Foucault's Theory Of Knowledge And Its Scientific Philosophy

Michel Foucault, a distinguished philosopher of postmodernism, conducted his research in medicine, criminology, history, literature, psychology, sociology and politics. After an "archeological" research of history, he revealed the construction of process of knowledge and developed a knowledge theory different from previous scholars. This paper aims to analyze the knowledge theory of Foucault and make a comparative discussion of the important ideas in the development process of philosophy of science. Based on the logic framework of the relations among the important concepts of Foucault Thought, namely, "knowledge type"-"knowledge/power"-"subject"-the internal logic of subject, this paper takes the discussion of concepts and related thoughts in philosophy of science as the main contents, analyses the classic theories and thoughts in philosophy of science, reviews the knowledge theory of Foucault. and tries to analyze the scientific philosophy thoughts in his theory. The main structure of this paper is as follows:In the introduction part, the life experience, thought origin and important works of Foucault are given to show the important events and turning points in his life. In addition, there are also some philosophers and traditions in French science history that have an important impact on Foucault, together with an illustration on several important works of Foucault as the "entrance" to his thoughts. This part is mainly about his thought origin, finds out the tread of Foucault thoughts, and paves the way to illustrating the different thoughts of Foucault, as the background of this paper.The first chapter begins with an important concept, namely "knowledge type", to discuss the knowledge theory of Foucault and compare with the paradigm theory from Thomas Samuel Kuhn, a famous philosopher of science, in order to find similar characters between their theories. Emphasis is given to the concept of "knowledge type" in his works "The order of things", trying to highlight the role of the concept of "knowledge type" in Foucault thoughts and his "history archives" way of conducting research.The second chapter discusses the concept of "power" in Foucault thoughts. Based on study of archives, Foucault found the representation of power in different ages.Besides. the relations between knowledge and power are also discussed in this chapter, as well as the subject of knowledge "intellectuals". From the academic arguments between Foucault and Sartre, we can try to explore Foucault's special understanding about intellectuals.This third chapter adopts Foucault's thought of "knowledge/power" and analyzed the latest progress in philosophy of science in terms of scientific community, scientific field, scientific investment and scientific authority in sociology of science, in order to reveal the operation of power and illustrate the significance of studying Foucault's knowledge theory in philosophy.