Michel Foucault

Foucault, M. (2000) The Order of Things. Pg. 55-63, London: Routledge.

Foucault makes the point that order is nothing more than judging that no outside stimuli should influence the order of one thing or another. The only thing that should influence are the things that set them apart. If you are able to not classify something due to its differences or similarities, you are just judging them by previous traits and precedents.

“Order, on the other hand, is established without reference to an exterior unit: ’I can recognize, in effect, what the order is that exists between A and B without considering anything apart from those two other terms’; one cannot know the order of things ‘in isolated nature’, but by discovering that which is the simplest, then that which is next simplest, one can progress inevitably to the most complex things of all.” (Page 59, first full paragraph)

“The activity of the mind-and this is the fourth point- will therefore no longer consist in drawing things together, in setting out on a quest for everything that might reveal some sort of kinship, attraction, or secretly shared nature within them, but, on the contrary, in discriminating, that is, in establishing their identities, then the inevitability of the connections with all the successive degrees of a series.”

The article is trying to focus directly on order, whereas the rest of the book takes on a holistic approach of looking at the other components or ordering. He neatly sectioned up the book to reveal these components and make the subjects easier to comprehend.

I plan on using this source in my argument against a truly globalized knowledge. There are so many variables to be taken into account, and this is one of them that prove my point.

The connections are purely in the writings and how they coincide with one another. This makes my statements detailed and accurate from multiple angles and perspectives.