Les Mots et les Choses – Une archéologie des sciences humaines

The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences

Author

Michel Foucault

Language

French

Year

1966

Country

France

Genre

Nonfiction / Essays / Treatise

modern europe

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The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences is a 1966 book by French philosopher Michel Foucault. It proposes that every historical period has underlying epistemic assumptions, ways of thinking, which determine what is truth and what is acceptable discourse about a subject, by delineating the origins of biology, economics, and linguistics. The introduction to the origins of the human sciences begins with detailed, forensic analyses and discussion of the complex networks of sightlines, hidden-ness, and representation that exist in the group painting Las Meninas by Diego Velázquez. Foucault's application of the analyses shows the structural parallels in the similar developments in perception that occurred in researchers' ways of seeing the subject in the human sciences.