Archaeology of Knowledge and Other Histories of Science

Abstract

Discursive formations as series of series of objects, enunciative modalities, concepts, as well as their conditions, are thus themselves just one series, one level to be described by histories of science. Not only is this claim strongly suggested by my interpretation above, but it is also stated straightforwardly by Foucault himself. In fact, he distinguishes between three types of histories of science, according to the level or series of events they are primarily concerned with. Thus the history of mathematics writes the history of the series of formal theories, where typically later theories are generalizations of earlier ones (AK 189). Foucault does not mention examples of such histories, but one might mention the work of Jean Cavailles as an outstanding example of this type of historiography. A second way of writing the history of science is the study of the emergence of problematics or paradigms. As Foucault sees it, “G. Bachelard and G. Canguilhem have provided models of this kind of history” (AK 190). Interestingly enoughThe Archaeology of Knowledgeclaims that this kind of history can only be written by taking a normative perspective, that is by judging the past of science in terms of its present (“this description takes as its norm the fully constituted science” (AK 190)). Finally, the description of the emergence of a discursive formation as well as its acquiring of epistemological principles, Foucault reserves for the archaeology of knowledge (AK 191).