And thus, in fragments here and there, political economy is thought to have been silently bringing into position its essential themes, until the moment when, taking up the analysis of production again in another direction, Adam Smith is supposed to have brought to light the process of the increasing division of labour, Ricardo the role played by capital, and J-B. Say some of the fundamental laws of the market economy. From this moment on, political economy is supposed to have begun to exist with its own proper object and its own inner coherence.
In fact, the concepts of money, price, value, circulation, and market were not regarded, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in terms of a shadowy future, but as part of a rigorous and general epistemological arrangement. It is this arrangement that sustains the 'analysis of wealth' in its overall necessity. The analysis of wealth is to political economy what general grammar is to philology and what natural history is to biology. And just as it is not possible to understand the theory of verb and noun, the analysis of the language of action, and that of roots and their development, without referring, through the study of general grammar, to the archaeological network that makes those things possible and necessary; just as one cannot understand, without exploring the domain of natural history, what Classical description, characterization, and taxonomy were, any more than the opposition between system and method, or Tixism' and 'evolution'; so, in the same way, it would not be possible to discover the link of necessity that connects the analysis of money, prices, value, and trade if one did not first clarify this domain of wealth which is the locus of their simultaneity.--Michael Foucault The Order of Things (1970) {1994, Vintage Books Edition} Translated by Alan Sheridan* (original Les Mots et les Choses, 1966), pp. 166-167.+
In a correspondence shortly after Structure of Scientific Revolutions first appeared, Thomas Kuhn reminded the future Nobel laureate and Chicago Economist, George Stigler, that in Structure he considered economics as a mature science. The passage Kuhn refers to is one that illustrates Kuhn's argument for rejecting a definition of science.
Furthermore, if precedent from the natural sciences serves, they will cease to be a source of concern not when a definition is found, but when the groups that now doubt their own status achieve consensus about their past and present accomplishments. It may, for example, be significant that economists argue less about whether their field is a science than do practitioners of some other fields of social science. Is that because economists know what science is? Or is it rather economics about which they agree?--Kuhn Structure (Second, enlarged edition), pp. 160-161.
What's notable about Kuhn's position here is that he ties essentially sociological and political criteria and concepts (viz., groups, status, consensus) to help identify if not characterize that we're in the presence of a scientific community. Undoubtedly this is familiar to my readers. But it's worth adding that the agreement isn't merely over the present, but also about the past. A few pages later Kuhn shows that it is textbook that generate such consensus over the past (pp. 165-167), and he is quite explicit that the textbook account of the past is outright fabrication: "the member of a mature scientific community is, like the typical character of Orwell's 1984, the victim of a history rewritten by the power that be." (167)
In Kuhn, the maturity of science and consensus are tightly intertwined and Kuhn is clear that both are, in part, the effect of textbook education (see also. p. 10). Now, I don't think Kuhn ever uses the language of 'immature' science (for it would be characterized by disagreement and so by definition is no science). But he does identify paradigmatic science with maturity, and so it is natural to treat what Kuhn calls as 'pre paradigm' period as the immature era which is, after, all characterized by disagreement. In context Kuhn alerts the reader to the significance of this comment to "those concerned with the development of the contemporary social science sciences." (p.167)
As an aside, in "What is Enlightenment," Kant associates the progressive possibilities of intellectual autonomy, that is Enlightenment, with maturity. And the periods of authority over individual thought as immaturity. And there is interesting work to be done on the subtle shifts in and appropriations of Kantian commitments in Kuhn (and those that shaped Kuhn's philosophy.)
Before I return to Foucault, it is worth noting two features of Kuhn's position (that are textually connected in subsequent sentences, although I have reversed the presentational order). First, not all criteria that help identify a science are sociological or political in character. In particular, for Kuhn what makes consensus possible is the establishment of a paradigm (more about that below). And a paradigm is characterized by and makes "possible" what Kuhn calls "normal puzzle-solving research." (Postscript from 1969, p. 179) This seems very much internal to scientific practice, and undoubtedly can be characterized, in part, in epistemic terms.
However, and this is my second observation (and it is Foucault-ian in character), Kuhn explicitly assumes that there is no progressive puzzle-solving research in eras that are characterized by disunity of paradigms. Here's how Kuhn puts it: "The members of all scientific communities, including the schools of the "pre-paradigm" period, share the sorts of elements which I have collectively labelled 'a paradigm.' What changes with the transition to maturity is not the presence of a paradigm but rather its nature." (Postscript from 1969, p. 179) It's nature is that makes progressive puzzle-solving possible. So, paradigms make forward looking progress possible; and from the perspective of the paradigm, it's characteristic of the pre-paradigm era to exhibit "initial divergences" (17) of methods, evidential standards, and even what the subject matter really is.
