|
man, Thom has the idea that pre-linguistic content may be seen as a manifoldin
many dimensions R
n n
(in turn possibly referring to a state-of-affairs with similar
or even greater dimensionality). If such a content is to be linguistically ex-
pressed, it must be cut up into R
4 4
pieces able to be rendered in single minor
events. gli eventi. These events, in turn, must be projected onto the linear one-dimensional
string of syntax so that formally, the encoding of content is a mapping R
n n
->R
4 4
- -
> R, necessarily losing some of the content originally present, in order to attain
the simplicity and stability of syntax. This analysis of semantic content into
pieces accessible to syntactic representation of course requires a mirror process
of synthesis to take place in the receiver.
Now, the semantic forms are the linguistic counterpart to the experienced
structure. struttura. As regards the crucial representation of events, these are, Thom
claims, evoked by the verbs whose schematic meaning simulates the external
event type they designate or refer to (cf. below on Lucien Tesnière). Obviously, Ovviamente,
the validity of Thom's solution to the problem rests on the possibility of pro-
ducing a consistent determination and delimitation of the semantic forms and
their corresponding event types. On the other hand, the way he states the case
seems to address a key issue in any research program within semiotics: 1) Man
is characterized by his capacity to organize sense data into pre-linguistic repre-
sentations of the external world which are faithful simulationsofcoreaspectsof
the spatiotemporal processes they refer to. 2) Whatever the origin of language
Page 13 Pagina 13
Wolfgang Wildgen
13 13
is, one of its fundamental functions must have been to communicate relevant
information about things and events in the environment. 3)Thus,languagemust
be capable of faithfully describing basic structures of spatiotemporaleventsand
must therefore dispose of means to encode such information (a morphology of
meaning). 4) It is one of the tasks of linguistics to explain how the structure of
our representations is encoded in language, in terms of a morphology of mean-
ing. Ing.
In short, Saussure is the, as it were, negative backdrop of Thom's realistic
conception of the relation between language and thought, and between thought
and the structural makeup of the objects it refers to. The Saussurean lexicon
allows him to stress the difference between the arbitrarity inherent to a mor-
phology of the signifier (in its relation to the signifier), and themotivatednature
of the morphology of the signified (in its relation to structure in the environ-
ment). mento).
Now, as regards Roman Jakobson, the only time he is invoked in non-
general terms and in a rather extensive quotation (something Thom is far from
being accustomed to) is in an epistemological discussion which is attheheartof
Thom's early ventures into the domain of linguistics. The discussion concerns
the classical Genesis / Geltung problem (origin vs. validity) and thus addresses
the classical antinomy between casual-reductionist and formal-structural ap-
proaches to language; an antinomy which Thom, in the vein of Jakobson, sets
out to overcome. Roughly speaking, the antinomy—or the aporia—consists in
the sorry alternative between considering language
1. 1. as a non-autonomous system and explaining it in terms of some other sys-
tem of constraining properties (relative to, say, the organism which uses
language, its psychology,its (neuro)-physiology;itsphonatoryandauditory
system, its ecology, history and sociology, and so on): in which case the
object—Language—is denied any ideal, general properties (it is no object
proper, no Gegenständlichkeit as Husserl would have put it), and it is as a
result reduced to being an epiphenomenon of the positive existence of its
material cause;
2. 2. as a self-contained formal symbolic system determinable solely in termsof
its own intrinsic relational or structural properties, independentlyofanyex-
trinsic reality, purpose, function, or relation to other cognitive domains
(perception, reasoning): in which case you may obtain a relatively faithful
description of language—on the grounds of a purelyimmanentgrammatical
a priori—which has a negative counterpart, though: the incapacity of moti-
vating and explaining the emergence and the very nature of the formal
Page 14 Pagina 14
Thom and modern evolutionary linguistics
14 14
structures governing the linguistic system: ”where do the structures come
from?” as Thom enjoyed asking.
