ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with an account of the paradigm as this is conceived by Michel Foucault and suggests a consequential modification of Foucault's episteme. It discusses the example of Foucault's episteme for the Renaissance and sketch an alternative account of it and its relationship with the alleged epistemological break of the seventeenth century in the light of this modification. An ideal type can be used to describe a paradigm; but it is also able to describe progressive change and epistemological breaks. The chapter sketches out a few claims relating to proposed modification of Foucault's episteme. Foucault's own notion of the inhuman logic inherent in epistemes closely resembles this formal rationality, without there ever being in Foucault's work acknowledgement of the proximity. The chapter suggests that it is possible to construct a working hypothesis of a paradigm and a paradigm shift which is not constrained by Kantian categorialism.
