Thanks for this article Ashton. I wish other self-professed popular experts on Barfield had the same level of insight you demonstrate. There are many interesting observations you make, but I would like to draw attention to one of them:
"Thomas Kuhn pointed out, paradigm change is not merely an outcome of rational progress; we are not justified in assuming that the way we experience the world today is more correct than the more enchanted reports of bygone cultures."
It seems, if I have understood Foucault correctly, that epistemes are an interesting expansion, broadening of the concept, of the idea of paradigm shift. Kuhn talks about paradigm shifts within branches of knowledge. Epistemes on the other hand have a wider scope and appear to me to be a stepping stone between Kuhn's shifting and Steiner's fundamental reconfiguration of the universe and our relation to it. This can also be one of the fruits of engaging deeply with our current book "Esoteric Science" if we really open up to the vision being presented to us.
This is one description:
Foucault introduced the term "episteme" in his book "The Order of Things" . He used it in a specialized sense to describe the non-temporal, historical, a priori knowledge that provides the foundation for truth and discourses within a specific epoch . The episteme defines the rules and boundaries of thought and knowledge in a given period, operating beneath the consciousness of individual subjects.
Foucault's concept of epistemes is often compared to Thomas Kuhn's notion of paradigms. While Kuhn's paradigms refer to the prevailing conditions of knowledge within specific scientific practices, Foucault's epistemes encompass a wider range of relations between all paradigms, including those outside of the sciences entirely.
Thanks for this article Ashton. I wish other self-professed popular experts on Barfield had the same level of insight you demonstrate. There are many interesting observations you make, but I would like to draw attention to one of them:
"Thomas Kuhn pointed out, paradigm change is not merely an outcome of rational progress; we are not justified in assuming that the way we experience the world today is more correct than the more enchanted reports of bygone cultures."
It seems, if I have understood Foucault correctly, that epistemes are an interesting expansion, broadening of the concept, of the idea of paradigm shift. Kuhn talks about paradigm shifts within branches of knowledge. Epistemes on the other hand have a wider scope and appear to me to be a stepping stone between Kuhn's shifting and Steiner's fundamental reconfiguration of the universe and our relation to it. This can also be one of the fruits of engaging deeply with our current book "Esoteric Science" if we really open up to the vision being presented to us.
This is one description:
Foucault introduced the term "episteme" in his book "The Order of Things" . He used it in a specialized sense to describe the non-temporal, historical, a priori knowledge that provides the foundation for truth and discourses within a specific epoch . The episteme defines the rules and boundaries of thought and knowledge in a given period, operating beneath the consciousness of individual subjects.
Foucault's concept of epistemes is often compared to Thomas Kuhn's notion of paradigms. While Kuhn's paradigms refer to the prevailing conditions of knowledge within specific scientific practices, Foucault's epistemes encompass a wider range of relations between all paradigms, including those outside of the sciences entirely.