The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences

Michel Foucault

The book’s central claim is that all periods of history have possessed certain underlying conditions of truth that constituted what was acceptable as, for example, scientific discourse. Foucault argues that these conditions of discourse (“epistemes”) have changed over time from one period’s “episteme” to another. Foucault demonstrates the parallelisms in the development of three fields: linguistics, biology, and economics. Foucault then argues that shifts in epistemes were caused by changes in conceptions of language. The book was a huge success in his native France and established Michel Foucault as a major intellectual figure.

status	Lost
genre	Philosophy » General Philosophy
publisher	Random House, Inc
publish date	1970
popularity	checked out 3 time(s)