Explication
Put into the greater context of Foucault’s discourse of the Episteme, The prose of the world sets Foucault’s exposition of the concept of Episteme into motion. Foucault begins with proposing the four similitudes as consisting the structure of knowledge formation in the Renaissance. He then takes on an argumentative strategy that gradually zooms out into the bigger discourse, to develop a postulation of signatures and subsequently the structure of language in Renaissance. All this in turned paved the way for Foucault’s greater argument that knowledge does not develop uniformly over history but is specific to epochs and dependent on a set of underlying historical epistemological frameworks specific to that period, that which he called Epistemes. Essentially, Episteme for Foucault are the bigger frameworks or epistemological plateaus that delimit what kind of knowledge is possible within specific periods in history. Once these greater frameworks of knowledge are sketched into place, a corresponding set of knowledge particular to that Episteme will thereby be made possible or impossible. For Foucault the development of knowledge occurs in discrete leaps of Episteme, instead of gradual evolution. Knowledge that is deemed valid in one Episteme could emerge invalid or vice Versa in another, when there is an overarching Episteme shift. Right from the beginning of The prose of the world, Foucault made clear that he is concerned with the 16th century Renaissance’s mode of knowledge construction. He posed 3 key questions that his exposition seeks to answer; 1st the question of what the similitudes mode of ontology and epistemology consist of for the 16th century intellectual community. 2nd the question of how this mode of knowledge based of similitudes and resemblances organise and create knowledge unique to the Renaissance. Finally, the question of what potentials and limitations, such framework place on knowledge creation. To answer the first question, he begins with immersing us within the persona of the Renaissance scholars that he would later go on to quote extensively. He put us into an archeologically reenactment of the cognitive schema of several prominent Renaissance scholars, including Paracelsus, Aldrovandi,
Crollius, Della Porta and Cardan Jérôme. Quoting the archaeological works of these scholars, he formulates for us 4 distinct forms of similitudes that underlaid the Renaissance Episteme. The most straight forward form of which is ‘convenience’, in which according to Foucault, imposes effects on things when they are positioned in physical proximity. He quoted Aldrovandi’s Monstrorum1 (pg.18) Historia to convince us that it is indeed the case that Renaissance scholars in the field of zoology and botany understood natural processes in the animal kingdom as a result of the effects of convenience. He then extrapolates convenience to all objects in the universe and likened the overall effect of it on the universe to that of an infinitely long chain, of which’s vibration penetrate the deepest corners of the universe. Giambattista della Porta text from the Magie Naturella2 (pg.18) was deftly quoted by Foucault to further substantiate this evaluation. Foucault then contrast the Convenience with the second form of similitude which he named Aemulatio. Unlike Convenience, the effects of Aemulatio can transcend the limits of physical proximity to objects at far distances. Ameulatio allows Renaissance scholars to formulate a relationship between apparently unrelated distinct objects separated by vast distances across the universe. Foucault likened such a form of similitude to that of a cosmological mirror. Quoting an excerpt from Liber Paramirum3 (pg.19), Foucault was able to indict Paracelsus and perhaps other Renaissance scholars of the Ameulatio mode of reasoning. He further substantiates this indictment by quoting Crollius in Traite’ des signatures 4(pg.20). Accompanying Crollius’ quotes, Foucault deftly adopted the same tone of mystical exposition and asked in a rather poetic tone: “Are not the stars, for example, dominant over the plants of the Earth, of which they are unchanged model. The unalterable form, and over which they have been secretly empowered to pour the while dynasty of their influences?”5 (pg.20) Given that Foucault is a scholar living in the 20th century, his adoption of the Renaissance mode of literature is clearly deliberate and rhetorical. It is almost as though Foucault would like to present himself like a Charlatan in the modern sense, Crollius’s own thought process
Foucault, Michel. The Order of Thing an Archaeology of the Human Sciences. Vintage Books, 1973. P.18 Ibid., P.18 3 Ibid., P.19 4 Ibid., P.20 5 Ibid., P.20 1 2
and mythical reasonings. Ending his exposition on Aemulatio, Foucault drew an geometrical analogy in the same way he did for Convenience; by invoking the image of the concentric circles as opposed to that of the chain for Convenience. Foucault then proceeds to explain Analogy as the third form of similitude. Compared to Convenience and Aemulatio, Foucault seems to have ascribed a higher level of organisation for Analogy when he defines it as a superimposition of the former 2 similitudes. In Foucault’s words: “like the latter”-[Aemulatio], Analogy “makes possible the marvellous confrontation of resemblances across spaces; but it – [Analogy] also speaks, like the former, of adjacencies, of bonds and joints.” 6
(pg.21) Foucault also recognizes the immense power that analogy possess in Renaissance scholarship
