QuestionsCan science explain everything?Power and knowledge imply one another: truth is "of this world"
Can science explain everything?A human construction

Power and knowledge imply one another: truth is "of this world"

Power-knowledge; the regime of truth; genealogy (Foucault)

Michel Foucault 1926 · 1984Philosopher and historian: knowledge and power produce each other, and every society has its regime of truth.
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What it claims

Scientific knowledge is partly a construction tied to power relations; the task is not to free truth from power, but to detach the power of truth from the forms of hegemony in which it operates.

Why

All knowledge presupposes power relations and truth is produced only under constraints: knowledge is not a neutral mirror.

The same idea through history
Friedrich Nietzsche1887Nietzsche, in the Genealogy of Morals, traces the origin of our values and knowledge to relations of force. Foucault claims this "genealogy" to study how bodies of knowledge form.
Thomas Kuhn1962Kuhn shows, from the history of the natural sciences, that the scientific community and its paradigms weigh on what counts as proof. His starting point differs from Foucault's, the conclusion is close.
Michel Foucault1975In Discipline and Punish, Foucault shows that bodies of knowledge about man (medicine, psychiatry, criminology) are born inside institutions of control: prison, asylum, clinic, school.
In short

"Power and knowledge imply one another: truth is "of this world"" is an argument by Michel Foucault (Discipline and Punish (1975); "Truth and Power" (interview, 1977), 1975) on the question "Can science explain everything?" (answer: a human construction). Its claim: Scientific knowledge is partly a construction tied to power relations; the task is not to free truth from power, but to detach the power of truth from the forms of hegemony in which it operates. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P3, P4). AskPhilosophy presents 3 objections, 1 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

Discipline and Punish (1975); "Truth and Power" (interview, 1977)
Valid with an implicit premise

Science is often imagined as a neutral gaze on the world, far from power. Michel Foucault, historian of prisons, asylums and hospitals, argues that knowledge and power are made together: to watch, classify or treat people, one produces knowledge about them, and that knowledge in turn gives ways of acting on them. Truth is therefore not outside power: each society has its "regime of truth", with its institutions, its rules and those charged with saying what is true. Foucault works mainly on the human sciences (medicine, psychiatry, criminology); whether his thesis also holds for physics is precisely what is disputed. The books are in copyright: we quote short passages from English translations, checked.

P1Power and knowledge directly imply one another: there is no power relation without the correlative constitution of a field of knowledge, nor any knowledge that does not presuppose and constitute at the same time power relations.
P2Truth is not outside power: it is produced only by multiple forms of constraint, and in turn induces effects of power. Each society has its regime of truth.
P3 · implicit premiseThe sciences are discourses received as true within such a regime, with their institutions (laboratories, hospitals, universities, prisons) and their rules for saying what counts as knowledge.
P4 · implicit premiseKnowledge produced under constraints that vary from one society to another is not a simple neutral reflection of reality: it is in part constructed.
Therefore scientific knowledge is partly a construction tied to power relations; the task is not to free truth from power, but to detach the power of truth from the forms of hegemony in which it operates.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P3 and P4, one can grant P1 and P2 for psychiatry and criminology while thinking that physics describes the world as it is, independently of the institutions that practise it. The conclusion then holds only for the human sciences.
The argument is valid with the hidden premises P3 and P4. P1 and P2 set the link between knowledge, truth and power; P3 places the sciences among the discourses held to be true; P4 says knowledge produced under varying constraints is partly constructed. The debates concern P3 (does it hold for physics as much as for psychiatry?) and P4 (is being produced under constraints a way of being less true?).
Analogy. A city map is never neutral: it shows what those who drew it want you to see (roads, districts, borders). The city exists independently of the map, but what we know of it passes through what was chosen to be drawn. Foucault says bodies of knowledge work like maps too.

Objections

3

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

Hilary Putnam 1975 · attacks the conclusion

Putnam argues that the success of science (confirmed predictions, working technologies) would be a miracle if its theories were not at least roughly true. A science merely constructed by institutions should not succeed so well at predicting facts nobody chose.

a defender replies
see the argument
We have not yet found a direct reply by Foucault in the texts.
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Joseph Rouse defender of the argument · 1987
In Knowledge and Power, Rouse applies Foucault's analysis to the natural sciences. For him laboratory knowledge is built through practices, instruments and institutions; this does not take away its effectiveness, but shows that its results hold together through those practices rather than as a simple mirror of the world.
The debate goes on (our summary) Foucault does not reply to Putnam (their texts date from the same period) and almost never speaks of physics: his inquiries are about medicine, psychiatry, prisons. Extending his thesis to the natural sciences is the work of his successors.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Basic disagreement: does the success of science prove it describes the world as it is, or only that it succeeds within its own practices? Realists and constructivists still divide on this (our summary).
Jürgen Habermas 1985 · attacks premise 2

Habermas accuses Foucault of contradicting himself: if all truth is an effect of power, his own critique of power has no basis for calling itself truer or more just than another. Foucault criticises without saying in the name of what, and his theory secretly presupposes norms it claims it cannot ground.

no reply
We have not yet found a direct reply by Foucault in the texts.
The debate goes on (our summary) Foucault died in 1984, before the publication of the lectures in which Habermas sets out this critique in full (1985). He did however defend in 1984, in "What Is Enlightenment?", a critique faithful to Kant's critical spirit without claiming a universal foundation: that text is not a direct answer to Habermas, and we have not re-read it.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Open point: can a critique do without a universal foundation, or does it presuppose one? Foucault's followers and Habermas's still debate it (our summary).
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Nancy Fraser 1981 · attacks the conclusion

Fraser finds Foucault's descriptions valuable, but his moral position confused: he uses "power" sometimes in a neutral sense, sometimes as something to fight. If all knowledge is tied to power, why would one form of power be worse than another? Without a criterion for telling domination from what is not, Foucault's conclusion does not say what to resist.

no reply
We have not yet found a direct reply by Foucault in the texts.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Open point: does Foucault have an implicit criterion (freedom, suffering, subjection) or not? Fraser's critique bears on politics more than on science; supporters and opponents still discuss it (our summary).