This paper defends Michel Foucault’s notion of archaeology of knowledge against the influential and putatively devastating criticism by Dreyfus and Rabinow that Foucault’s archaeological project is based on an incoherent conception of the rules of the discursive practices it purports to study. I argue first that Foucault’s considered view of these rules as simultaneously implicit and historically efficacious corresponds to a general requirement for the normative structure of a discursive practice. Then I argue that Foucault is entitled to that (...) view despite the charges to the contrary by Dreyfus and Rabinow. I also explain in detail how the argument by Dreyfus and Rabinow arises from a misunderstanding of Foucault’s archaeological project as transcendental inquiry, while archaeology of knowledge is, in fact, a diagnostic project. The result is a novel understanding of the notion of archaeology of knowledge that enables a reassessment of Foucault’s philosophical work in connection with current debates regarding the relationship between reflection and practice in the structure of thought. (shrink)

This book is an important introduction to the critical interpretation of the work of the major French thinker Michel Foucault. Through comprehensive and detailed analyses of such important texts as The History of Madness in the Age of Reason, The Birth of the Clinic, The Order of Things, and The Archaeology of Knowledge, Professor Gutting provides a lucid exposition of Foucault's 'archaeological' approach to the history of thought - a method for uncovering the 'unconscious' structures that set boundaries on (...) the thinking of a given epoch. The book also casts Foucault in a new light, relating his work to two major but neglected influences: Gaston Bachelard's philosophy of science and Georges Canguilhem's history of science. This perspective yields a new and valuable understanding of science, balancing and complementing the more common view that he was primarily a social critic and theorist. An excellent guide for those first approaching Foucault's work, the book will also be a challenging interpretation and evaluation for those already familiar with his writings. (shrink)

An Archaeology of Educational Evaluation: Epistemological Spaces and Political Paradoxes outlines the epistemology of the theories and models that are currently employed to evaluate educational systems, education policy, educational professionals and students learning. It discusses how those theories and models find their epistemological conditions of possibility in a specific set of conceptual transferences from mathematics and statistics, political economy, biology and the study of language. The book critically engages with the epistemic dimension of contemporary educational evaluation and is of theoretical (...) and methodological interest. It uses Foucauldian archaeology as a problematizing method of inquiry within the wider framework of governmentality studies. It goes beyond a mere critique of the contemporary obsession for evaluation and attempts to replace it with the opening of a free space where the search for a mode of being, acting and thinking in education is not over-determined by the tyranny of improvement. This book will appeal to academics, researchers and post-graduate students in the fields of educational philosophy, education policy and social science. (shrink)

A critically acute summary of the main theories about the 'State', from Greek antiquity to the present. The authors highlight the importance of archaeology to our knowledge of how the first States were formed and how they functioned. They also ask what conditions of social production led to the State arising as the self-interested regulator of social relationships.

In this article, I argue for historical epistemology as a methodology for critical disability studies by examining Foucault’s archaeology of cure in History of Madness. Although the moral, medical, and social models of disability frame disability history as an advancement upon moral and medical authority and a replacement of it by sociopolitical knowledge, I argue that the more comprehensive frame in which these models circulate—the “models framework”—requires the more nuanced approach that historical epistemology offers. In particular, the models framework (...) requires greater use of epistemology as an analytical tool for understanding the historical construction of disability. Thus, I turn to Foucault’s History of Madness in order to both excavate one particular archaeological strand in the text—the archaeology of cure—and to demonstrate how this narrative disrupts some of the key assumptions of the models framework, challenging DS to consider the epistemological force of non-medical fields of knowledge for framing disability and procedures for its cure and elimination. I conclude by arguing that DS must develop historical epistemological methodologies that are sensitive to the complex overlays of moral, medical, and social knowledge, as well as attend to the social construction of scientific and biomedical knowledge itself. (shrink)

