice may nevertheless reach different conclusions."[6] For this reason, basically, the criteria still are not "objective" in the usual sense of the word because individual scientists reach different conclusions with the same criteria due to valuing one criterion over another or even adding additional criteria for selfish or other subjective reasons. Kuhn then goes on to say, "I am suggesting, of course, that the criteria of choice with which I began function not as rules, which determine choice, but as values, which influence it."[6] Because Kuhn utilizes the history of science in his account of science, his criteria or values for theory choice are often understood as descriptive normative rules (or more properly, values) of theory choice for the scientific community rather than prescriptive normative rules in the usual sense of the word "criteria," although there are many varied interpretations of Kuhn's account of science.

Eurocentrism

More recently, criticism from a different direction has been developed by Arun Bala in his study The Dialogue of Civilizations in the Birth of Modern Science(Palgrave Macmillan, 2006). He charges that The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is itself a profoundly Eurocentric work, although it is often perceived as opening the door to the multicultural turn in historical studies of science. Bala charges that Kuhn ignores the significant impact of Arabic and Chinese science when he writes:

Every civilization of which we have records has possessed a technology, an art, a religion, a political system, laws and so on. In many cases those facets of civilizations have been as developed as our own. But only the civilizations that descend from Hellenic Greece have possessed more than the most rudimentary science. The bulk of scientific knowledge is a product of Europe in the last four centuries. No other place and time has supported the very special communities from which scientific productivity comes.

—Kuhn, 1962, pp. 167-168

Bala argues that it is precisely Kuhn’s postmodern epistemological paradigm that obstructs recognition of non-Western influences on modern science. Bala argues that this leads Kuhn to treat different cultural scientific traditions as separate intellectual universes isolated from each other. Instead, Bala argues, we would have a different multicultural picture of science by including the contributions from Arabic, Chinese, ancient Egyptian and Indian traditions ofphilosophy, mathematics, astronomy and physics that went into shaping the birth of modern science.

Wikipedia