Further Foucault

Working through Foucault, one issue that comes to mind is how many times do you continue the circle of questioning traditions/basis? How low-level do we need to start before we can actually work out what we know?

For example, in biblical studies, the very nature of the discipline is built on a tradition: the text of the Bible. The notion of canon would need to be questioned. Do we go further? If the texts in the canon were written in conversation with other texts, which are now lost, can we even say anything about the texts?

In more general history, does our task get further complicated (or made impossible) the further back we go in time? If we suspect there are further texts available, do we need those before we can claim complete work?

Further, how do Foucault's theories work in the light of complexity/fractal theory? Complexity/fractals would claim that the rules providing us with the infinite complexity can be stated simply. While mathematics (in which I have engaged complexity theory the most, though not recently), the rules/terms of the system are often perhaps more easily stated than perhaps in history or literature, this does not mean that it wouldn't apply to other areas. History in particular lends itself to complexity's infinite (or near infinite) inputs into a system, regardless of how simple the rules of the system might be. Foucault lets (encourages) us render a discourse down into the specifics that we need to see how complex this actually becomes.