The article presents an epistemological and partially methodological analysis of cognitive science as a scientific discipline, created as a result of the transformations that took place in the philosophical and psychological concepts of the mind and cognition, which were carried out with the aid of tools and methods of modelling as well as through simulating human cognitive processes and consciousness. In order to describe this interdisciplinary science, and its positions, as well as the stages and directions of its development, it (...) makes use of the epistemological model formulated by Michel Foucault, in which he draws attention to social, ideological and technological conditions of scientific knowledge. The opinions of the leading creators and critics of cognitive science, such as George A. Miller, Howard Gardner, Margaret Boden and José Luis Bermúdez are referenced to and analyzed with the use of this model. The article shows the epistemologically and methodologically divergent status of cognitive science, as well as its cognitive and institutional conditions and challenges, which stand before it after half a century of intensive development. (shrink)

Media archaeology is not just a methodological claim but first of all a research practice of media culture. The case study described in this text is meant to demonstrate that archaeoacoustics can be applied to cultural aesthetics as well. The research expedition of April 2004 exploring the sonosphere of the Li Galli islands facing the Italian Amalfi coast measured the sonosphere of the acoustic theatre where the Homeric Sirens are supposed to have sung, resulting in surprising findings about the acoustic (...) real lurking behind the myth. The relation between media archaeology and aesthetics is a dialectic one: Only through the application of most positivistic acoustic measurement technologies can new evidence against the philological tradition be gained, while at the same time these data only make aesthetic sense when coupled with cultural knowledge. (shrink)

In the United Kingdom, the concept of mentorship has been central to nurse education since the 1980s. Mentorship has become the definitive term used to denote the supervisory relationship of the student nurse with a qualified nurse who monitors and evaluates their skill development in the clinical area. The background against which the concept was established is examined through a consideration of the concepts of archaeology of knowledge and genealogy of knowledge as conceptualised by Michel Foucault. In particular, (...) the Foucauldian concepts of power, discourses and the gaze are used to direct and shape the analysis. The paper explores the interplay of managerial dominance and professionalism and the ways in which mentorship can be used as a means of control and surveillance. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: References.

It is widely thought that causal cognition underpins technical reasoning. Here we suggest that understanding causal cognition as a thinking system that includes theory of mind (i.e., social cognition) can be a productive theoretical tool for the field of evolutionary cognitive archaeology. With this contribution, we expand on an earlier model that distinguishes seven grades of causal cognition, explicitly presenting it together with a new analysis of the theory of mind involved in the different grades. We then suggest how such (...) thinking may manifest in the archaeological or stone tool record and techno-behaviors of the last three million years or so. Our thesis is threefold: (a) theory of mind is an integral element of causal cognition; (b) generally speaking, the more advanced causal cognition is, the more it is dependent on theory of mind; and (c) the evolution of causal cognition depends more and more on mental representations of hidden variables. Ultimately, the final or seventh grade of causal cognition allows us to reason from a network of hidden variables that, amongst other things, enables the learning, manufacture, and use of complex technological systems. It also facilitates the seamless mapping of knowledge between personal (egocentric), physical, and social networks that allows for newly devised and innovative technical and social outcomes. (shrink)

Puts The Archaeology of Knowledge at the heart of Foucault's thoughtDavid Webb reveals the extent to which Foucault's approach to language in The Archaeology of Knowledge was influenced by the mathematical sciences, adopting a mode of thought indebted to thinkers in the scientific and epistemological traditions. By aligning his thought with the challenge to Kantian philosophy from mathematics and science in the late-19th and early-20th centuries, he shows how Foucault established his own perspective on the future of critical (...) philosophy. (shrink)

Foucault's archaeological method is contrasted with that of a humanist history. The contrast highlights strengths and weaknesses found in Foucault's approach. It is argued that he is right to reject a concept of objective knowledge based on pure facts and pure reason; and that he is right to reject the idea of the autonomous individual uninfluenced by the social context; but that he is wrong to extend these rejections to an utter repudiation of respectively our having reasonable knowledge (...) of an external reality and our being creative and rational agents. A recognition of these strengths and weaknesses is used as a basis for the development of an account of the human sciences that is an alternative to that of Foucault's The Order of Things. This alternative history shows his proclamation of the death of Man to be mistaken. (shrink)