It is while evoking the Scylla of reductionism and the Charybdis of
autonomism that Thom (1974) refers to Jakobson's cognate concern:
[…] if we do not thoroughly combine the complementary notions of autonomy and integra-
tion, our attempt will be led astray: either the prosperous idea of autonomy will degenerate,
as all particularisms, into an isolationistic and self-destructive prejudice, ie a sortofsepara-
tism or apartheid, or we go in the opposite direction, whereby we compromise the sound
principle of integration by substituting the indispensable autonomy with an infelicitous het-
eronomy (or 'colonialism')” (Jakobson, Essais de linguistique générale , II,p.256;ourtrans-
lation).
Catastrophe Theory as applied to linguistics is in Thom's view a way of
overcoming this state of affairs. On the one hand it supplies with a morpho-
logical description, thus doing justice to the phenomenological autonomy of
language as a higher order object (again: a Husserlian Gegenständlichkeit ), on
the other hand it is as such a theory that aims at motivating the nature of the
morphological structure of language, since the structure is determined in terms
of the externally realized and syntactically simulated conflict between two or
more forces/actants. As Thom himself claims:
For the catastrophe theoretician the structure is no ” a priori ” fact, it does not belong to some
Platonic empyrean. It is a direct result of the conflict between two (or more) forces which
generate and sustain it. This makes it possible to develop a classification of forms as well as
an algebra, a combinatorial system of forms on a multidimensional space […] We are now
close to perceiving the outline of a dynamic structuralism which reintegrates causality and
time and thus appears as a general theory of forms which is independent of the specific na-
ture of the substrate space” (Thom 1974, p. 245, our translation).
9 9
9 9
Pour le théoricien des « catastrophes » la structure n'est pas donnée « a priori », elle ne sort
pas d'une empyrée platonicienne. Elle est directement issue du conflit entre deux (ou plu-
sieurs) forces qui l'engendrent et la maintiennent par leur conflit même. Ceci permet de dé-
velopper une classification des formes, ainsi qu'une al- gèbre, une combinatoire des formes
sur un espace multidimensionnel ; ainsi, les possibilités de l'approche structurale se trou-
vent-elles considérablement augmentées, et en expliquant la morphologieparundynamisme
sous-jacent, on peut rompre l'antinomie des tendances réductionniste et structurale.Onpeut,
en e et, faire une théorie rendant compte des mécanismes de cause, et classifier les formes
archétypes qui passent par couplage causal d'un substrat à un autre. Ainsi, s'entrevoitlapos-
sibilité de créer un structuralisme dynamique, qui, réintégrant la causalité et le temps,sepré-
senterait comme une théorie générale des formes indépendante de la nature spécifique de
l'espace substrat.”
Page 15 Pagina 15
Wolfgang Wildgen
15 15
Lucien Tesnière (and Aristotle)
Thom endorsed a basic form of Aristotelian realism throughout his wholeintel-
lectual life. This is, of course, explicitly the case in his Sketch of a Semio-
Physics (Thom 1988) and its outline of a common sense ontology based on a
reinterpretation of Aristotle's Physics as a charting of naive physics, but it is
already key to his early conception of the relation between mind and matter. In In
his view, perception is a question of extracting form or structure , ie morpho-
logical information , from the matter in which it is realized. Perception is,
roughly speaking, a ”transfer of form” from matter to mind, and this is indeed
to be taken in a literal, strong sense: the state into which the mind stabilizes,
corresponding to the understanding of the experienced object, is a state which
rests on the same structure than the object itself; to perceive is to take in a form
from one domain, the physical realm, a form, which is then re-unfolded in an-
other realm or domain, the soul or the mind. Hence, Thom's Aristotelian punch
line: ”the message which has an autonomous meaning inherits itsstructurefrom
the external catastrophe it intends to mean” (Thom 1972, p. 329); the content of
the intentional act is thus claimed to possess the same structure as the external
object it refers to. This entails that the meaningful representational states in the
brain are governed by the same morphogenetic principles than the phenomenal
manifestation of their reference objects (things and processes). If this is so—
that is if such Aristotelian hylomorphism obtains, then, obviously, a major task
consists in laying down the types of structure (or catastrophes, to use Thom’s
term) which organize the interaction between spatial entities and thus make out
the scaffolding of those general processes and events humans perceiveandcon-
ceptualize. In its semiotic versant Catastrophe Theory sets out explicitly to es-
tablish this: it aims to lay down the principles which govern the semiotic inter-
face between phenomenal forms and representational forms.
