Finished Foucault – ultimately unsatisfactory despite 80% good content. Conclusions as incomprehensible as the penultimate chapter on Man. Did Foucault get tired towards the end, or his translator, or his editor (or was it just me) ?
Discovered publishers note about the mysterious translation of the title – sure enough, the publisher suggested The Order of Things precisely to distinguish it from other works in English with the titles “Words and Things / Objects” (See Quine below)
Umberto Eco’s little joke in his title “Foucault’s Pendulum” is of course responsible for the confusion between Michel Foucault and the Pendulum. (See the 10 most elegant experiments blog earlier)
[Note that psybertron seems to have got into search engines and directory listings at last – so more direct google hits etc, rather than re-directs from the old weblog archives. That, plus the increasing number of reciprocal links, probably responsible for the rising hit rate. I’ll have to watch my P’s&Q’s.]