As study of knowledge, epistemology attempts at identifying its necessary and sufficient conditions and defining its sources, structure and limits. From this pointof view, until present, there are no applied approaches to the Romanian archaeology. Consequently, my present paper presents an attempt to explore the structural characteristics of the knowledge creation process through the analysis of the results of a series of interviews conducted on Romanian archaeologists. The interviews followed a qualitative approach built upon a semi-structured frame. Apparent (...) data saturation was reached after four interviews within initial target group (senior researchers with institutional authority). Under these conditions a decision was made to continue the interviews within a secondary control group (young doctoral or post-doc researchers guided by members of the initial target group) in order to both verify the observed data saturation and to assess the impact of the attitude of senior researchers towards scientific research on the younger generation. The preliminary results allow to assert that Romanian archaeology is still caught in a highly conservative and intradisciplinarian manner of knowledge production with a negative effect on both new knowledgeproduction and future specialists’ education. (shrink)

In 1746 the French philosophe Condillac published his Essay on the Origin of Human Knowledge , one of many attempts during the century to determine how we organize and validate ideas as knowledge. In investigating language, especially written language, he found not only the seriousness he sought but also a great deal of frivolity whose relation to the sober business of philosophy had to be addressed somehow. If the mind truly reflects the world, and language reflects the mind, (...) why is there so much error and nonsense? Whence the distortions? How can they be remedied? In The Archeology of the Frivolous , Jacques Derrida recoups Condillac's enterprise, showing how it anticipated--consciously or not--many of the issues that have since stymied epistemology and linguistic philosophy. If anyone doubts that deconstruction can be a powerful analytic method, try this. (shrink)

We cannot escape Indiana Jones! (Not that we would want to, of course.) Harrison Ford deserves credit for the character's popularity. His ability to subtly play up Indy's foibles while playing down the character's heroism, makes Indiana Jones relatable. Of course, Lucas and the screenwriters are also responsible, as they magnificently depict Indy battling antagonists seeking to possess mystical objects for world domination. But Indy is no mere action hero. He also struggles with unrequited love that lingers for decades, an (...) estrangement from his over-bearing father that lasts just as long, and a life-long obsession with regaining an important object unfairly taken from him. As we know, Indy doesn't always choose wisely, and if the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles are to be trusted, he made many missteps in his youth on the way to becoming the hero we know and love. Indy loses a fight as often as he wins, and when he wins, he doesn't always fight fairly. In fact, he stumbles so often, one might wonder why he persists decade after decade toward his goals. He's not getting any younger. What's the point? And, as he inexplicably trudges on, he-in the four films and various graphic novels-has many alleged encounters with the supernatural. He's not a religious person (at all), so what should he make of those? Should he take the leap of faith and become a believer? While we often see him conducting his highly unconventional fieldwork, spending an unusual amount of time in caves, he cannot completely ignore his "day job" teaching undergraduates and aiding their pursuit of knowledge. But why should archaeologists strive to put artifacts in a museum, or search for "fact," but not "truth" (and who is Dr. Tyree, anyway)? The Indiana Jones character is expressive of the human condition, vividly illuminating our struggles and issues on the big screen. True, we don't have John Williams's orchestra filling us with pride when we manage to do the right thing or play the part of the hero. Still, no one would blame you if you imagined Indy's theme blaring in the background while rising to meet a challenge! (shrink)

Like any science, archaeology relies on trust between actors involved in the production of knowledge. In the early history of archaeology, this epistemic trust was complicated by histories of Orientalism in the Middle East and colonialism more broadly. The racial and power dynamics underpinning 19th- and early 20th-century archaeology precluded the possibility of interpersonal moral trust between foreign archaeologists and locally hired labourers. In light of this, archaeologists created systems of reward, punishment, and surveillance to ensure the honest behaviour (...) of site workers. They thus invented a set of structural conditions that produced sufficient epistemic trust for archaeological research to proceed—a system that continues to shape archaeology to the present day. (shrink)

