more on this theme | more from this thinker
Full Idea
How is it that at certain moments and in certain orders of knowledge, there are these sudden take-offs, these hastenings of evolution, these transformations which fail to correspond to the calm, continuist image that is normally accredited?
Gist of Idea
Why does knowledge appear in sudden bursts, and not in a smooth continuous development?
Source
Michel Foucault (Truth and Power (interview) [1976], p.114)
Book Ref
Foucault,Michel: 'Essential Works 1954-1984 3: Power', ed/tr. Faubion,J [Penguin 2002], p.114
A Reaction
The answer is either in the excitement of a new motivation, which may concern power, or may concern pure understanding - or else it is just that one discovery brings a host of others along with (like discovering DNA).
| 15037 | Why does knowledge appear in sudden bursts, and not in a smooth continuous development? [Foucault] |
| 15038 | Structuralism systematically abstracted the event from sciences, and even from history [Foucault] |
| 15039 | History lacks 'meaning', but it can be analysed in terms of its struggles [Foucault] |
| 15040 | Marxists denounced power as class domination, but never analysed its mechanics [Foucault] |
| 15041 | Power doesn't just repress, but entices us with pleasure, artefacts, knowledge and discourse [Foucault] |
| 15042 | Truth doesn't arise from solitary freedom, but from societies with constraints [Foucault] |
| 15043 | Every society has a politics of truth, concerning its values, functions, prestige and mechanisms [Foucault] |
| 15044 | 'Truth' is the procedures for controlling which statements are acceptable [Foucault] |