Inédit 1 (1964): Réflexions sur les possibilités d’une description de l’histoire de la linguistique

Semiotica ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 2017 (214) ◽  
pp. 15-28
Author(s):  
Algirdas J. Greimas
Keyword(s):  
Sociology Of Knowledge ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Independent System ◽  
Scientific Revolutions ◽  
Generalized Systems ◽  
History Of ◽  
Entire Society ◽  
Effective Models ◽  
Structural Semantics ◽  
Kuhnian Revolution

AbstractThe Wenner-Gren Foundation symposium “Revolution vs. Continuity in the Study of Language” invites speakers to discuss the applicability of Thomas Kuhn’s 1962 essay to linguistics. Kuhn does well to posit an autonomous epistemological plane, to take account of the sociology of knowledge, and to focus on the history of structures rather than of fleeting events. On the other hand, he presents each science as essentially stagnant throughout most of time, and offers an atemporal and harmonious view of how one “paradigm” replaces its predecessor; Kuhnian history emerges as a succession of synchronies. The portrayal ignores that if paradigms emerge at successive moments, old and new overlap and coexist in tension. Constructing each science as an independent system, it also neglects dynamics that cross or connect disciplines, including generalized systems of thought, and outlooks common to an entire society at a given era.Whereas sciences today are familiar with synchronic systems, effective models of those structures’ diachronic transformation are lacking. Rather than Kuhn’s or Hegel’s a priori and overly general schemas, inductive approaches based on the linguistic analysis of scholarship or researchers’ autobiographical testimonies could provide better results. In the interim, adopting Braudel’s concept of history as encompassing events belonging to three distinct chronological orders ranging from quotidian to multi-secular, we can see that a Kuhnian revolution alters views characteristic of a discipline during a given period, but only changes portions of the overall field as it has developed throughout time. This conception reconciles synchrony and diachrony. Rather than prolonged periods of inactivity, we observe a constant scientific praxis which transforms paradigms defined as open, their possibilities always exceeding their extant realizations. Such paradigmatic variations cannot account for exceptional scientific revolutions which exceed their scale, such as the invention of writing, and which represent instead breakthroughs in a model’s effectiveness, in its ability to transform reality and human experience. The contemporary project for a structural semantics aims to achieve a second linguistic revolution by constructing a new language which can serve as the science of humanity, an anthropology comparable to the mathematics used in the life sciences.

RISE, GRUBENHUND: ON PROVINCIALIZING KUHN

2012 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-126 ◽  
Author(s):  
DEBORAH R. COEN
Keyword(s):  
History Of Science ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Foreign Languages ◽  
Ludwik Fleck ◽  
Scientific Revolutions ◽  
Visual Metaphors ◽  
Structure Of Scientific Revolutions ◽  
History Of ◽  
Kuhnian Revolution ◽  
Neutral Ground

Bilingualism was Kuhn's solution to the problem of relativism, the problem raised by his own theory of incommensurability. In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, he argued that scientific theories are separated by gulfs of mutual incomprehension. There is no neutral ground from which to judge one theory fitter than another. Each is formulated in its own language and cannot be translated into the idiom of another. Yet, like many Americans, Kuhn never had the experience of moving comfortably between languages. “I've never been any good really at foreign languages,” he admitted in an interview soon before his death. “I can read French, I can read German, if I'm dropped into one of those countries I can stammer along for a while, but my command of foreign languages is not good, and never has been, which makes it somewhat ironic that much of my thought these days goes to language.” Kuhn may have been confessing to more than a personal weakness. His linguistic ineptitude seems to be a clue to his overweening emphasis on the difficulty of “transworld travel.” Multilingualism remained for him an abstraction. In this respect, I will argue, Kuhn engendered a peculiarly American turn in the history of science. Kuhn's argument for the dependence of science on the norms of particular communities has been central to the development of studies of science in and as culture since the 1980s. Recent work on the mutual construction of science and nationalism, for instance, is undeniably in Kuhn's debt. Nonetheless, the Kuhnian revolution cut off other avenues of research. In this essay, I draw on the counterexample of the physician–historian Ludwik Fleck, as well as on critiques by Steve Fuller and Ted Porter, to suggest one way to situate Kuhn within the broader history of the history of science. To echo Kuhn's own visual metaphors, one of the profound effects of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions on the field of history of science was to render certain modes of knowledge production virtually invisible.