'A breath-taking panorama.' The Sunday Times 'Those seeking a grand overview of science's greatest hits over the past century will find it here.' The Washington Post 'Convincing... A provocative history probes the connections that are helping to unify scientific disciplines.... Watson examines an impressive array of connections... Whether you identify as a biologist, an astrophysicist, or a mathematician, one thing's for certain: We're all ultimately working with the same fabric.' Science 'Anyone interested in science will enjoy this fascinating, fast-paced, intellectual (...) journey through the history of scientific ideas. Watson masterfully weaves the concept of convergence through covering an astonishing breadth of scientific and cultural domains.' Mario Livio, astrophysicist, author of Brilliant Blunders and Why? Convergence is a history of modern science with an original and significant twist. Various scientific disciplines, despite their very different beginnings, and disparate areas of interest have been coming together over the past 150 years, converging and coalescing, to identify one extraordinary master narrative, one overwhelming interlocking coherent story: the history of the universe. Intimate connections between physics and chemistry have been revealed as have the links between quantum chemistry and molecular biology. Astronomy has been augmented by particle physics, psychology has been increasingly aligned with physics, with chemistry and even with economics. Genetics has been harmonised with linguistics, botany with archaeology, climatology with myth. This is a simple insight but one with profound consequences. Convergence is, as Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg has put it, 'The deepest thing about the universe.' This book does not, however, tell the story by beginning at the beginning and ending at the end. It is much more revealing, more convincing, and altogether more thrilling to tell the story as it emerged, as it began to fall into place, piece by piece, converging tentatively at first, but then with increasing speed, vigour and confidence. The overlaps and interdependence of the sciences, the emerging orderthat they are gradually uncovering, is without question the most enthralling aspect of twenty-first-century science. (shrink)

What is archaeology? A research field dealing with monuments? A science? A branch of philosophy? Dzbyński suggests the simple but thoughtful equation: Archaeology = History = Knowledge. This book consists of 8 chapters presenting a collection of characteristic philosophical attitudes important for archaeology. It discusses the historicity of archaeological sources, the source of the algorithmic approach in archaeological reasoning, and the accuracy of logical and irrational thinking. In general, this book is concerned with the history of archaeologists' search for (...) a suitable methodology. All these issues are discussed in relation to two main intellectual trends of archaeology to the present day: processual and post-processual archaeology. Processualism introduced and developed the idea of algorithmic and universal reasoning in archaeology, while post-processualism focused attention on the individual value of a monument and the archaeologist himself. These are still two foundations on which the present knowledge of the past is based, and thus their defining role cannot be overestimated. An additional layer of narrative, visible right from the beginning of the book, is the gradual discovery of the relationship between archaeology and popular culture, especially film and literature. Its aim is both illustration and explanation. It is intended that the reader receives not only information and knowledge, but also a deeper emotional reference which is connected with the reception of works of art. (shrink)

Entangled by modernism -- Archaeological use of theories -- Object science -- Group formation, dissent, and change -- A method for analyzing cultural action -- Fragmenting the Bronze Age -- Contestation in the Hopewell.

How can we know what really happened in the distant past in places like ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Palestine, Greece, and Rome, especially since the evidence is fragmentary and ancient cultures are so different from our own frame of reference? Scholars may examine historical documents and archaeological artifacts, and then make reasonable inferences. But in the final analysis there can be no absolute certainty about events far removed from present reality, and the past must be reconstructed by means of hypotheses that (...) coherently organize all available data. Knowledge claims about the past, and about many areas of science as well, rest on a network of interdependence between theory and evidence, and between interpretation and data. In this fascinating study of epistemology, philosopher Peter Kosso argues for a coherence model of epistemic justification. In the first part, the conceptual argument, he proposes a model of knowledge of the past. In the second part he presents three detailed case studies drawn from the work of historians and archaeologists. These studies are used to support and fine-tune the model outlined in the first part. Kosso presents many insights into the limits of knowledge and our ability to know the mental as well as the physical past. Historians, archaeologists, philosophers, and students interested in epistemology will find this accessible work to be of great value. (shrink)

