I 279
Natural history: change between 1775 and 1795: the principle of classifications is not called into question. "Essential feature" Difference:
Old view: for the systematics the representative elements were determined from the beginning.
New: methodologists: for them, the representation only comes off almightily in the advancing confrontation. >
Representation.
1. Hierarchy of features: some are absolutely constant and are missing in no genre or species. Others are less constant. With them a definition of families or orders is impossible. They are not essential.
2. Function of the features: functions are connected with the characteristics. Old view: the essence is fixed at the visible point. New: the feature is not created by a relationship of the visible to itself.
3. Concept of life: a relationship in the depth of the body that connects the organs to the surface.
Classification: new: does no longer mean referring the visible to itself, but to a deeper cause.
4. Parallelism between classification and nomenclature is resolved by this fact.
Thought image/Foucault: Relationship between the organization's space and that of the nomenclature: instead of covering one another, they will be perpendicular to each other.
Similarity: presupposes the examination of the whole organization of the species.
The name and genre, designation and classification, language and nature cease to intersect. The order of the words and the order of the beings are only found in an artificially defined line.
Language: one begins to talk about things that stand in a space other than the words.
Order/Classic: certain way of composition of elementary substances. (>
Classification/Linné,
Species/Linné).
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Gould II 70
Classification/Gould: Historical changes of classifications are the fossilized signs of mental overthrows.
Gould II 71
Classification/Foucault/Gould: Why group the poor, the unemployed, and the mentally ill together?
Foucault argues that the birth of modern commercial societies has led to a new definition of cardinal sin, which must be made invisible by locking it away. That sin was inaction.
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Gould II 72
Foucault: Thesis: The things that are left out of the taxonomies are just as important as those that are included.
1. M. Foucault,