Now, this formal isomorphism between the structure of objects (in the
broad sense, including event types) and the structure of perception transposes
directly to Thom's topological theory of language. The structural form of the
object is not only re-unfolded in content of perception, but also in and by the
structure of the symbolic system in which such contents are expressed, ie lan-
guage. gauge. In other words, Thom claims that the principle organizing the combina-
tion of meaning-carrying units in language corresponds to the principle under-
pinning the configuration of phenomenal parts into intelligible wholes in
perception. percezione. The rationale of this claim is biological: it seems sensible to sug-
gest, as Thom says (1980a: 180), that language has evolved from the necessity
of (or the advantage inherent in) conveying to others the significant changes
Page 16 Pagina 16
Thom and modern evolutionary linguistics
16 16
(ie the catastrophes) in the environment. This entails—as Thom with no fur-
ther argument asserts—that the syntactic structure ”naturally” reflects the dy-
namic structure of the external catastrophe. But how, then, is the dynamic
structure of the external catastrophe actually encoded in language? To which
extent can it make sense to claim that one and the same principle of organiza-
tion should be active in two realms as apparently different as the linguistic and
the perceptual?
Here, Thom is standing on the shoulders of the founding father of modern
syntax, Lucien Tesnière (1893-1954), who in 1934 published the article ”Com-
ment construire une syntaxe” which preceded his monumental work on struc-
tural syntax, posthumously published in 1959 with the title Eléments d'une
syntaxe structurale . As a matter of fact, Tesniére counts among themostimpor-
tant linguistic influences on Thom, as he puts it rather bluntly: “Personally,
only two linguists have taught me something: Lucien Tesnière (Bloomfield’s
contemporary as regard his use of graphs) and Hansjakob Seiler, German lin-
guist who founded a universalist group in Köln.”
10 10
In the following we shall very briefly present some of the tenets of Tes-
nière's syntax, establish the affinities to Thom's topological syntax as well as
point to a couple of differences.
Tesnière defines syntax as a system of dependence relationswithsuperordi-
nate and subordinate lexical entities. Syntactical analysis, thus, consists in lay-
ing down the hierarchy of connections between lexical entities in a sentence. In In
'my old friend', 'friend' is the superordinate word, whereas 'my old' are the
subordinate terms ('old' being the superordinate of 'my'). In 'my old friend
Alfred reads a book', the highest superordinate term is 'reads',whereas'Alfred'
and 'book' are the immediate subordinate words with each their subordinate
expressions. Now, key to Tesnière's theory of syntax is the notion of valency .
As just suggested, Tesnière places the verb or the verbal ”knot” on top of the
hierarchy of connections. It is the core element of linguistic expressions and
Tesnière defines it in terms that are readily transposable to recent grammars'
use of argument-role structure and the like. ”The verbal knot,” Tesnière says,
”expresses a real small drama. As a drama it indeed comprises a process, and
most often actors and circumstances.” (Tesnière, 1959: 102, our translation).
Now, the number of ”actors”—or to use Tesnière's own and in continental
10 10
“Personnellement, seuls deux linguistes m'ont appris quelque chose : Lucien Tesnière
(contemporain de Bloomfield pour son emploi des graphes) et Hansjakob Seiler,linguisteal-
lemand qui a fondé un groupe universaliste à Cologne” (Letter to Monsieur Lekka-
ri,Abdelbasset, March 26th 1991; Inédits 1991, p. 105, in Thom 2003).
Page 17 Pagina 17
Wolfgang Wildgen
17 17
semiotics widespread term: ”actants” (semantic roles)—attached to a verb de-
fines its ”valency” or argument-structure. Two elements connect directly to
Thom's topological linguistics as developed in eg (Thom, 1980a, originally
1971). 1971).
a) The structural principle of combination underlying both Tesnière's and
Thom's theory of syntax is not purely formal-linguistic. Linguistic entities
are not combined by virtue of their categorical form (analytically attributed
with some valency), rather they are combined correlatively totheschematic
content expressed by the verb: it is, thus, not a formal property of the verb
”give” that it has a trivalent structure (giver -> gift -> givee), it is a (real
formal) property of the scene it refers to. Part of Tesnière's legacy in Thom
could indeed be defined in terms of the intrinsic semantic import of syntax.
