question:
where did all those guys go who were reading Order of Things? did they
create a separate thread somewhere?
ON a very general level, I'm not so interested in the earlier stuff
("archealogy of knoweldge etc) which is flawed by its tendency to remove
practices of knowledge production from other historical patterns of
development and winds up boardering on an intellectual historical approach.
However, at the moment I'm writing a history of science paper, and I'm
interested in contrasting Foucault's archealogy of 19th century life
sciences with other more economic- historicizing approaches.... that is,
efforts to consider the history of 19th century science as one feature of a
politically and economically unstable century.
I looked at Foucault's introduction to Georges Canguilhem's NOrmal and
Pathological, which talks about a "history of discontinuity" as competing
scientific paradigms qualify themselves only by establishing ruptures in
the narrative of progressive enlightenment. Am I alone in thinking that
this approach to the history of science ignores a range of other societal
processes of which it may be merely on of many functional elements, or,
conversely, it ignores those societal processes which might be determined
by scientific "ideologies"?
sam
PS: thanks to all who helped me with my Foucault and ethnography
bibliography. hopefully it will be good enough to post on this list.
where did all those guys go who were reading Order of Things? did they
create a separate thread somewhere?
ON a very general level, I'm not so interested in the earlier stuff
("archealogy of knoweldge etc) which is flawed by its tendency to remove
practices of knowledge production from other historical patterns of
development and winds up boardering on an intellectual historical approach.
However, at the moment I'm writing a history of science paper, and I'm
interested in contrasting Foucault's archealogy of 19th century life
sciences with other more economic- historicizing approaches.... that is,
efforts to consider the history of 19th century science as one feature of a
politically and economically unstable century.
I looked at Foucault's introduction to Georges Canguilhem's NOrmal and
Pathological, which talks about a "history of discontinuity" as competing
scientific paradigms qualify themselves only by establishing ruptures in
the narrative of progressive enlightenment. Am I alone in thinking that
this approach to the history of science ignores a range of other societal
processes of which it may be merely on of many functional elements, or,
conversely, it ignores those societal processes which might be determined
by scientific "ideologies"?
sam
PS: thanks to all who helped me with my Foucault and ethnography
bibliography. hopefully it will be good enough to post on this list.