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The Prose of the World

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Michel Foucault
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It has been over two centuries since resemblance ceased to play in our culture a stable, adequate and autonomous role at the wellspring of knowledge. The classical age broke away from it. First Bacon, then Descartes established within our time a system of knowledge in which similitude no longer occupied more than a precarious and temporary place, on the border of illusion: “when we discover some resemblances between two things we ordinarily attribute what we have recognized as true of one only to the other as well, even aspects in which in reality they differ.” Since the 17th century the similar has offered no more to knowledge than an unstable countenance, ready to give way to knowledge, and it is the province of knowledge to determine immediately the identical and the different so that they appear one beside the other and are scrupulously distinguished.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 14 , Issue 53 , March 1966 , pp. 17 - 37
Copyright
Copyright © 1966 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

References

1 Bacon, Novum Organon, Book 1, p. 45 and 55.

2 Descartes, Regulae I.

3 P. Gregoire, Syntaxeon artis mirabilis, Cologne, 1610, p. 28.

4 G. Porta, La Physionomie humaine (French translation, 1655), p. 1.

5 U. Aldrovandi, Monstrorum historia, Bologna, 1647, p. 663.

6 T. Campanella, Realis Philosophia, Frankfort, 1623, p. 98.

7 G. Porta, Magie naturelle (French translation, Rouen, 1650), p. 22.

8 U. Aldrovandi, Monstrorum historia, p. 3.

9 Paracelsus, Liber Paramirum (translated by Grillot de Givry, Paris, 1913), p. 3.

10 Crollius, Traité des signatures (French translation, Lyon, 1624), p. 18.

11 Paracelsus, loc. cit.

12 Cesalpinus, De plantis libri XVI, 1583.

13 Crollius, Traité des signatures, p. 88.

14 P. Belon, Histoire de la nature des oiseaux, Paris, 1555, p. 37.

15 U. Aldrovandi, Monstrorum historia, p. 4.

16 Crollius, Traité des signatures, p. 87.

17 G. Porta, Magie naturelle, p. 72.

18 G. Porta, Magie naturelle, p. 72.

19 J. Cardan, De la subtilité (French translation, Paris, 1656), p. 154.

20 S. G. S., Annotations au Grand Miroir du Monde de Duchesne, p. 498.

21 S. G. S., loc. cit.

22 Paracelsus, Die 9 Bücher der Natura Rerum (Œuvres, ed. Suhdorff, v. IX, p. 393).

23 Crollius, Traité des signatures, p. 4.

24 Crollius, Traité des signatures, p. 6.

25 Crollius, Traité des signatures, p. 6.

26 Crollius, Traité des signatures, p. 33.

27 Crollius. Traité des signatures, pp. 33-34.

28 J. Cardan, Métoposcopie (1658 edition), pp. iii-viii.

29 G. Porta, La physionomie humaine, p. 64.

30 Bacon, Histoire naturelle (French translation, 1631), p. 221.

31 Paracelsus, Archidoxis Magica (French translation, 1909), pp. 22-23.

32 Paracelsus, loc. cit.

33 T. Campanella, De sensu rerum et magia, Frankfort, 1620.