biohistoriography
--- the genealogy of embodied epistemology
The sub-title of this website also functions as a definition of what is a completely new field of intellectual history: biohistoriography.
Why not �biohistory�? Biohistory already exists and it can be understood as a sub-discipline of biohistoriography. Biohistory investigates the way in which the biological forces of nature (ecology, environment, disease, etc) impact on, and distort, discrete events in human history. Biohistory is an additional factor in human history rather than an explanation for the course of human history as a whole. Biohistoriography, on the other hand, poses a direct challenge to the basis of existing historiographical approaches to human history - the idea of a disembodied human intellectual history - known as epistemology.
Why �embodied epistemology� and not �bio-epistemology�? Also known as �evolutionary epistemology�, bio-epistemology asserts that human knowledge marches hand-in-hand with evolutionary biology. Bio-epistemology is based on the idea that humans evolved into the highest form of life and that human knowledge is determined by human evolution. In other words, it means that if evolution was repeated, humans would evolve again, and human knowledge would evolve with it to arrive at this exact same point in history. Biohistoriography poses a direct challenge to bio-epistemology. It asserts that human knowledge does not evolve - it is not determined by biology - but is contingent on biology by being embodied.
Why �genealogy�? For biohistoriography, epistemology is contingent on embodied biology, not evolutionary biology, so human history does not occur as a smooth, seamless, flow towards some evolutionary predetermined epistemological end-point. Embodied epistemology is interrupted by embodied biology - it stops and starts - but embodied biology always remains as the basis for epistemology. There is epistemological continuity through the �family line� of embodiment but there are contingent �breaks� between �generations� of embodiment - and, consequently, a genealogy of epistemology. There are surface similarities between biohistoriography and the work of the French historiographer, and philosopher of history, Michel Foucault (1926-1984), in the idea of �genealogical epistemology� . However, although biohistoriography has no basis in the work of Foucault, it is a concept with roots in the same lesser-known French philosophical tradition through Gaston Bachelard (1884-1962) and Georges Canguilhem (1904-1995).
Why �epistemology� not �knowing�? If biohistoriography was a Foucauldian concept then its definition would be �embodied knowing�. For Foucault, epistemology was not an absolute truth - it was not about �objective knowledge� - it was a way of �knowing� - something which changed with the course of history. Foucaults epistemology is contingent on �history� itself - it is self-generating and so completely without foundation. Indeed, for Foucault, epistemology was neither disembodied or embodied knowledge - it was something he called �knowing�. In distinction to the established disembodied epistemology, and Foucaults vision of epistemology, biohistoriography synthesizes the objective disembodied knowledge of epistemology with an objective biology of embodiment.
What do I mean by �biology of embodiment�? I have already said that biohistoriography is not �evolutionary� historiography but I have not yet said what I do mean by biology in this context. Biohistoriography specifically priveleges the embodiment of a particular biological circumstance, of a disease, known as Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME).
This website features a series of essays in the new field of biohistoriography.
The essays are researched and written to academic standard from documented sources - but they are not the works of an academic - they are original independent thinking towards a new intellectual history.
The essays are not acceptable to academic journals for four reasons:
1) The essays directly challenge the established academic approach to epistemology.
2) The essays appear to be too fantastical to be true - they appear unbelievable.
3) The essays are not written by a qualified, or tenured, academic.
4) The essays cross too many artificial academic disciplinary boundaries.
For these reasons, and the issue of surrendering copyright, I am publishing the essays on this dedicated website.
The problem of "embodied knowledge" as an academic discipline is very new - but a start was made in 1998 with the publication of a book of essays by the University of Chicago Press:
Science incarnate: historical embodiments of natural knowledge / Christopher Lawrence & Simon Shapin (eds). Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.
No copying of this website, in any media, without permission from the author.
