The unnamed structuralism of four nineteenth-century philosopher-physicists - CNRS - Centre national de la recherche scientifique Accéder directement au contenu
Chapitre D'ouvrage Année : 2018

The unnamed structuralism of four nineteenth-century philosopher-physicists

Olivier Darrigol

Résumé

Structuralism is commonly believed to have emerged in the twentieth century, first in linguistics and in mathematics, then in anthropology, psychology, literary criticism, and other human sciences, with a surge in the 1960s. The word is also used to characterize a variety of the semantic approach to physical theory and a variety of realism in today's philosophy of physics. Although there are many varieties of structuralism, they all share a focus on structure qua self-contained, abstract , generic system of relations. Abstractness here means that the nature of the relata is indifferent; genericity means that the same structure is shared by a multi-plicity of objects. This minimal definition of structuralism is adopted here, for it is well adapted to a study of interdisciplinary exchanges in a historical perspective. It implies a kind of cohesion and holism, because in a given structure the meaning of a term is entirely defined by its relations with other terms and because any term is related to any other term through a chain of relations (otherwise the structure would divide itself into several independent substructures). In some varieties of structuralism,-structure‖ may have additional connotations including rigidity, agency, dynamism, or analogy with organisms. The most pervasive structuralist qualifications nonetheless remain abstractness and genericity. The word-structuralism‖ received the meaning just defined in the 1920s. 2 In earlier times the word-structure‖ rarely had its modern structuralist meaning. It usually referred to the way an object is constructed (concretely or metaphorically), with no intended abstraction of the structure from its object(s).This lexical observation raises two questions: How did the word-structure‖ acquire its structuralist meaning? Did structuralism exist before it was so named?
Fichier principal
Vignette du fichier
Structure Evora.pdf (866.77 Ko) Télécharger le fichier
Origine : Fichiers produits par l'(les) auteur(s)
Loading...

Dates et versions

hal-02950532 , version 1 (01-10-2020)

Identifiants

  • HAL Id : hal-02950532 , version 1

Citer

Olivier Darrigol. The unnamed structuralism of four nineteenth-century philosopher-physicists. Maria de Paz; João Príncipe. Évora studies in the philosophy and history of science, 2, CALEIDOSCÓPIO, pp.1-49, 2018, From Ontology to Structure, 978-989-658-482-5. ⟨hal-02950532⟩
56 Consultations
176 Téléchargements

Partager

Gmail Facebook X LinkedIn More