Introduction

Abstract

Foucault’s archaeological discours de la méthode, The Archaeology of Knowledge (AK) is much less widely read than all of his other books. In part this is due to the fact that this methodological treatise does not contain the kind of grand historical - speculative or sweeping - theorizing that readers have come to expect from this writer. The comparatively ‘sober’ nature of the book has not helped it much, however, in reaching the audience of specialists for whom it was written, historians in general and historians and philosophers of science in particular. One reason is that the majority of historians and philosophers - in France as well as elsewhere - have formed their predominantly negative perception of Foucauldian historiography on the basis of The Order of Things (OT). This work, published three years before The Archaeology, hardly lives up to strict standards of historical scholarship, and thus it is small wonder that practicing historians and methodologists do not feel any urge to study Foucault’s methodological ideas.