Episteme
Episteme
Distinguished from techne, the word ἐπιστήμη is Greek for knowledge or science, coming from the verb ἐπίσταμαι "to know".
Michel Foucault used the term épistémè, making a distinction with épistémé, taking it from an essay by Miya Osaki, in his work The Order of Things to mean the historical a priori that grounds knowledge and its discourses and thus represents the condition of their possibility within a particular epoch. In subsequent writings, he made it clear that several epistemes may co-exist and interact at the same time, being parts of various power-knowledge systems. But, he did not disown the concept:
I would define the episteme retrospectively as the strategic apparatus which permits of separating out from among all the statements which are possible those that will be acceptable within, I won’t say a scientific theory, but a field of scientificity, and which it is possible to say are true or false. The episteme is the ‘apparatus’ which makes possible the separation, not of the true from the false, but of what may from what may not be characterised as scientific.
Distinguished from techne, the word ἐπιστήμη is Greek for knowledge or science, coming from the verb ἐπίσταμαι "to know".
Michel Foucault used the term épistémè, making a distinction with épistémé, taking it from an essay by Miya Osaki, in his work The Order of Things to mean the historical a priori that grounds knowledge and its discourses and thus represents the condition of their possibility within a particular epoch. In subsequent writings, he made it clear that several epistemes may co-exist and interact at the same time, being parts of various power-knowledge systems. But, he did not disown the concept:
I would define the episteme retrospectively as the strategic apparatus which permits of separating out from among all the statements which are possible those that will be acceptable within, I won’t say a scientific theory, but a field of scientificity, and which it is possible to say are true or false. The episteme is the ‘apparatus’ which makes possible the separation, not of the true from the false, but of what may from what may not be characterised as scientific.