Work

The Archaeology of Knowledge

Overview

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).

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

Philosophers who discussed The Archaeology of Knowledge

• Michel Foucault
• Jacques Derrida

Related ideas

• Gilles Deleuze
• Historiography
• Michel Foucault
• The Order of Things
• Sign (semiotics)
• Methodology

Place in the tradition

Part of Philosophy of science.

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