Here, syntax is less a principle for the linearized combination of lexical en-
tities by virtue of their categorical form than it is a principle for theconfigu-
ration of lexical entities by virtue of their semantic structure. Seen from the
point of view of contemporary cognitive linguistics (Talmy 2000, Lan-
gacker 1987-1991), both Tesnière and Thom more or less explicitly antici-
pate the crucial intermediary schematic level, shared by both language and
perception: accordingly, verbs evoke a schematic representationofa”small
drama” or express as their genuine content the ”phenomenologicalcatastro-
phe” in the scene they designate: syntax simulates the interaction between
spatiotemporal actants. This also tends to motivate the strong constraints
syntactic structure is submitted to, as we suggested above: if the highest
value of verb valency is 4, this is, according to Thom, due to the fact that
the interactions they represent are themselves constrained by the maximum
number of simultaneous minima in the seven elementary catastrophes.
Thom's theory thus provides a sort of minimalist cognitivist idea; however,
this aspect of his theory—the outline of a schematic ontology roughly de-
fined in terms of the 7 elementary catastrophes and the archetypal graphs—
is exactly what has lead to Jean Petitot's reframing and re-elaboration of
morphodynamic semiotics in view of hooking up the ”deep” morpho-
topological structures that Thom laid bare with the ”shallower”,butdescrip-
tively much more efficient conceptual schemata developed in cognitivesci-
ence. rienza.
b) More technically, Thom's linguistic theory could be characterizedasatopo-
logical schematization of the concept of valency. Thom construes Tes-
nière's connexion between actants in terms of positional connexions be-
tween places occupied by actants in an abstract space (to this, cf. Petitot
Page 18 Pagina 18
Thom and modern evolutionary linguistics
18 18
1985, 1992, 1995). The structural connexions underpinning surface syntax
which Tesnière defined in terms of his “stemma” are thus redescribed by
Thom as positional configurations: a trivalent verb consequently encodes a
connexion between three positional actants. Such positional configurations
are limited in number since there is a limited number of possible undecom-
posable interactions between actants. Thom's well-knownarchetypalgraphs
or interactional graphs are models of the fundamentally possibleformsofin-
teraction between actants. His aim is therefore to objectively determine the
nature and number of event types expressed in and by language.Ifaccording
to Thom, the message inherits the structure (the catastrophe) of the state of
affairs it refers to, then, at a global level, this structure exerts a strong con-
straint on language: indeed, the nature and limits of event types necessarily
defines the nature and limits of linguistic combination of meaningunits.The
set of event types (catastrophes) serves as a global characterization of the
sentence structure in general. At a local level, in any given expression, a
verb can be said to unfold a schematic landscape with actants interacting in
a general way (the interaction type of the verb) and comports a specification
of the interaction (the action type of the verb, as it were): the archetypal
graph captures, of course, the general schematic make-up, say ofa transmis-
sion type, whereas the particular verbs provide the concrete flesh: 'give',
'hand', 'send', 'offer', 'donate', etc. The interaction type providestheglobal
structural unity of the expression; the action type its local specificity.
It is easy to evaluate the extension of Tesnière's influence on Thom,butitis
difficult to assess its depth. On the one hand, Tesnière is the most recurrent
reference in Thom's semio-linguistic writings: he appears for the first time in
the seminal ”Topologie et signification” (1968, reprinted in Thom 1980a),
never to disappear again (Thom still warmly refers to Tesnière and the influ-
ence he exerted on him in his 1997-talk ”Graphes-Signaux-Prégnances”).
Moreover, there are, as we have just suggested, important analogies between
Tesnière and Thom. Firstly, of course, both rest on a mereological-semantic
definition of language structure in terms of dependency relations between su-
perordinate and subordinate parts (with the verb as the kernel and other word
classes as satellites hooked onto it)—ie they both marshal they idea that in
language the structural configurational order prevails over the linear, combina-
torial order.
