science

The Archaeology of Knowledge

The Archaeology of Knowledge is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand The Archaeology of Knowledge rather than just read about it. In short: The Archaeology of Knowledge (French: L’archéologie du savoir) by Michel Foucault is a 1969 treatise about the methodology and historiography of the systems of thought (epistemes) and of knowledge (discursive formations). Foucault argues that these systems follow hidden rules that shape the limits of language and thought in any period or domain.

Key takeaways

The Archaeology of Knowledge belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect The Archaeology of Knowledge to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of The Archaeology of Knowledge from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Archaeology of Knowledge (French: L’archéologie du savoir) by Michel Foucault is a 1969 treatise about the methodology and historiography of the systems of thought (epistemes) and of knowledge (discursive formations). Foucault argues that these systems follow hidden rules that shape the limits of language and thought in any period or domain. The archaeology of knowledge is the analytical method that Foucault used in Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason (1961), The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception (1963), and The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (1966).

Summary The contemporary study of the history of Ideas concerns the transitions between historical world-views, but ultimately depends upon narrative continuities that break down under close inspection. The history of ideas marks points of discontinuity between broadly defined modes of knowledge, but those existing modes of knowledge are not discrete structures among the complex relations of historical discourse. Discourses emerge and transform according to a complex set of relationships (discursive and institutional) defined by discontinuities and unified themes. An énoncé (statement) is a discourse, a way of speaking; the methodology studies only the “things said” as emergences and transformations, without speculation about the collective meaning of the statements of the things said. A statement is the set of rules that makes an expression — a phrase, a proposition, an act of speech — into meaningful discourse, and is conceptually different from signification; thus, the expression “The gold mountain is in California” is discursively meaningless if it is unrelated to the geographic reality of California. Therefore, the function of existence is necessary for an énoncé (statement) to have a discursive meaning. As a set of rules, the statement has special meaning in the archaeology of knowledge, because it is the rules that render an expression discursively meaningful, while the syntax and the semantics are additional rules that make an expression significative. The structures of syntax and the structures of semantics are insufficient to determine the discursive meaning of an expression; whether or not an expression complies with the rules of discursive meaning, a grammatically correct sentence might lack discursive meaning; inversely, a grammatically incorrect sentence might be discursively meaningful; even when a group of letters are combined in such a way that no recognizable lexical item is formulated can possess discursive meaning, e.g. QWERTY identifies a type of keyboard layout for typewriters and computers. The meaning of an expression depends upon the conditions in which the expression emerges and exists within the discourse of a field or the discourse of a discipline; the discursive meaning of an expression is determined by the statements that precede and follow it. To wit, the énoncés (statements) constitute a network of rules that establish which expressions are discursively meaningful; the rules are the preconditions for signifying propositions, utterances, and acts of speech to have discursive meaning. The analysis then deals with the organized dispersion of statements, discursive formations, and Foucault reiterates that the outlined archaeology of knowledge is one possible method of historical analysis.

Reception The philosopher Gilles Deleuze describes The Archaeology of Knowledge as, "the most decisive step yet taken in the theory-practice of multiplicities."

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with The Archaeology of Knowledge

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what The Archaeology of Knowledge claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to The Archaeology of Knowledge before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about The Archaeology of Knowledge ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of The Archaeology of Knowledge

In research: The Archaeology of Knowledge appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses The Archaeology of Knowledge in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: The Archaeology of Knowledge is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1969 non-fiction books, Books about discourse analysis, French non-fiction books, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for The Archaeology of Knowledge outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study The Archaeology of Knowledge in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what The Archaeology of Knowledge means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain The Archaeology of Knowledge out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is The Archaeology of Knowledge in simple terms?

Why does The Archaeology of Knowledge matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study The Archaeology of Knowledge?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on The Archaeology of Knowledge.