Experimental archaeology is often understood both as testing hypotheses about processes shaping the archaeological record and as generating tacit knowledge. Considering lithic technologies, I examine the relationship between these conceptions. Experimental archaeology is usefully understood via “maker’s knowledge”: archaeological experiments generate embodied know-how enabling archaeological hypotheses to be grasped and challenged, and further, well-positioning archaeologists to generate integrated interpretations. Finally, experimental archaeology involves “material speculation”: the constraints and affordances of archaeologists and their materials shape productive exploration of the (...) capacities of objects and human skill in ways relevant to archaeological questions. (shrink)

In memoriam Bill ReadingsIt is generally agreed that the modern university originated in early 19th-century Prussia, under the inspiration of Wilhelm von Humboldt. Thus it was stamped with the seal of idealism and of German Romanticism. Today the entrepreneurial model that seems to be imposing itself on universities around the globe confounds this former ideal, particularly by requiring academia to report on its economically quantifiable "impact." But an impact on what, exactly? On knowledge in general? On society at large? (...) On industry? Is it a question of developing the critical acumen of each person in a democratic universe in which the citizen must be formed as well as informed? Or is it a question of favoring .. (shrink)

The article explores and formulates the applied functions of the archive. In addition to its function as a resource for understanding the past, the archive has important applied functions in the present. The task of defining the functions of the archive also requires defining the concept of the archive. For this aim, the concept of “archive” in the works of philosophers Alyda Assman, Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida, as well as Ukrainian researchers – Vitaly Turenko, Volodymyr Prykhodko, Serhii Rudenko, Maryna (...) Palienko, was considered and studied. These philosophers have found a methodological connection with regard to the etymology of the ancient Greek term “Αρχη”. Detailed studies of the semantics of the concept of Αρχη allow to investigate the understanding of the origin of the functions of the archive. The French philosopher Michel Foucault considered the concept of the archive as a component of his ontological system, “Archaeology of Knowledge”, which explains the functioning of human knowledge, memory and power. So, Foucault explained the epistemological function of the archive. Another French philosopher, Jacques Derrida, focuses on the human desire to take hold of the past, which he calls “archive fever,” and develops this concept in his famous work “Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression”. Among the general concepts of the archive, Derrida focuses on the main and important political function of the archive, the embodiment of the archive in the body. The way the archive functioning is an important factor in the political regime, but at the same time it ensures the successful operation of the education system. In its various forms, the archive transmits to posterity information that appears as a warning and instruction based on the experience of the past. Based on these conditions, the archive acquires an important educational function in the modern world and forms the key ideological conditions for the functioning of society. (shrink)

Counselor educators can utilize the ideas of philosopher Michel Foucault in preparing preservice school counselors for their work with K?12 students in public schools. The Foucaultian ideas of governmentality, technologies of domination, received truths, power/knowledge, discontinuity, and archaeology can contribute to students' understanding of the hidden power relations in the assumptions and techniques of counseling. Because most students enter counseling programs without a background in Foucault, it falls to counselor educators to incorporate his ideas into the curriculum. This article (...) describes areas in which Foucaultian ideas can be introduced into the counseling curriculum, in particular, in the practicum courses. (shrink)

The paper aims at reconsidering the problem of existence and recognition of the past in modernistic philosophy. For Henri Bergson, duration is one of the most enigmatic constituents of human existence. In 1896, when he tackled the question of memory, Bergson reached for the basic philosophical questions posed at the very beginning of the Early Greek thought, then asked by Berkeley’s radical empiricism (so called Berkeley’s razor) and subsequently by Kantian Transcendentalism. All these questions have led to the existential analysis (...) of duration which allows for the new foundation of the idea of remembrance and finally the phenomenon of memory. Bergson has treated memory as one of the most important manifestations of vital force (fr. élan vital). The paper culminates with the analysis of artefact as the foundation of the Archaeology of Knowledge. Polish bergsonism and its references to the issue of memory were presented in a poem written by Bolesław Leśmian. (shrink)

Knowledge and Civilization advances detailed criticism of philosophy's usual approach to knowledge and describes a redirection, away from textbook problems of epistemology, toward an ecological philosophy of technology and civilization. Rejecting theories that confine knowledge to language or discourse, Allen situates knowledge in the greater field of artifacts, technical performance, and human evolution. His wide ranging considerations draw on ideas from evolutionary biology, archaeology, anthropology, and the history of cities, art, and technology.

