exact science. On the other hand, if architecture, like the practice of government and
the practice of other forms of social organization, is considered as a techne, possibly
using elements of sciences like physics, for example, or statistics, etc...., that is what
is interesting. But if one wanted to do a history of architecture, I think that it should be
much more along the lines of that general history of the techne, rather than the
histories of either the exact sciences or the inexact ones. The disadvantage of this word
techne, I realize, is its relation to the word ‘technology’, which has a very specific
meaning. A very narrow meaning is given to ‘technology’: one thinks of hard
technology, the technology of wood, of fire, of electricity. Whereas government is also
a function of technology: the government of individuals, the government of souls, the
government of the self by the self, the government of families, the government of
children, and so on. I believe that if one placed the history of architecture back in this
general history of techne, in this wide sense of the word, one would have a more
interesting guiding concept than by considering opposition between the exact sciences
and the inexact ones.
NOTES
1 See the article on Foucault in Skyline, March 1982, p. 14.
2 Jean Bodin, Republic, Paris, 1577.
3 Alain Corbin, Les Filles de noces, Aubier, 1978.
Michel Foucault 357