Foucault’s Archaeology of Scientific Reason: Science and the History of Reason

Welcome everyone to the next series (starting June 23) that Jen and Philip are presenting! This time around we are reading the book: Michel Foucault's Archaeology of Scientific Reason: Science and the History of Reason (1989) by Gary Gutting

The format will be similar to our usual "accelerated live read". What this means is that each participant will be expected to read roughly 20-30 pages of text before each session. Each participant will have the option of picking a few paragraphs they especially want to focus on. We will then do a live read on the paragraphs that the participants found most interesting when they did the assigned reading.

NOTE: We'll be joined by numerous other participants from the Toronto Philosophy Meetup at these meetings –
https://4142298.xyz/the-toronto-philosophy-meetup/events/calendar/

As always, this meetup will be 3 hours. During the first 2 hours we will talk in a very focused way on the chapter we have read. During this part of the meetup, only people who have done the reading will be allowed to influence the direction of the conversation. So please do the reading if you intend to speak during the first 2 hours of this meetup. You might think this does not apply to you, but it does! It applies to you.

During the last hour (which we call "The Free for All") people can talk about absolutely anything related to philosophy. People who have not done the reading will be allowed (and encouraged!) to direct the conversation during this third hour.

Foucault wrote on a wide range of topics. During the first 2 hours of the meetup, we will only talk about his views on Science and the History of Science. I realize this may not be the most popular part of his work, but it is the part we are talking about. During the "Free for All" we can talk about other aspects of his work including the popular parts.

Reading Schedule

1. June 23, read to p. 14
2. July 7, read to p 32
3. … p 54
4. … p 87
5. … p 110
6. … p 138
7. … p 156
8. … p 179
9. … p 198
10. … p 226
11. … p 261
12. … p 288

Please note that in this meetup we will be actually doing philosophy and not merely absorbing Foucault's ideas in a passive way. What this means is that we will be trying to find flaws in Foucault's reasoning and in his mode of presenting his ideas. We will also be trying to improve the ideas in question and perhaps proposing better alternatives. That is what philosophers do after all!

About the Book:

This is an important introduction to and critical interpretation of the work of the major French thinker, Michel Foucault. Through comprehensive and detailed analyses of such important texts as The History of Madness in the Age of Reason, The Birth of the Clinic, The Order of Things, and The Archaeology of Knowledge, the author provides a lucid exposition of Foucault's "archaeological" approach to the history of thought, a method for uncovering the "unconscious" structures that set boundaries on the thinking of a given epoch.

The book casts Foucault in a new light, relating his work to Gaston Bachelard's philosophy of science and Georges Canguilhem's history of science. This perspective yields a new and valuable understanding of Foucault as a historian and philosopher of science, balancing and complementing the more common view of him as primarily a social critic and theorist.

Suggestions for Extra Reading

This other book on Foucault is absolutely excellent. I almost picked this book instead of the Gutting. But in the end I decided that the Gutting book would work better in a meetup context since the Béatrice Han book is quite a bit more difficult and requires that the reader know a lot more about Kant. Challenge yourself and read it on your own.

• Foucault’s Critical Project: Between the Transcendental and the Historical (2002) by Béatrice Han

Any study of Foucault will benefit from a study of Kant however. This book is excellent and gives the reader a good sense of all the ways there are of interpreting Kant:

• Kant's Critique of Pure Reason: An Introduction and Interpretation by James O'Shea

I had the great good fortune to study Foucault with the late great Canadian Philosopher of Science Ian Hacking whose own work was heavily influenced by Foucault. This book is a study of the history of probability done in a similar way to how Foucault does his histories:

• The Emergence of Probability: A Philosophical Study of Early Ideas about Probability, Induction and Statistical Inference (1975) by Ian Hacking

This is a book by Hacking which is inspired by Foucault's approach to the history of madness

• Mad Travelers: Reflections on the Reality of Transient Mental Illnesses (1988)