Scientific Revolutions

Philosophy ◽  
2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Nickles
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Practice ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Scientific Change ◽  
Scientific Development ◽  
Scientific Revolutions ◽  
Structure Of Scientific Revolutions ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Scientific Decision

Scientific revolutions and the problem of understanding deep scientific change became central topics in philosophy of science with Thomas S. Kuhn’s publication in 1962 of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (see Kuhn 1970, cited under General Overviews). Kuhn attacked the received view of the logical empiricists and Popperians that scientific change is cumulative. He claimed that there have been several revolutions since the so-called scientific revolution, including dramatic overturnings in the most mature sciences—with more to be expected in the future. Kuhn’s more dynamic model of scientific development postulated the existence of occasional crises that sometimes trigger full-scale revolutions that overthrow the old “paradigm” and replace it with a new one discontinuous or “incommensurable” with the old one. He rejected the received views of scientific rationality and denied that even the most successful sciences are progressing toward a final, representational truth about the world. By focusing on finished, “textbook” science, defenders of the received view, he argued, presented an inadequate account of how scientific research is done, leaving unexplained the marked difference between the mature natural sciences and the social sciences as well as the difference within a mature science itself between “normal science” and the extraordinary research context of science in crisis. Kuhn and an entire generation of historically oriented philosophers of science believed that philosophical models of science should be more naturalistic (not based on a priori normative claims), more reflective of scientific practice, and thus testable against the history of science. Unlike the logicians of science, Kuhn highlighted cognitive and social psychological factors and the importance of rhetoric in scientific decision making. In reaction, critics questioned whether there have been any genuinely Kuhnian revolutions, accusing Kuhn of debunking modern science by portraying science as subjective, irrational, and relativistic. Kuhn replied that he was not a relativist, that he was attempting to develop a new account of scientific cognition and rationality, and that he was in effect trying to instigate a revolution of his own at the level of metascience and even general epistemology. Virtually no expert fully accepts Kuhn’s model of science, but there is general agreement that he posed some serious problems, including the problem of new theories: How can it be rational for scientists to reject a highly developed and accomplished theory or research program in favor of a radical and undeveloped new approach? Kuhn’s work stimulated a number of later developments in philosophy and in social studies of science more generally.

scholarly journals The crowd and citylife: Materiality, negotiation and inclusivity at Tokyo’s train stations

Urban Studies ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 004209802110078
Author(s):  
Romit Chowdhury ◽  
Colin McFarlane
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
Urban Density ◽  
History Of ◽  
Mode Of Being ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The City ◽  
Human Embodiment

In the history of urban thought, density has been closely indexed to the idea of citylife. Drawing on commuters’ experiences and perceptions of crowds in and around Tokyo’s Shinjuku Station, this article offers an ethnographic perspective on the relationship between urban crowds and life in the city. We advance understandings of the relations between the crowd and citylife through three categories of ‘crowd relations’– materiality, negotiation and inclusivity – to argue that the multiplicity of meanings which accrue to people’s encounters with crowds refuses any a priori definitions of optimum levels of urban density. Rather, the crowd relations gathered here are evocations of citylife that take us beyond the tendency to represent the crowd as a particular kind of problem, be it alienation, exhaustion or a threshold for ‘good’ and ‘bad’ densities. The portraits of commuter crowds presented capture the various entanglements between human and non-human, embodiment and mobility, and multiculture and the civic, through which citylife emerges as a mode of being with oneself and others.

Assisted-living for older people in Israel: market control or government regulation?