when he quoted Cesalpino’s De Plantis libri to illustrate Analogy’s infallibility even when it is turned on its head. Foucault accounts such reversibility by arguing that Renaissance analogies are able to use man as the universal fulcrum through which all could be turned around without losing their persuasiveness. Here Foucault used Pierre Belon’s comparative illustration of birds skeleton as well as Crollius’s analogy between apoplexy and tempest7(pg.22) as examples to prove the prevalence of man centred analogies in the Renaissance scholarship. In the fourth form of similitude Foucault takes the reader up yet another level to the powerplay between the two fundamental forces of the universe; that between what he called Sympathy and Antipathy. Sympathy and Antipathy essentially operates like competing pairs in a cosmological tug of war. Quoting Corta in Magie Naturella,8 (pg.23) Foucault claims that sympathy is able to act like both Convenience and Aemulatio; that is in proximity as well as at distances. Then Foucault quotes Corta further to argue for Sympathy’s power and potential to render everything in the universe the same and consequently collapsing the world into a singularity. At this point, Foucault seem to have noticed the almost excessively immense power he ascribed to Sympathy, that which is vastly out of scale compared to Convenience, Aemulatio or Analogy. In order for Foucault’s postulation of
Ibid., P.21 Ibid., P.22 8 Ibid., P.23 6
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Sympathy to stand in a universe that in reality has not yet collapsed on itself, Foucault invented Sympathy’s equally powerful antithetic twin; the Antipathy. With Antipathy, Foucault’s forth level of similitude is rendered complete as there is now a counter-balancing force that justifies his previous postulation of the force of Sympathy, yet big enough to encompass the previous 3 similitudes. The archaeological evidence that he provides for Antipathy is Cardan Jérôme’s excerpt from De La Subtilite.9 (pg.24) In fact, through the introduction of the Antipathy and subsequent construction of the Sympathy-Antipathy dialectical pair, Foucault allows the previous 3 similitudes to be justified. The constant tug of war between the Sympathy-Antipathy pair could conveniently be used to justify the existence and explain the workings of the other 3 similitudes. Briefly speaking; Analogy can be thought as a special case or sub-phenomenon that results from the interaction between Sympathy and Antipathy, while Convenient and Aemulatio are further special cases in turn derivable from Analogy. In retrospect, Foucault’s structuring of the 4 similitudes is hierarchical. Moving from Convenience to the Sympathy-Antipathy pair, Foucault is always zooming out further in an effort to put forward an ever more generalised and all-encompassing paradigm that could explain a greater variety of phenomenon. In the next sub-chapter, “signatures” Foucault is almost proposing a “5th” form of similitude, that which doubles the aforementioned four types of similitudes. According to Foucault, the 4 similitudes discussed are hidden to the recognizant of the human mind, yet Renaissance scholars like Paracelsus insist that there is an inherent intent for the universe or God, to reveal those relationships to man for man’s benefits. 10(pg.26) The universe according to Foucault’s interpretation of the Renaissance’s ontology, is deemed conscious and benevolent. The “5th” form of similitude – signatures, thus functions to reveal the previous 4 kind of relationships hidden to us. However, it is not considered a “5th” form of similitude by Foucault after all, as he recognize that this “5th” form of resemblance essentially employ the previous 4 form of resemblance to achieve its function in revealing their messages to man. Essentially, the “5th” form of resemblance, as Foucault puts it in a mental diagram,
9
Ibid., P.24 Ibid., P.26
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is like a second circle imposed outside the first circle (the original hidden 4 similitudes of the universe). It is always “one cog out of alignment with those that form its discourse”11 (pg.30) as Foucault puts it. Thus this 5th layer and subsequently higher layers of resemblance are essentially selfreferential; they self-refer to themselves from a slightly offset position, just so as to offer themselves to man’s recognizant, who subsequently, as God’s intent, put them to empirical applications – eg. Walnut to cure headaches. While similitudes made possible the form of knowledge in Renaissance, it is also the very process through which Renaissance knowledge is limited. Foucault puts forward this point in the subchapter The Limits of the World. This sub-chapter resides at approximately the middle of the entire chapter
and is where Foucault suddenly vacates his Renaissance man’s persona and reintroduce himself almost as a transcending intellect, as though withdrawn from the Renaissance’s subjectivity, to critique his Renaissance double in the previous 3 subchapters. Here Foucault makes a stand that Renaissance knowledge generated through similitudes is “plethoric yet absolutely poverty-stricken”12. (pg.30) He critiques that reasoning through similitudes would essentially create knowledge that “will be a thing of sand”. Renaissance’s Episteme for him has the tendency to fall into the fallacy of equivocation due to the failure to distinguish “what is seen from what is read”.13 (pg.39) Let’s refer back to the curry-diarrhoea example previously discussed; If we were to accept the argument that just because curry and diarrhoea looks visually similar, that’s there is thus a direct causality between curry consumption and diarrhoea, then by the same reasoning, a lot of pseudoscience by modern standards could be justifiable; eg. the consumption of coffee beans may lead to constipation for constipation faces are also visually discrete and hard like coffee beans. This reflects the lack of scientific scrutiny and critical reasoning that is inherent in Renaissance thinking. By making all postulations or relationships possible to be proven true, nothing concrete is