Episteme...The Order of Things.craftsmanship..Artes Mechanicae...Techne...Truth is a thing of this world: it is produced only by virtue of multiple forms of constraint.

Bachelard proposed that the history of science is replete with "epistemological obstacles"—or unthought/unconscious structures that were immanent within the realm of the sciences, such as principles of division (e.g., mind/body). The history of science, Bachelard asserted, consisted in the formation and establishment of these epistemological obstacles, and then the subsequent tearing down of the obstacles. This latter stage is an epistemological rupture—where an unconscious obstacle to scientific thought is thoroughly ruptured or broken away from.

Artes Mechanicae or mechanical arts, are a medieval concept of ordered practices or skills, often juxtaposed to the traditional seven liberal arts Artes liberales. Also called "servile" and "vulgar", from antiquity they had been deemed unbecoming for a free man, as ministering to baser needs.
Johannes Scotus Eriugena (9th century) divides them somewhat arbitrarily into seven parts:In his "Didascalicon," Hugh of St Victor (12th century) includes navigation, medicine and theatrical arts instead of commerce, agriculture and cooking.

Hugh's treatment somewhat elevates the mechanical arts as ordained to the improvement of humanity, a promotion which was to represent a growing trend among late medievals

The classification of the Artes Mechanicae as applied geometry was introduced to Western Europe by Dominicus Gundissalinus (12th century) under the influence of his readings in Arabic scholarship. In the 19th century "mechanic arts" referred to fields of which some are now known as engineering. Use of the term was apparently an attempt to distinguish these fields from creative and artistic endeavors like the performing arts and the fine arts which were for the upper class of the time, and the intelligentsia. The mechanic arts were also considered practical fields for those that did not come from good families.

Related phrases, "useful arts," or "applied arts" probably encompass the mechanic arts as well as craftsmanship in general. The most famous usage of the term "mechanic arts" (and the one in which it is most commonly encountered today) is in the Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act.

Techne is a term in philosophy which resembles epistēmē in the implication of knowledge of principles, although techne differs in that its intent is making or doing as opposed to disinterested understanding. As an activity, techne is concrete, variable, and context-dependent. As one observer has argued, techne "was not concerned with the necessity and eternal a priori truths of the cosmos, nor with the a posteriori contingencies and exigencies of ethics and politics. [...] Moreover, this was a kind of knowledge associated with people who were bound to necessity. That is, techne was chiefly operative in the domestic sphere, in farming and slavery, and not in the free realm of the Greek polis

Aristotle saw it as representative of the imperfection of human imitation of nature. For the ancient Greeks, it signified all the mechanic arts, including medicine and music. The English aphorism, "gentlemen don’t work with their hands", is said to have originated in ancient Greece in relation to their cynical view on the arts. Due to this view, it was only fitted for the lower class while the upper class practiced the liberal arts of 'free' men (Dorter 1973).

Socrates also compliments techne only when it was used in the context of epistēmē. Epistēmē sometimes means knowing how to do something in a craft-like way. The craft-like knowledge is called a technê. It is most useful when the knowledge is practically applied, rather than theoretically or aesthetically applied. For the ancient Greeks, when techne appears as art, it is most often viewed negatively, whereas when used as a craft it is viewed positively because a craft is the practical application of an art, rather than art as an end in itself. In The Republic, written by Plato, the knowledge of forms "is the indispensable basis for the philosophers' craft of ruling in the city" (Stanford 2003). Techne is often used in philosophical discourse to distinguish from art .

Techne is a term in philosophy which resembles epistēmē in the implication of knowledge of principles, although techne differs in that its intent is making or doing as opposed to disinterested understanding.

As an activity, techne is concrete, variable, and context-dependent. As one observer has argued, techne "was not concerned with the necessity and eternal a priori truths of the cosmos, nor with the a posteriori contingencies and exigencies of ethics and politics. [...] Moreover, this was a kind of knowledge associated with people who were bound to necessity. That is, techne was chiefly operative in the domestic sphere, in farming and slavery, and not in the free realm of the Greek polis

Aristotle saw it as representative of the imperfection of human imitation of nature. For the ancient Greeks, it signified all the mechanic arts, including medicine and music. The English aphorism, "gentlemen don’t work with their hands", is said to have originated in ancient Greece in relation to their cynical view on the arts. Due to this view, it was only fitted for the lower class while the upper class practiced the liberal arts of 'free' men (Dorter 1973).

Socrates also compliments techne only when it was used in the context of epistēmē. Epistēmē sometimes means knowing how to do something in a craft-like way. The craft-like knowledge is called a technê. It is most useful when the knowledge is practically applied, rather than theoretically or aesthetically applied. For the ancient Greeks, when techne appears as art, it is most often viewed negatively, whereas when used as a craft it is viewed positively because a craft is the practical application of an art, rather than art as an end in itself. In The Republic, written by Plato, the knowledge of forms "is the indispensable basis for the philosophers' craft of ruling in the city" (Stanford 2003). Techne is often used in philosophical discourse to distinguish from art.*

Techne is often used as a term to further define the process of rhetoric as an art of persuasion. In his writing Toward a Sophistic Definition of Rhetoric, rhetoric scholar Dr. John Poulakos explains how the Sophists believed rhetoric to be an art that aimed for terpis, or aesthetic pleasure, while maintaining a medium of logos. For centuries, debate between sophists and followers of Plato has ensued over whether rhetoric can be considered a form of art based on the different definitions of techne.[3] Contrasting from others, Isocrates saw rhetoric as an art—yet in the form of a set of rules, or a handbook. Some examples of handbooks are the Rhetoric of Aristotle, the Rhetorica ad Alexandrum, and the De Inventione of Cicero, all composed of rules to write effective speeches. On the other hand, it can be seen in David Roochnik’s book Of Art and Wisdom: Plato’s Understanding of Techne that Plato viewed techne as “a stable body of reliable knowledge able to tell us, in fixed terms readily teachable to others, how we ought to live.” He believed that moral knowledge is equivalent to a techne and that the meaning of the term techne must be fully grasped to understand the nature of moral knowledge.

