There are, for example, "forms of scientific consciousness" that are aspects of a psychopathological "will to knowledge" rooted in "instinct, passion, the inquisitor's devotion, cruel subtlety, and malice." The extent to which this is so depends on the degree to which the personalities creative of such forms are characterized by instinctual sources of violence and sadism unmastered by the ego.
Keynes claimed an extreme degree of this paychopathology characterized Newton's "scientific consciousness." Though this was capable of significant insight into inorganic phenomena, it was largely closed to insight into social phenomena. For this reason, it was incapable of creating truly scientific social theory, in particular, it was incapable of creating a truly scientific economics. It led for instance to a mistaken identification of scientific reasoning with axiomatic deductive reasoning. The nature of the "internal relations" characteristic of social phenomena, however, severely limits the applicability of such reasoning (the fact of internal relations explains why, as Foucault claims, "logic" imposes on things "a duration not intrinsic to them"). The mind characterized by obsessional psychopathology is closed to this aspect of reality. Thus, as Keynes puts it, "starting from a mistake" the "remorseless logician" can end up in "bedlam."
Ironically, many of Foucault's own claims can be explained in this way. He himself, however, implicitly and self-contradictorily excludes his own form of "scientific consciousness" from the claims he makes about "forms of scientific consciousness" in general.
"if it [historical consciousness] examines itself and if, more generally, it interrogates the various forms of scientific consciousness in its history, it finds that all these forms and transformations are aspects of the will to knowledge: instinct, passion, the inquisitor's devotion, cruel subtlety, and malice. It discovers the violence of a position that sides against those who are happy in their ignorance, against the effective illusions by which humanity protects itself, a position that encourages the dangers of research and delights in disturbing discoveries. The historical analysis of this rancorous will to knowledge reveals that all knowledge rests upon injustice (that there is no right, not even in the act of knowing, to a truth or a foundation for truth) and that the instinct for knowledge is malicious (something murderous opposed to the happiness of mankind). Even in the greatly expanded form it assumes today, the will to knowledge does achieve a universal truth; man is not given an exact and serene mastery of nature. On the contrary, it ceaselessly multiplies the risks, creates dangers in every area; it breaks down illusory defenses; it dissolves the unity of the subject; it releases those elements of itself that are devoted to its subversion and destruction." http://www.personal.psu.edu/faculty/j/m/jmh403/ nietzsche_genealogy_history.htm
Ted