The Archaeology of Knowledge (L’archéologie du savoir, 1969) by Michel Foucault is a treatise about the methodology and historiography of the systems of thought (epistemes) and of knowledge (discursive formations) which follow rules that operate beneath the consciousness of the subject individuals, and which define a conceptual system of possibility that determines the boundaries of language and thought used in a given time and domain.

[1] The contemporary study of the History of Ideas concerns the transitions between historical world-views, but ultimately depends upon narrative continuities that break down under close inspection.

Discourses emerge and transform according to a complex set of relationships (discursive and institutional) defined by discontinuities and unified themes.

[3] A statement is the set of rules that makes an expression — a phrase, a proposition, an act of speech — into meaningful discourse, and is conceptually different from signification; thus, the expression “The gold mountain is in California” is discursively meaningless if it is unrelated to the geographic reality of California.

[10] The philosopher Gilles Deleuze describes The Archaeology of Knowledge as, "the most decisive step yet taken in the theory-practice of multiplicities.