In The Order of Things, Michel Foucault describes the task of the philosophical archaeologist: to study the incommensurable breaks and disruptions in a given history of systems of thought. Akin to the distinctive layers of soil one finds digging into the earth, Foucault analyzes what he calls an episteme: a distinctive cultural and intellectual order that shapes the character and limits of knowledge production and the parameters of experience as such.1 Where archaeology sees radical breaks between epistemes, Foucault's later (...) genealogical method goes to work upon these breaks, engaging them in their contingencies, decentering and denaturalizing those things—madness, criminality, sexuality—that we take to be... (shrink)

Usual narratives among prehistoric archaeologists consider typological approaches as part of a past and outdated episode in the history of research, subsequently replaced by technological, functional, chemical, and cognitive approaches. From a historical and conceptual perspective, this paper addresses several limits of these narratives, which (1) assume a linear, exclusive, and additive conception of scientific change, neglecting the persistence of typological problems; (2) reduce collective developments to personal work (e.g. the “Bordes’” and “Laplace’s” methods in France); and (3) presuppose the (...) coherence and identity of these “methods” over time. It explores the case of the “Structural and analytical typology” method, developed in France, Spain, and Italy from the 1950s to the 2000s by Georges Laplace and his collaborators for lithic implements. This paper (1) provides a detailed historical account of the evolving content of this collective endeavour over five decades; (2) it addresses the epistemological question of what makes the identity and unity of a scientific method, demonstrating that the core component of the “analytical typology” lies in its particular way to represent real-world phenomena through its notation system; and (3) it reveals how this little known but significant episode of advances in the methods and theory of archaeology, contemporary but independent of the “New Archaeology” trend in English-speaking archaeology, was instrumental in the continuation of evolutionary perspectives in France and in the development of quantitative and formal methods in archaeology in southwestern Europe, foreseeing crucial knowledge representation issues raised today by digital methods in archaeology and data curation. (shrink)

This paper outlines an approach for comparing Edmund Husserl’s late historical-teleological reflections in the Crisis of the European Sciences with Michel Foucault’s archaeology of discursive formations in his Archaeology of Knowledge, with a particular emphasis on the notion of an “historical apriori.” The argument is that each conception of historical reflection complements the other by opening up a depth dimension that moves beyond the traditional limits of the philosophy of history. In Husserl, the concept of the lifeworld fixes the (...) parameters of a “deep history” as the horizon of anonymous subjective comportment, while in Foucault the concept of the archive delimits an alternative deep history of the anonymous production of discursive formations. Together, Husserl and Foucault represent two important moments of the radicalization of the theme of history in twentieth century philosophy, one seeking to extend the limits of transcendental philosophy, the other contesting the domain of the transcendental altogether. (shrink)

Finding Time for the Old Stone Age explores a century of colourful debate over the age of our earliest ancestors. In the mid nineteenth century curious stone implements were found alongside the bones of extinct animals. Humans were evidently more ancient than had been supposed - but just how old were they? There were several clocks for Stone-Age time, and it would prove difficult to synchronize them. Conflicting timescales were drawn from the fields of geology, palaeontology, anthropology, and archaeology. Anne (...) O'Connor draws on a wealth of lively, personal correspondence to explain the nature of these arguments. The trail leads from Britain to Continental Europe, Africa, and Asia, and extends beyond the world of professors, museum keepers, and officers of the Geological Survey: wine sellers, diamond merchants, papermakers, and clerks also proposed timescales for the Palaeolithic. This book brings their stories to light for the first time - stories that offer an intriguing insight into how knowledge was built up about the ancient British past. (shrink)

Underlying this article is the conviction that social scientists typically take on board a too restrictive concept of knowledge acquisition. The paper propounds a new concept of knowledge acquisition, one which is self-referential (i.e. which affects one's presuppositions) and which draws upon the unfamiliar to reveal and undercut the familiar. The aim of this paper is twofold. First, it is to show that this concept of knowledge acqui sition is already anticipated by Foucault, that it is a (...) major concern of his, and that it is a common thread throughout his work. Consequently, a new light can be thrown on both Foucault's archaeology and his genealogy: both are directed towards a self-referential form of knowledge, and as such the two periods are shown to have more in common than conventionally assumed. Second (and conversely), the aim of the paper is to elucidate this self-referential type of knowledge by showing how it is used by Foucault. Key Words: archaeology • Foucault • genealogy • history • methodology • Nietzsche • past • philosophy of social sciences • present • structuralism. (shrink)