2003 ◽  
Vol 23 (6) ◽  
pp. 779-795 ◽  
Author(s):  
ISRAEL DORON ◽  
ERNIE LIGHTMAN
Keyword(s):  
Older People ◽  
Assisted Living ◽  
Government Regulation ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Self Regulation ◽  
Legal Regulation ◽  
Rapid Expansion ◽  
Assisted Living Facilities ◽  
History Of ◽  
Legitimate Interests

In recent decades there has been a rapid expansion of assisted-living facilities for older people in many different countries. Much of this growth has occurred with only limited or no government regulation, but many problems have arisen, typically around the quality of care, which have led to demands that governments act to protect vulnerable residents. This paper examines whether formal legal regulation is the optimal policy to protect the needs and rights of frail residents, while respecting the legitimate interests of others, such as operators and owners. It presents the case for and against direct legal regulation (as in institutions), and suggests that no overall a priori assessment is possible. The analysis is based on the case of Israel, where proposed regulations for assisted-living have been introduced but not implemented. After a brief history of assisted-living in Israel – its recent dramatic growth and why this occurred – the paper concludes that formal direct regulation is not the best route to follow, but that the better course would be to develop totally new ‘combined’ regulatory legislation. This would define the rights of residents and encourage self-regulation alongside minimal and measured mechanisms of deterrence. Such an approach could promote the continued development of the assisted-living industry in Israel and elsewhere, while guaranteeing that the rights, needs and dignity of older residents are protected.

A New Approach to the Modeling of Magnetorheological Dampers and Application to Resonance Control

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dennis A. Siginer ◽  
Mario Letelier ◽  
Juan Sebastián Stockle Henríquez
Keyword(s):  
Flow Pattern ◽  
Yield Stress ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Time History ◽  
Magnetorheological Damper ◽  
Mr Fluid ◽  
Variable Resistance ◽  
History Of ◽  
Displacement Pattern ◽  
Analytical Tools

Abstract A predetermined flow pattern in a magnetorheological damper providing continuously variable resistance to flow is required for efficient damping of a given load. The required predetermined flow pattern rests on the a priori determination of the constitutive properties of the magnetorheological (MR) fluid determined to generate variable resistance to flow. The inverse problem of constructing the predetermined response of the damper with a specific displacement pattern of the piston in the damper for efficient damping of a given load is solved. The magnetorheological (MR) fluid in the damper is modeled as a Bingham phase change material with time dependent yield stress offering continuously variable resistance to the flow in the piston to achieve the required specific displacement pattern. The governing equations are solved for any time history of the dimensionless yield stress of the fluid which in turn is determined from the imposed response of the damper. Analytical tools developed can be used in optimizing damper performance. The application of the method to resonance mitigation is illustrated.

scholarly journals An historical framework for psychiatric nosology

2009 ◽  
Vol 39 (12) ◽  
pp. 1935-1941 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. S. Kendler
Keyword(s):  
Psychiatric Illness ◽  
Theoretical Orientation ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Early History ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Species Definition ◽  
Psychiatric Nosology ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
History Of

This essay, which seeks to provide an historical framework for our efforts to develop a scientific psychiatric nosology, begins by reviewing the classificatory approaches that arose in the early history of biological taxonomy. Initial attempts at species definition used top-down approaches advocated by experts and based on a few essential features of the organism chosena priori. This approach was subsequently rejected on both conceptual and practical grounds and replaced by bottom-up approaches making use of a much wider array of features. Multiple parallels exist between the beginnings of biological taxonomy and psychiatric nosology. Like biological taxonomy, psychiatric nosology largely began with ‘expert’ classifications, typically influenced by a few essential features, articulated by one or more great 19th-century diagnosticians. Like biology, psychiatry is struggling toward more soundly based bottom-up approaches using diverse illness characteristics. The underemphasized historically contingent nature of our current psychiatric classification is illustrated by recounting the history of how ‘Schneiderian’ symptoms of schizophrenia entered into DSM-III. Given these historical contingencies, it is vital that our psychiatric nosologic enterprise be cumulative. This can be best achieved through a process of epistemic iteration. If we can develop a stable consensus in our theoretical orientation toward psychiatric illness, we can apply this approach, which has one crucial virtue. Regardless of the starting point, if each iteration (or revision) improves the performance of the nosology, the eventual success of the nosologic process, to optimally reflect the complex reality of psychiatric illness, is assured.