11 11
Secondly, and perhaps less known, Thom has acknowledged his
11 11
Tesnière's syntactical structure has an evident semantic ground insofar as its argument” or
”actant” structure is relative to the type of event it refers to; it is therefore not a simple ana-
Page 19 Pagina 19
Wolfgang Wildgen
19 19
”diagrammatical” depth to Tesnière to the extent that the Strasbourg linguist
was the first to propose ” a graph based structural explanation of grammatical
structure,” that is to say a schematization of sentence structure that does not
simply mirror or reproduce its linear order.
12 12
On the other hand, however, Thom's own theory of syntaxisquiterudimen-
tary with respect to Tesnière's detailed descriptions and fine-grained distinc-
tions. zioni. His references to Tesnière are in almost all cases general in scope and
basically boil down to simply evoking Tesnière's concept of valency.
It seems thus sensible to contend that Thom's theory of languageiskindred,
intellectually affine with Tesnière's, but not built on his grounds.InfactThom's
assumptions as regards language are, both generally (for example, as to the
relation of language to perception and the formal structure of the phenomenal
world) and internally (as to its own formal make-up) a direct consequenceofhis
ontological commitment. In other words, with our without Tesnière, Thom
would most probably have come up with the same sort of theory. Once you
claim that the central issue to be addressed within linguistics is how language
can syntactically simulate the structure of the events it refers to, and once you
claim that these event structures cluster in determinable types, then the rest
follows: there must exist recurrent semantic forms which can re-articulate this
interactional structure, and there must exist lexical entities in chargeofexpress-
ing this sort of content, viz. verbs. verbi. In contrast to Tesnière—who wasbusydoing
other things—Thom explicitly aims at bringing linguistic structure back to the
world. mondo.
Saliency and pregnancy (Wolfgang Köhler)
The development of Catastrophe Theory is known to constitute the first part of
Thom's philosophy of nature. The concept of pregnancy is, along withitscoun-
lytical property of a given categorical form: the ditransitivity of the verb ”give” issomething
proper to the kind of event it refers to, not an a priori property of that verb as a categorical
form. modulo.
12 12
Cf.: ”Des théories linguistiques que j'eus l'occasion de rencontrer, celle de Tesnières
m'avait particulièrement plu. Car ce fut la première à expliquer la structuregrammaticalepar
une structure en graphe de cette partie du discours qu'on appelle usuellement la phrase ”
(Among the linguistic theories I had the occasion to encounter, I was particularly fond of
Tesnière's. It was indeed the first to explain the grammatical structure of the part of dis-
course we usually call the sentence by a graph structure(Thom 1997, p. 31).
Page 20 Pagina 20
Thom and modern evolutionary linguistics
20 20
terpart ”saliency”, the pillar of what he himself called his “second philosophy”,
that is to say the one devoted to the characterization of the ”intelligible ontolo-
gies” and relaxing the dependency on the mathematical formalisms oftheorigi-
nal Catastrophe Theory (Thom 1988 is the main reference as regards this en-
deavor). Three things should be mentioned in this respect: (1) Thom introduces
the notion of pregnancy, albeit not saliency, in the heyday of Catastrophe The-
ory, cf. for example the article ”De l'icône au symbole” from 1973 (Thom
1980; Eng. transl. trad. 1985). We are consequently dealing with a constant in
Thom's work, perfectly compatible with the basic catastrophe-theoretical
framework.
13 13
(2) However, in ”De l'icône au symbole” (1980a, originally from
1973), Thom distinguishes between biological pregnancies (ie the capacity of
a form to evoke other biologically significant forms) and physical pregnancies
(ie, the intrinsic, salient, structural stability of a form). The notion of biologi-
cal pregnancy clearly anticipates the conception of pregnancy Thom will mar-
shal in the 1980s, so that biological and physical pregnancy simply correspond
to the later notions of pregnancy and saliency, respectively. (3) Whereas
Thom's own use of the concept is perfectly clear, the relation between Thom’s
understanding of ”pregnancy” and its Gestalt-theoretical origins in Max
Wertheimer and Wolfgang Köhler (Thom's main, if not simply only reference
in this respect) remain rather unclear.
