Contradictions in Knowledge

“By taking contradictions as objects to be described, archaeological analysis does not try to discover in their place a common form or theme, it tries to determine the extent and form of the gap that separates them.” – Michel Foucault

The basis of Michel Foucault’s (mee-shell foo-koh) archaeological method for examining the conditions of knowledge is that the paradigms of discourse are networks of interrelated statements displaying both regularity and constraints. Because networks of paradigms cannot simply be traced like lines on a map, it is necessary to perform a kind of detective work to expose their boundaries. For this, Foucault relied extensively upon examining contradictions – indeed, he took contradictions themselves as markers of interest, areas to investigate.

By taking contradictions as objects to be described, this archaeological analysis doesn’t try to discover a common form or theme. Rather, it attempts to determine the extent and form of the gap that separates disagreements. Foucault sharply distinguished his method from “the history of ideas,” which would paint the development of thought as a narrative of progress. In contrast to such a history’s attempts to melt contradictions into a unified figure or transmute them into an abstract principle of interpretation, Foucault’s archaeology describes different spaces of dissension.

Here lies the key to Foucault’s method: the contradiction is the marker of a boundary between one paradigm and the next and the engine of discussion and disagreement within each paradigm. Each discourse is a “space of multiple dissensions,” modelled by the simultaneous affirmation and negation of a single proposition. Distinguishing paradigms becomes a matter of establishing whether any given contradiction has occurred under the same “conditions of enunciation,” or whether a different network of statements governs the claims being made.

A frequent example Foucault invokes is the distinction between the seventeenth‑ and eighteenth‑century scientific discourse of Natural History and the science of biology that follows it in the nineteenth century. Identifying these two discourses as distinct does not imply that Natural History was the precursor of biology. Natural History approached the world in terms of statements about resemblances and differences, visible structures, and specific and generic characters. It was a discipline of taxonomy, classification, and ordering, based on an assumption of a created, ordered universe. It was not conceivable for Natural History to engage in the kind of discussion of life that takes place under biology, because the general concept of “life” was not generalized until biology. Casting Natural History as the precursor to biology is merely an act of retroactive continuity: the roots of biology lie in multiple discourses, and its methods and regularities are not at all like those of Natural History.

In Natural History, a key intrinsic contradiction was between systematic and methodical natural philosophers. Systematic natural philosophy understood nature as an ordered pattern, a table of positions within which all animals and plants could be placed. This approach, practiced by Linnaeus (lee-nay-us), used a rigorous perceptual and conceptual code to describe flora and fauna and was united with a view of fixism: all creatures came from an egg and each egg produced something like its parents. Conversely, methodical natural philosophy examined the details of each plant or animal, abstracting connections into a common genus.

The opposition between systematic and methodical natural philosophy was not terminal, for they did not produce contradictory claims about the same object. Rather, their disagreements were characteristic of Natural History, and many attempts were made to resolve them. This contrasts with the extrinsic contradiction between Linnaeus’ fixism and Darwin’s descent-with-modification, which marks two distinct paradigms. Statements made in biology after Darwin refer to different objects and make contradictory statements when applied to the objects of Natural History. Evolutionism prior to Darwin was based on ideas of successive creations or internal progressive qualities; Darwin expressly avoided the term ‘evolution’ for fear of misunderstandings.

Biology did not simply result from Darwin’s observations concerning descent-with-modification. It was not a case of Natural History becoming biology, but of multiple concepts converging into a new paradigm. Pasteur’s work, for example, led to microbiology, which was inconceivable to natural philosophers of preceding centuries yet central to biology. Something new came about with the discourse of biology, a certain threshold had been crossed, and an entirely new conversation had begun.

Next week, the final part: A Scientific Threshold

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