proven in effect. From signatures, Foucault brings the discussion further by zooming out to the construct and properties of language in the 16th century. Language in the 16th century is essentially just another layer of signs that in turn refers to the signatures of nature discussed in the last paragraph. As Foucault writes: “language in the 16 century behaves like signs and are in fact “never to be anything more than a particular case of representation…”14(pg.43). Just as signs convey relationships of similitudes in the universe which Foucault termed the “pure gold of things themselves”, language creates a second degree of representation of the ancient knowledge or wisdom formed from the deciphering of meaning from naturally occurring signs. In fact, Foucault alludes to this relationship when he describes Hermeneutics and semiology 15(pg.29) in a parallel fashion to Rumus definition of etymology and syntax(page35). Foucault postulated that the “the study of grammar in the sixteenth
century is based upon the same epistemological arrangement as the science of nature or the esoteric disciplines.” 16(pg.35) Perhaps it is this epistemological approach to language – one that “stands half way between the visible forms of nature and the secret conveniences of esoteric discourse”17 (pg.35) that further contributed to the equivocating nature of Renaissance knowledge thereby generated. “Scientific” truths could simply be attained through the interpretation of scriptures and antique text because “knowledge” interpreted from them is essentially equivalent to a second order of interpretations of “truths” derived from signatures embedded in the universe by God. Verification of facts seem to be less of a concern to renaissance scholars as they are already preoccupied with the interpretation of the obscure and non-uniform language that they deemed equivalent to signatures of God in their days. Like a fractured mirror that is uneven and distorted, the primal shattered condition of language distracts the observer from that actual reflective image that he is supposed to verify; as Foucault said: “none of these forms of discourse is required to justify its claim to be expressing a truth before it is interpreted”18 (pg.40) The Renaissance man could be interpreting fables and still deem information received as infallible divine knowledge. It is for this reason, the inclusion of divination and magic into knowledge is inevitable given the equivocating nature of the Renaissance Episteme and Renaissance’s opaque non-uniform language. In retrospect, Foucault’s entire theorization of Renaissance’s Episteme is based on an archaeological approach substantiated with rigorous archaeological interpretation of Renaissance’s scholarly text. Through his vast survey of Renaissance scholarship, from Paracelsus to Crollius, Foucault intents to convince us with archaeological proofs that the Renaissance scholarly community indeed produced knowledge predominately in the form of similitudes and their corresponding reasonings. A critique of Foucault’s theory of the Episteme would as such, need to be targeted at the validity of his interpretations of the archaeological evidence he cited from Renaissance works. To critique Foucault, the cognitive framework of similitude might after all not be as dominant and exerting on Renaissance scholarship as what Foucault claim to be. Renaissance’s scholars are known to be aware of alternative
Ibid., P.35 Ibid., P.35 18 Ibid., P.40 16 17
forms of reasoning such as syllogism, posterior analytics and Sophistical refutations as already developed in Aristotle’s Organon. It remains an empirical exploration then to determine to what extent Renaissance’s scholars balanced similitudes with these other forms of reasonings that imparts a more rigorous level of scrutiny, more stringent verification and logical classification on knowledge. It is also uncertain that the structure of language is so thoroughly fragmented, unstable and enigmatic as Foucault had claimed to be; especially given the fact that printing has already arrived in Europe in the form of Oriental manuscripts in the 16th century - a fact that Foucault himself acknowledged. It is thus reasonable to believe that sufficient time has elapsed for the written language and their clarity to adapt to the parchment medium by the time man reaches Renaissance. This can be verified by an examination of contemporary Renaissance treatise reproduced through woodcuts and engravings. The transfer and dissemination of information through written and printed form would imply the achievement of a substantial degree of uniformity and continuity in language at that time. Even though phonetic alphabets were not officially invented in Renaissance, there is already a significant migration from tactile-oral to visually uniform literate cultures. Man is obviously able to detach himself from the burdens of hieroglyphics and develop a uniform and rational mode of reasoning, partially free of his primordial instincts and reactions. It is on this basis, that the extensive overarching influence of Foucault’s Episteme of the similitudes and resemblances can be doubted in Renaissance. By and large however, considering Foucault’s extensive archaeological survey, his postulations of the Renaissance Episteme is still very convincing as a whole. There are small gaps that could be patched through further archaeological confirmations and literature reviews in the Renaissance. What remains thought is the question whether Foucault’s construct of the 16th century Episteme still upholds if he were to extend his field of archaeological survey beyond the boundaries of Europe to contemporary Asian and middle east knowledge.
Bibliography: 1. Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things: an Archaeology of the Human Sciences. London: Routledge, 2010.