The text ”Prédication et Grammaire Universelle” (Thom,1980b,butwritten
and presented in public in January 1978) seems to be one of the very first to
introduce the notion in its by now classical conception: ”Let's say that a spatial
form ( F ) is 'pregnant' if its perception causes great physiological or behavioral
response in the observer (human or animal!)” (Thom 1980b, p. 3). Howeverthe
first text to be systematically devoted to this topic is probably ”Morphologiedu
sémiotique” (from 1981, reedited in Thom 1992). Here Thom defines saliency
13 13
This is indeed worthwhile mentioning since sorry attempts have been made—perhaps even
to some extent by Thom himself—to pull down an iron curtain between the ”structural” ca-
tastrophe theoretical period (with its Heraclitean emphasis on the stabilizing logoi sustaining
the order of the phenomenal world and its representations) and the post-catastrophistic pe-
riod with its Parmenedian emphasis on the continuum and the slow flow of pregnantial
meaningfulness. As an argument against this specious divide one could point to Thom's all
as constant emphasis on the interdependency or fundamental correlation ofdiscontinuity and
continuity: meaningfulness implies necessarily morphological detachment and saliency,
which then in turn is necessarily a detachment from and thus an articulation of a continuum.
So even though, at least from the 1980s and on, Thom assigns ontological primacy to the
continuum, obviously he still holds that any theory of form, any morphology in whatever
domain, must rest on the irreducible distinction between regular and irregular points, and
hence on the concept of discontinuity.
Page 21 Pagina 21
Wolfgang Wildgen
21 21
as a distinct, detached phenomenon; a visual form is an epitome of this, but an
acoustic phenomenon would do all as well, a tactile too. A salient form may
take on a specific signification for a biological organism, ie provoke a hormo-
nal reaction and an emotional response. This is, as already mentioned, what
Thom understands by the pregnancy of a saliency. So the prey of a hungry
predator is highly ”pregnant” for the predator. Essentially, this sense of ”preg-
nancy” is how French and English dictionaries define the expression (as ”full-
ness” or ”richness” in a lot of different respects). It means something very dif-
ferent in its German version, in a sense it even means the inverse here, namely
”concise”, ”precise”, ”clear”. Now, this would be anecdotic if, on two occa-
sions, Thom himself had not referred to Wolfgang Köhler andGestaltTheoryas
the origin of the concept such as he uses it. First in the mentioned article from
1973: ”The fact that a theory of the pregnancy of forms is possible was the es-
sential doctrine of Gestalt Theory that W. Köhler marshaled with courage and
lucidity” (Thom 1980 (1973): 264). And bis repetita many years later where
Thom in a footnote remarks that his use of the term is “obviously” an upshot of
to the German “Prägnanz” , due Gestalt Theory in general and MaxWertheimer
and Wolfgang Köhler in particular (Thom 1988, 32 note 4) .
The latter quotation of course echoes the former, yet none of them justifies
Thom's claim to the effect that he uses the concept of pregnancy in
Wertheimer's or Köhler's sense. Wertheimer's laws of Prägnanz (Wertheimer
1923) are indeed principles ruling the organization of forms on purely percep-
tual grounds, independently of all biological interests and categorical meaning.
These principles, which govern the ”grouping” of qualities according to prox-
imity, color, closure, size, orientation, ”good continuation,” etc. do, of course,
have a biological rationale: they further fast object recognition, but they do not
concern an animal's chemical and emotional reaction to what it perceives—its
tendency or not to consider a given form as biologically significant—and for
this reason they do not sustain pregnancy in Thom's sense. Rather, Prägnanz in
Gestalt Theory strictly applies to saliency as Thom defines it: they are the laws
that explain how qualities are grouped and organized so as to form detached
figural wholes in perception. Notice also that the prime property of pregnancy
according to Thom is its unbounded, continuous ”flow” character, whereas the
prime character of gestaltic Prägnanz is its closed, discontinuouscharacter.The
”flow” is, as it were, what makes it possible for pregnancies to invest Prägnan-
zen ; the latter's discontinuous, bounded character is what makes it possible to
contain the former. This is by the way probably the reason why Thom, in his
1987-paper on the epistemology of evolutionary processes, explicitlynotesthat
Page 22 Pagina 22
Thom and modern evolutionary linguistics
22 22
he uses the term ”pregnancy” in the French sense of ”prégnance” (Thom1987a,
note 1).
