Conceptual space of nature goes 3D

I am glossing here the account given by Foucault in the Reading, from The Order of Things, as cited, around page 265.

Foucault expresses the point that with the new conception of organism you have two levels - what is inspectable at one level and the organization underlying what is inspectable at another - by saying that the 18th C table of identities and differences was broken up; that the level of identities was uncoupled from the level of differences.

"The Same and the Other" belong to the same space in the Classical period, and occasion natural history; "something like biology becomes possible when this unity of level begins to break up, and when differences stand out against the background of an identity that is deeper and, as it were, more serious than that unity".

So where you had differences and identities considered as belonging to the same two dimensional plane, you now have identities of function at a deep level actually manifesting themselves on the surface through features that may not be the same at all: an "uncoupling of the level of identities from that of differences".

In the 18th Century you have therefore a two-dimensional table of differences and identities. In the 19th Century, this gives way to a three dimensional conception: differences and identities become seen as the the consequence of structural organization underlying them.

The difficulty is in understanding the Classical conception: we still operate with what replaced it, the three dimensional conception which thinks that how an animal appears, what observable features it possesses, are the surface manifestations of what is truly significant, namely the functional organization of the organism. Can we imagine this third dimension not being there? That is what Foucault would have us do if we are to grasp the Classical perspective.

A PARALLEL: ISLANDS AS MOUNTAIN TOPS

It sometimes comes as a shock to think of a cluster of islands as the tops of a mountain range most of which is submerged. The surprise is thinking of them as having something like a "third dimension" which we had not thought of them as having before, a dimension that goes down below the waves and allows us to think of the islands as linked up. This gives us a bit of a parallel for the idea of becoming aware of a third dimension for animals and plants.

But can we take the parallel further and think of the features of the islands as thrown up by the organization of the structures that lie under the waves?

We can imagine Classical persons approaching the classification of the islands like this: visit the islands, survey them carefully, list their observable features (size, whether wooded, whether hilly, type of coastline etc); then set up groups based (one way or another) on these features.

A post 18th Century person would say: what you have to notice is that these surface features, or some of them, flow from the underlying structure of the "mountain range" the islands belong to. Take this point and you immediately have a way of identifying some observable features as more significant from the point of view of classifying than others eg there will be the signs of an island's volcanic character will be more important than purely accidental features (shape?).

There is also the point that several different characters will be signs of the same thing, so that surface differences become compatible with fundamental identities. (Eg one surface covered by grass and another by trees, when the underlying feature is the capacity to support vegetation of some kind or other.)

But the real revolution comes when the post-18th Century person goes on to say not just that surface features can be put into an order of significance in virtue of their relationship to underlying structure but that we ought to be interested in the underlying structure as such, and only bother with the problem of putting things into order insofar as this serves other purposes.

What do you think?

Does Foucault's conception here make sense? Is it convincing?

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Reason, nature and the human being in the West: Part 5

5.3 The conceptual space of nature goes 3D: Foucault

A PARALLEL: ISLANDS AS MOUNTAIN TOPS

What do you think?