This article provides a substantive discussion of the relevance of the history of archeology to the history of science. At the same time, the article introduces the papers contained in this special issue as exemplars of this relevance. To make its case, the article moves through various themes in the history of archeology that overlap with key issues in the history of science. The article discusses the role and tension of regimes of science in antiquarian and archeological practices, (...) and also considers issues of scale and place, particularly in relation to the field. Additionally, the piece attends to issues of professionalization and the constitution of an archeological public, at the same time as discussing issues of empire, colonialism, and the circulation of knowledge. Meanwhile, enriching discussions within and beyond the history of science, the article discusses the history of archeology and its relationship with museums, collecting, and material culture and materiality. Finally, the piece discusses the relationship of the history of archeology with wider discussions about scientific ethics. In conclusion, the article questions whether we should speak of ‘the history of archeology’ at all. (shrink)

List of Illustrations Introduction 1 The Didactic and the Elegant: Some Thoughts on Scientific and Technological Illustrations in the Middle Ages and Renaissance 3 2 Temples of the Body and Temples of the Cosmos: Vision and Visualization in the Vesalian and Copernican Revolutions 40 3 Descartes’s Scientific Illustrations and ’la grande mecanique de la nature’ 86 4 Illustrating Chemistry 135 5 Representations of the Natural System in the Nineteenth Century 164 6 Visual Representation in Archaeology: Depicting the Missing-Link in Human (...) Origins 184 7 Towards an Epistemology of Scientific Illustration 215 8 Illustration and Inference 250 9 Visual Models and Scientific Judgment 269 10 Are Pictures Really Necessary? The Case of Sewall Wright’s ’Adaptive Landscapes’ 303 Bibliography 339 Notes on Contributors 373 Index 377. (shrink)

The existence of a partnership between knowledge and armies - and, connected with it, between knowledge and wars, conquests, and the entire apparatus of empires - has been affirmed since the time of Xenophon. The troops clear a path that the scholars follow, and an increase of knowledge is a side effect of the incursion. The great linguistic discoveries of the eighteenth century - that is, the Zend and Sanskrit languages - would have been impossible without the (...) expansion of the French and British empires into Asia; and Bonaparte, in his foray into Egypt, was accompanied by a large contingent of scholars. After the uniformed troops march in, official scholarly missions follow. For example, in 1849, Italian archives were opened to French scholars as a result of the French occupation of Rome. Renan's access to Italian libraries, monasteries, and manuscript collections was a result of the presence of French troops in Italy. This was a period of preliminary analyses, of the publication of catalogues, and of amazement at the wealth of available documents. In brief, it was a period of successful compilation, of rapid and exhilarating erudition. It was a time when everything rang true. In 1860, it was once more Renan who set off, on the margins of the French intervention in Syria and Lebanon, in search of epigraphical materials. In fact, all of nineteenth-century French, German, and English archaeology follows in the wake of the colonial expansion of the various empires. (shrink)

Michel Foucault's The Archaeology of Knowledge was published in March 1969; Discipline and Punish in February 1975. Although only six years apart, the difference in tone is stark: the former is a methodological treatise, the latter a call to arms. What accounts for the radical shift in Foucault's approach? Foucault's time in Tunisia had been a political awakening for him, and he returned to a France much changed by the turmoil of 1968. He taught at the experimental University of (...) Vincennes and then moved to a prestigious position at the Collège de France. He quickly became involved in activist work concerning prisons and health issues such as abortion rights, and in his seminars he built research teams to conduct collaborative work, often around issues related to his lectures and activism. Foucault: The Birth of Power makes use of a range of archival material, including newly available documents at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, to provide a detailed intellectual history of Foucault as writer, researcher, lecturer and activist. Through a careful reconstruction of Foucault's work and preoccupations, Elden shows that, while Discipline and Punish may be the major published output of this period, it rests on a much wider range of concerns and projects. (shrink)

The philosophical works of Michel Foucault have profoundly influenced many disciplines, but his influence on theology has seldom been considered. Archives and the Event of God unravels the effects that Foucault's Archaeology of Knowledge and Discipline and Punish have had on the study of theology and religion.