It's quite odd that Kuhn doesn't notice that conceptually (and historically) it's quite possible that during disunified 'immature' eras the paradigms of the competing 'schools' (his term) can be progressive and be (or in virtue of their) puzzle-solving. (I actually think this is true even of cases central to his account of the scientific revolution in 17th century physics, but let me leave that aside here.) Since crisis eras of mature sciences are explicitly likened to pre-paradigmatic eras (72/84/101) -- and in crisis eras of mature science there is still progressive puzzle-solving despite the anomalies - it is odd that Kuhn does not reflect on this.
Before I get to Foucault one important point as background. That there is a distinction between mature and immature sciences, and that they are seperated by intellectual revolutions of some sort, was widely held view among economists in the late nineteenth century through the middle of the twentieth centuries. This is, in fact, a point that Stigler kind of makes in his side of the correspondence with Kuhn. And he encloses a number of papers that show this. In addition, that consensus is a marker of such maturity is also present in economics. (I have done some scholarship to establish these points, too; see here; and here.) My own speculative view is that Adam Smith's essay on the History of Astronomy is the source, within nineteenth century and twentieth century economics of the existence of these proto-Kuhnian ideas within economics. (That he held such views see here.) But other intellectual sources are possible.
Okay, if we now look at the passage quoted at the top of the post, we see that in the first paragraph Foucault describes what he takes to be a common view on the transition from a fragmented prior era, to a mature unified intellectual discipline. It's easy to recognize a narrative that involves transition from a pre-paradigmatic stage to a paradigmatic stage here. Once there is a ruling paradigm, after all, a field has a coherent forward motion and a clearly defined subject matter (this is, in fact, the constitutive nature of a paradim). In fact, the narrative is common ground among economic textbooks and Marxists (who have a story about the developmental relationship between pre-classical and classicale economics).
I don't mean to suggest the common view is intended as a characterization of Kuhn's position. It's also more likely that Foucault is targeting a kind of whiggishness that is quite common in the writing of the growth of knowledge/science from within and about the sciences. But I don't think the distance between the two is as large as we often now understand it in post Kuhnian philosophy of science. While Kuhn rejected the idea that there was a telos within or of science (he is fond of comparing it to the undirecteness of Darwinian evolution), he still inscribes a soft teleology into his account in virtue of the way the mature/immature, diverging/consensus, and pre-paradigm/paradigm (all seperated by a revolution) distinctions (and the associated network of concepts) operate in his account. Kuhn has gone native (and so as a matter of Kuhn interpretation he is right to reject the extreme relativists/constructivists in science studioes that have presented him as their progenitor).
But in the second quoted paragraph Foucault goes on to reject the common view. For him the pre-Smithian (and pre-classical) political economists were not different in kind with those that followed Smith-Ricardo-Say. They held very different kind of views and with different methods, but that is because the thought of the age was structured by a very different kind of set of conceptual background conditions (episteme). These conceptual background conditions can be stable over considerable time and act on and through many different intellectual disciplines at once for Foucault. (Part of the excitement of Foucault's book is his analysis of the structural analogies of different disciplines in the same era (defined by an episteme). I leave aside here the mechanisms of how this is supposed to work.
Now, crucially for my present concerns Foucault recognizes ruptures between successive eras (epistemes) and within disciplines within eras.* These can coincide, when ruptures within disciplines lead to a new era. Interestingly enough, as it happens (and I return to this some other time) Adam Smith's work is a vector of such micro rupture in a field that also happens to inaugurate a much larger set of shifts. (I am not ascribing to Foucault a causal account here because I want to avoid discussing here his account of large scale change between epistemes.)**
So, in Foucault's account, from the perspective of a later time (within a discipline), especially in a later episteme, the earlier work will, when intelligible at all, seem childish or disunified. Very much the way Kuhn describes immature, pre-paradigm eras. But on Foucault's own all things considered view, this is a kind of optical illusion, itself the effect of unexamined teleological commitments. One is literally unable to see what he calls 'the link of necessity that connects' the conceptual structure and practices of those in an earlier age. And because Foucault doesn't use consensus as a marker of scienticity or disciplined knowledge he can actually analyze how it works -- and since he is interested in human sciences -- and how such knowledge works on humans on its own (contested) terms.**
To be continued.
*Some of what Foucault says about Smith's political economy in The Order of Things is actually rather cliché (and derivative of Marxist interpretations of Smith). This is a feature and not a bug of his account because of this vectorial role that Smith plays in it. Interestingly enough, Foucault is one of the great readers of Smith's essay (published as an appendix to The Theory of Moral Sentiments also in French translation), "Considerations on the Origin of Languages" (alongside Derrida of all people). In a future post I will discuss how Smith becomes a world historical vector of change in Foucault's hands.
**The significance of my interests in the present digression are actually signaled by Foucault in his preface to the English edition. It's worth reading in light of the Kuhnian reflections here.