In Gorgias, Plato wrote that rhetoric is not techne but a habit of a bold and ready wit. Plato continued saying rhetoric is not an art but an experience because it fails to explain the nature of its own application. He compared it to cookery and medicine saying cookery pretends to know what is best for the body because it is pleasurable while medicine knows what is for the best of the health of the human body. Medicine is techne for it seeks what is best for the health of a person unlike cookery which is only for pleasure and fools a person into believing it is better for their health.

Richard Parry writes Aristotle believed techne aims for good and forms an end, which could be the activity itself or a product formed from the activity. Aristotle used health as an example of an end that is produced from the techne of medicine. To make a distinction between techne and arete he said the value of techne is the end product while arete values choosing the action that promotes the best moral good.

Techne is also a part of communication, and affects how human cultures interact. When people speak to one another, they apply their knowledge of social interactions, verbal and nonverbal cues, and their shared language to the skill of speaking. It is both personal and social, everybody has their own personal techne around their speech based on learned experiences and personal tics, and very social in that communities all communicate amongst each other on the interpersonal and large scale.

In relation to communication, techne is based less on what a person says or thinks, but on what they do. The mechanical action of speaking is mostly unconscious, and most of the work takes place in the centers of the brain similar to how a pianist knows where his fingers should go even without looking (Shepard). As Jonathan Sterne puts it, “Communication requires both language and technology – and both are forms of techne.” (Shepard) In relation to technology, the use of a cell phone or any other communicative device requires both an understanding of how the phone works and how social interactions are supposed to be handled on the telephone, but also requires that a person actively does it.

"Episteme" is a philosophical term derived from the Ancient Greek word ἐπιστήμη, which can refer to knowledge, science or understanding, and which comes from the verb ἐπίσταμαι, meaning "to know, to understand, or to be acquainted with". Plato contrasts episteme with "doxa": common belief or opinion. Episteme is also distinguished from "techne": a craft or applied practice. The word "epistemology" is derived from episteme.

The French philosopher Michel Foucault used the term épistémè in a highly specialized sense in his work The Order of Things to mean the historical a priori that grounds knowledge and its discourses and thus represents the condition of their possibility within a particular epoch. In subsequent writings, he made it clear that several epistemes may co-exist and interact at the same time, being parts of various power-knowledge systems. But he did not discard the concept:

I would define the episteme retrospectively as the strategic apparatus which permits of separating out from among all the statements which are possible those that will be acceptable within, I won’t say a scientific theory, but a field of scientificity, and which it is possible to say are true or false. The episteme is the ‘apparatus’ which makes possible the separation, not of the true from the false, but of what may from what may not be characterised as scientific.

Yet in Foucault's The Order of Things he describes Episteme as:

However, if in any given culture and at any given moment, there is always only one episteme that defines the conditions of possibility of all knowledge, whether expressed in a theory or silently invested in a practice. (Foucault, 168)

Foucault's use of episteme has been asserted as being similar to Thomas Kuhn's notion of a paradigm, as for example by Jean Piaget.However, there are decisive differences. Whereas Kuhn's paradigm is an all-encompassing collection of beliefs and assumptions that result in the organization of scientific worldviews and practices, Foucault's episteme is not merely confined to science but to a wider range of discourse (all of science itself would fall under the episteme of the epoch). While Kuhn's paradigm shifts are a consequence of a series of conscious decisions made by scientists to pursue a neglected set of questions, Foucault's epistemes are something like the 'epistemological unconscious' of an era; the configuration of knowledge in a particular episteme is based on a set of fundamental assumptions that are so basic to that episteme so as to be invisible to people operating within it. Moreover, Kuhn's concept seems to correspond to what Foucault calls theme or theory of a science, but Foucault analysed how opposing theories and themes could co-exist within a science. Kuhn doesn't search for the conditions of possibility of opposing discourses within a science, but simply for the (relatively) invariant dominant paradigm governing scientific research (supposing that one paradigm always is pervading, except under paradigmatic transition). In contrast, Foucault attempts to demonstrate the constitutive limits of discourse, and in particular, the rules enabling their productivity; however, Foucault maintained that though ideology may infiltrate and form science, it need not do so: it must be demonstrated how ideology actually forms the science in question; contradictions and lack of objectivity is not an indicator of ideology.Kuhn's and Foucault's notions are both influenced by the French philosopher of science Gaston Bachelard's notion of an "epistemological rupture", as indeed was Althusser.[citation needed] In 1997, Judith Butler used the concept of episteme in her book Excitable Speech, examining the use of speech-act theory for political purposes.

"Truth is a thing of this world: it is produced only by virtue of multiple forms of constraint. And it induces regular effects of power. Each society has its regime of truth, its “general politics” of truth: that is, the types of discourse which it accepts and makes function as true; the mechanisms and instances which enable one to distinguish true and false statements, the means by which each is sanctioned; the techniques and procedures accorded value in the acquisition of truth; the status of those who are charged with saying what counts as true"

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Episteme

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Taken on: March 10, 2018

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