scholarly journals Towards developing a cyber-physical multi-agent system for managing precise farms with digital twins of plants

2019 ◽  
pp. 257-261
Author(s):  
Vladimir Laryukhin ◽  
Petr Skobelev ◽  
Oleg Lakhin ◽  
Sergey Grachev ◽  
Vladimir Yalovenko ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
Knowledge Bases ◽  
Agent Based ◽  
Plant Soil ◽  
Plant Cultivation ◽  
Technical Requirements ◽  
Digital Twins ◽  
History Of ◽  
Multi Agent ◽  
High Uncertainty

The paper presents the multi-agent approach for developing cyber-physical system for managing precise farms with digital twins of plants. It discusses complexity of the problem caused by a priori incompleteness of knowledge about factors of plant growth and development, high uncertainty of crops cultivation, variety of weather, business and technical requirements, etc. The approach proposes knowledge bases and multi-agent technology in combination with machine learning methods for designing considered systems. Digital twin of plant is specified as an agent based on ontology model of objects relevant for plant cultivation (specific sort of plant, soil, etc) associated with history of operations and environment conditions. The architecture and functions of system components are designed. The expected results of system implementation and the benefits for farmers are discussed.

scholarly journals Behind the Facade of Uvarov’s Classicism: Career Strategies of Classical Philologists at Russian Universities

2020 ◽  
pp. 80-92
Author(s):  
Kira Ilina
Keyword(s):  
Public Education ◽  
General Education ◽  
Sociology Of Knowledge ◽  
Russian Empire ◽  
Ministry Of Education ◽  
Classical Source ◽  
Academic Networks ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Russian Empire ◽  
Russian Universities

Introduction. The article is focused on reconstruction of the practices of forming a disciplinary group of classical philologists in the Russian Empire universities in the 1830s – 1850s. Methods. For this purpose, the archival materials of the Ministry of Education, as well as Saint Petersburg, Moscow, Kazan and Kiev Universities are considered. The research methodology is based on a combination of both traditional general historical methods and methods of classical source studies, and approaches developed in the framework of the history of science, the sociology of knowledge and the history of disciplines. Analysis and results. It is important to analyze three points: the political context, practices in building career trajectories and academic networks of professors of Greek and Roman literature and antiquities at Russian universities. The transformation of the existing network of universities into the system of public education was carried out by the Minister of Public Education Sergey Uvarov in the 1830s. Transferring to Russia the European model of secondary education based on the study of classical languages, Uvarov created a system of general education and relentlessly promoted antiquity studies in the Russian Empire. Teaching classical disciplines was expanded at gymnasiums and universities. Following the academic personnel reform of the late 1830s, a number of “antiquity chairs” at universities was headed by young philologists and historians who had spent two or three years of training at universities in Germany, mainly in Berlin, attending lectures and seminars of leading German classical philologists. In the 1840s – 1850s, an artificially constructed group of classical philologists gradually transformed into a disciplinary community.

scholarly journals De fremmede, Det Gamle Testamente, vi

1987 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans J. Lundager Jensen
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Ethnic Differences ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Western World ◽  
Equal Part ◽  
Nature And Culture ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
History Of

On the basis of examples of attitudes towards foreigners in the Old Testament, the internal tension between a tendency to eliminate the differences between Israel and foreigners and an insistence on maintaining the fundamental distance between Israel and foreigners, even in eschatological perspective, is presented. The a priori assumption of the Israelitic understanding of themselves is not a differentiation between nature and culture (between non-human and the human), but between the human in general and the specifically Israelitic. This difference cannot be transgressed without the break-down of the Israelitic system. Identity is understood here as establishing differences. But the dialectic between the Old Testament beginnings which are negated by the history of Israel, continues in the New Testament which negates the history of Israel and yet which allows the Old Testament to remain as an equal part of the canon. The practical universalism (modernism) of the Western world and the eradication of ethnic differences is thereby partly anticipated as a problematic in the Christian canon and partly given an important corrective.

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