The Order of Things
An Archaeology of Human Sciences
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group · Print & ebook · March 29, 1994
With vast erudition, Foucault cuts across disciplines and reaches back into seventeenth century to show how classical systems of knowledge, which linked all of nature within a great chain of being and analogies between the stars in the heavens and the features in a human face, gave way to the modern sciences of biology, philology, and political economy.
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- Who it’s for
- Follow Foucault across the shift from classical systems of knowledge to modern sciences.
- Themes
- History of scientific knowledge, Changing systems of thought, The cultural construction of “man”
- Genres
- Post-Structuralism, What We Can Know, Social Theory
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With vast erudition, Foucault cuts across disciplines and reaches back into seventeenth century to show how classical systems of knowledge, which linked all of nature within a great chain of being and analogies between the stars in the heavens and the features in a human face, gave way to the modern sciences of biology, philology, and political economy.
Continue reading
The result is nothing less than an archaeology of the sciences that unearths old patterns of meaning and reveals the shocking arbitrariness of our received truths. In the work that established him as the most important French thinker since Sartre, Michel Foucault offers startling evidence that "man"—man as a subject of scientific knowledge—is at best a recent invention, the result of a fundamental mutation in our culture.
Shifting Ways of Knowing
Follow Foucault across the shift from classical systems of knowledge to modern sciences.
Come here for
- A layered account of how cultures organize knowledge
- Questions about the supposedly timeless truths we inherit
Expect
- Erudite connections across disciplines and centuries
- A contemplative challenge to the idea of “man” as scientific subject
Where it sits
| Post-Structuralism | 46% |
|---|---|
| What We Can Know | 41% |
| Social Theory | 27% |
Percentages are BookFrontier’s reading of the book.
Publisher categories
- Modern Philosophy
- Philosophers & Their Ideas
- Social Theory
- Authors
- Michel Foucault
- Publisher
- Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
- Published
- March 29, 1994
- Format
- Print & ebook
- Theme
- History of scientific knowledge · Changing systems of thought · The cultural construction of “man”
- Reading lane
- Modern Philosophy