Michel Foucault's historical and philosophical investigations have gone through many phases: the archaeological, the genealogical, and the ethical among them. What remains constant, however, is the question that motivates them: who are we? Todd May follows Foucault's itinerary from his early history of madness to his posthumously published College de France lectures and shows how the question of who we are shifts and changes but remains constantly at or just below the surface of his writings. By approaching Foucault's work in (...) this way, May is able to offer readers an engaging and illuminating way to understand Foucault. Each of Foucault's key works - "Madness and Civilization," "The Archaeology of Knowledge," "The Order of Things," "Discipline and Punish" and the multi-volume "History of Sexuality" - are examined in detail and situated in an historical context that makes effective use of comparisons with other thinkers such as Freud, Nietzsche and Sartre. Throughout this book May strikes a balance between sympathetic presentation and criticism of Foucault's ideas and in so doing exposes Foucault's contributions of lasting value. "The Philosophy of Foucault" is an accessible and stimulating introduction to one of the most popular and influential thinkers of recent years and will be welcomed by students studying Foucault as part of politics, sociology, history and philosophy courses. (shrink)

When one defines "order" as a sorting of priorities, it becomes beautifully clear as to what Foucault is doing here. With virtuoso showmanship, he weaves an intensely complex history of thought. He dips into literature, art, economics and even biology in The Order of Things, possibly one of the most significant, yet most overlooked, works of the twentieth century. Eclipsed by his later work on power and discourse, nonetheless it was The Order of Things that established Foucault's reputation as an (...) intellectual giant. Pirouetting around the outer edge of language, Foucault unsettles the surface of literary writing. In describing the limitations of our usual taxonomies, he opens the door onto a whole new system of thought, one ripe with what he calls "exotic charm". Intellectual pyrotechnics from the master of critical thinking, this book is crucial reading for those who wish to gain insight into that odd beast called Postmodernism, and a must for any fan of Foucault. (shrink)

Existing accounts of Foucault’s archaeological methodology have not (a) contextualized the concept properly within the intellectual field of its emergence and (b) explained why it is called ‘archaeology’ and not simply ‘history’. Foucault contributed to the field of ‘history of systems of thought’ in France around 1960 by broadening its scope from the study of scientific and philosophical systems into systems of ‘knowledge’ in a wider sense. For Foucault, the term ‘archaeology’ provided a response to new methodological questions arising (...) from this initiative. Archaeological methodology had already been developed into a distinct comparative approach for the study of linguistic and cultural systems, notably by Dumézil. Foucault redevised archaeological methodology for the post-Hegelian tradition of studying ‘problems’ prevalent in the history of systems of thought. The article thus furnishes the groundwork for a ‘sociological archaeology’ or ‘problem analysis’ that is not particularly dependent on Foucault as a social theorist of power. (shrink)

When radiocarbon dating techniques were applied to archaeological material in the 1950s they were hailed as a revolution. At last archaeologists could construct absolute chronologies anchored in temporal data backed by immutable laws of physics. This would make it possible to mobilize archaeological data across regions and time-periods on a global scale, rendering obsolete the local and relative chronologies on which archaeologists had long relied. As profound as the impact of 14C dating has been, it has had a long and (...) tortuous history now described as proceeding through three revolutions, each of which addresses distinct challenges of capturing, processing and packaging radiogenic data for use in resolving chronological puzzles with which archaeologists has long wrestled. In practice, mobilizing radiogenic data for archaeological use is a hard-won achievement; it involves multiple transformations that, at each step of the way, depend upon a diverse array of technical expertise and background knowledge. I focus on strategies of triangulation and traceability that establish the integrity of these data and their relevance as anchors for evidential reasoning in archaeology. (shrink)