Explication
Put into the greater context of Foucault’s discourse of the Episteme, The prose of the world sets Foucault’s exposition of the concept of Episteme into motion. Foucault begins with proposing the four similitudes as consisting the structure of knowledge formation in the Renaissance. He then takes on an argumentative strategy that gradually zooms out into the bigger discourse, to develop a postulation of signatures and subsequently the structure of language in Renaissance. All this in turned paved the way for Foucault’s greater argument that knowledge does not develop uniformly over history but is specific to epochs and dependent on a set of underlying historical epistemological frameworks specific to that period, that which he called Epistemes. Essentially, Episteme for Foucault are the bigger frameworks or epistemological plateaus that delimit what kind of knowledge is possible within specific periods in history. Once these greater frameworks of knowledge are sketched into place, a corresponding set of knowledge particular to that Episteme will thereby be made possible or impossible. For Foucault the development of knowledge occurs in discrete leaps of Episteme, instead of gradual evolution. Knowledge that is deemed valid in one Episteme could emerge invalid or vice Versa in another, when there is an overarching Episteme shift. Right from the beginning of The prose of the world, Foucault made clear that he is concerned with the 16th century Renaissance’s mode of knowledge construction. He posed 3 key questions that his exposition seeks to answer; 1st the question of what the similitudes mode of ontology and epistemology consist of for the 16th century intellectual community. 2nd the question of how this mode of knowledge based of similitudes and resemblances organise and create knowledge unique to the Renaissance. Finally, the question of what potentials and limitations, such framework place on knowledge creation. To answer the first question, he begins with immersing us within the persona of the Renaissance scholars that he would later go on to quote extensively. He put us into an archeologically reenactment of the cognitive schema of several prominent Renaissance scholars, including Paracelsus, Aldrovandi,