The problem of change. It has been said that this work denies the very possibility of change. And yet my main concern has been with changes. In fact, two things in particular struck me: the suddenness and thoroughness with which certain sciences were sometimes reorganized; and the fact that at the same time similar changes occurred in apparently very different disciplines. Within a few years (around 1800), the tradition of general grammar was replaced by an essentially historical philology; natural classifications were ordered according to the analyses of comparative anatomy; and a political economy was founded whose main themes were labour and production. Confronted by such a curious combination of phenomena, it occurred to me that these changes should be examined more closely, without being reduced, in the name of continuity, in either abruptness or scope. It seemed to me at the outset that different kinds of change were taking place in scientific discourse - changes that did not occur at the same level, proceed at the same pace, or obey the same laws; the way in which, within a particular science, new propositions were produced, new facts isolated, or new concepts built up (the events that make up the everyday life of a science) did not, in all probability, follow the same model as the appearance of new fields of study (and the frequently corresponding disappearance of old ones); but the appearance of new fields of study must not, in turn, be confused with those overall redistributions that alter not only the general form of a science, but also its relations with other areas of knowledge. It seemed to me, therefore, that all these changes should not be treated at the same level, or be made to culminate at a single point, as is sometimes done, or be attributed to the genius of an individual, or a new collective spirit, or even to the fecundity of a single discovery; that it would be better to respect such differences, and even to try to grasp them in their specificity. In this way I tried to describe the combination of corresponding transformations that characterized the appearance of biology, political economy, philology, a number of human sciences, and a new type of philosophy, at the threshold of the nineteenth century. Foucault, The Order of Things, p. XII Foreword to English edition.
+My paperback edition lacks the name of the translator. But I found it online here.
"It's quite odd that Kuhn doesn't notice that conceptually (and historically) it's quite possible that during disunified 'immature' eras the paradigms of the competing 'schools' (his term) can be progressive and be (or in virtue of their) puzzle-solving."
That is because pre-paradigmatic sciences (what you've labeled "immature sciences") don't have paradigms, so this is hot in fact conceptually possible for Kuhn. The change of "nature" among "the sorts of elements" that make up a paradigm in a mature/paradigmatic science is just that they form a paradigm now where they didn't before. It's not that "immature" sciences have multiple paradigms where a "mature" science has a singular one. The existence of various phenomena as "the sort of elements" that make up a paradigm is always a backwards projection once a paradigm is up and running; before this happens, nothing is "the sort of element that could make up a paradigm" just on its own, because paradigms across all possible sciences don't have that sort of similarity. Anything *might* be an element of a future paradigm!
Posted by: Daniel Lindquist | 11/02/2022 at 06:57 AM
Hi Daniel, what do you make of this passage: "What changes with the transition to maturity is not the presence of a paradigm but rather its nature."
Posted by: Eric Schliesser | 11/02/2022 at 03:26 PM
Hi Daniel, i agree that fron perspective of normal science there is no paradigm in immature eras. But i am not sure kuhn infers from this there are no paradigms in the schools. SO, what do you make of this passage: "What changes with the transition to maturity is not the presence of a paradigm but rather its nature."
Posted by: Eric Schliesser | 11/02/2022 at 03:29 PM
The way I parse that is that what is present is what will later be called "a paradigm", but it is not yet a paradigm. This I think is how to make sense of the puzzling suggestion in Kuhn's prose that something can be "present" over a span of time but with multiple "natures": what changes is just the ways in which what is there can be accurately described. Before "mature" normal science is on the scene, the materials that will be the paradigm are already there, scattered about; but they are not yet formed into a paradigm until puzzle-solving can be done by looking to them as a model, since it is just their being treated in this way that makes them count as a paradigm.
As an analogy, my grandfather was a young boy in Nebraska many years ago: he was already present in Nebraska. But his nature as a "grandfather" was not there until he moved to Oklahoma and met my grandmother etc. etc. So in a sense I can say that my grandfather was a young boy in Nebraska, even though there was never a young boy in Nebraska who who was a grandfather.
I think Kuhn puts it in this rather awkward way at that point in the text because he wants to ward off the idea that what changes in a revolutionary shift to normal science has to be the introduction of something radically New, a Paradigm that suddenly appears on the scene as a great discovery: it need not be like that because the paradigm can just be (in a sense) things that were already lying about, only now slightly polished up and put to novel work. The revolutionary shift can take the form of a primarily social reorganization that does epistemic work, rather than occurring at the time some remarkable new fact is uncovered or a new theory is first formulated: it may just happen that old, pre-existing work suddenly takes on new relevance or is newly appreciated, and so what was already "present" suddenly takes on the new "nature" of something that inspires a regime of normal scientific puzzle-solving.
Posted by: Daniel Lindquist | 11/05/2022 at 09:11 AM