Michel Foucault's Archaeology of Scientific Reason
Science and the History of Reason

An introduction to the critical interpretation of the work of Michael Foucault.

Gary Gutting (Author)

9780521366984, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 29 September 1989

324 pages
21.6 x 14 x 1.8 cm, 0.41 kg

"...Gary Gutting is the most likely to bring to historians of science a Foucault they will find comprehensible, if not uniformly congenial." Isis

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.

Preface
Introduction
1. Bachelard and Canguilhem
2. Madness and mental illness
3. Clinical medicine
4. The order of things: I. from resemblance to representation
5. The order of things: II. the rise and fall of man
6. The archaeology of knowledge
7. Reason and philosophy
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Western philosophy, from c 1900 - [HPCF]