The concept couple plays a central role in Thom's idea of “ontologie intel-
ligible”, his formal requirement for any regional ontology, as it were. The idea L'idea
is that any ontological domain must possess concepts of these two types; sim-
ple, stable, spatially well-defined forms (saliencies)and meaning-bearingforces
able to propagate between saliencies and to inhabit and modify these saliencies
in stable and characteristic ways (pregnancies)—so to speak forms and forces,
to put it crudely. The very notion of “intelligible ontology” is, of course, in
some sense a catachresis uniting epistemology and ontology in one expression.
Thom's basic realism, however, seems to preclude a pure epistemologicalread-
ing of it, pointing rather to his idea that all ontologies must be understandable
because of their necessary inclusion of these two elements. To that extent,
Thom's use of the word couple, while originating in Gestalt psychology, takes
it far beyond that in order to form the basis of an audacious general principle of
formal ontology. The intertwinement between epistemologyandsemioticsindi-
cated in Thom's famous motto “What must be sought is a theory of language
which immediately involves a theory of knowledge” ensures that this“intelligi-
ble ontology” is tightly connected to his semiotics: the duplicity of saliencyand
pregnancy in ontology is mirrored by the duplicity of noun and verb in linguis-
tics. tic.
Kenneth L. Pike (emic/etic)
Kenneth L. Pike plays an episodic role in Thom's theory of language. Roughly
speaking, Pike simply provides him with a distinction (emic vs. etic) which
Thom, in turn, adapts to his own framework in order to capture a property of
language that he considers as a grammatical universal, namely the distinction
between more speaker independent or ”emic” entities incontradistinctiontothe
”etic” features of language which are more speaker dependent. The emic-etic
terms constitute each their pole on one of the axes which organize and structure
the universal categories (word classes) of grammar. At one end, the emic end,
we thus have the most speaker independent terms: the epitome of which are
Nouns. Thom considers them as quasi-organisms possessing their own regula-
tion system, with external limits protecting their signification against ”aggres-
sions” from cognate terms pertaining to the same semantic domain or network
of systematically correlated terms. The signification of a concept has thus a
Page 23 Pagina 23
Wolfgang Wildgen
23 23
wide temporal scope, it is unlikely to undergo changes, and it is, in its default
understanding, quite autonomous with respect to the pragmatic situation of
communication. di comunicazione. At the other, etic end we have the fundamentally speaker de-
pendent categories, such as deictics, whose meaning is unilaterally dependent
on speaker's and hearer's spatiotemporal anchoring. A couple of variations
notwithstanding, Thom parses the whole continuum from emic to etic in the
following way: nouns, verbs, adjectives, possessive pronouns, numerals, and
deictics (Thom 1978a, 1980b; Pike 1971).
Algirdas Julien Greimas
The founding father of European post-Hjelmslevian semiotics, AJ Greimas,is
only sparsely mentioned in Thom's work (The CD-Rom containing the com-
plete works of Thom notifies 14 references, of which many are purely inciden-
tal). He seems to have had no import on Thom's semiotics—quite contrary to
what was the case for Thom's disciple Jean Petitot—and the only aspect of his
work which Thom refers to (with no bibliographical specifications) is the ”se-
miotic square” (the first attested reference to it appears in an essay entitled
”Modèles mathématiques de la morphogenèse” from 1971, partiallyincludedin
the 1974-version of the book with the same name and left out of the 1980-
version). Here Greimas' semiotic square is qualified as one of those”verygross
objects” which the structural methods within the human sciences use todotheir
formalizations.
Thom mainly deals with the square in its narratological version, ie as a
formalization of an ordered, cyclic sequence of transformations of states or
narrative turning points (naturally interpreted as ”catastrophes”).Hisreinterpre-
tation of it consists 1) in stripping the semiotic square of its ” logical clothing”
(”Structure cycliques en sémiotiques”, Thom 1992, p. 73), by 2) proposing a
dynamic modeling of its formal, logical scaffolding in terms of the cyclic hys-
teresis-structure described below.
14 14
Though there does not seem to exist any
deep theoretical affinities between Thom and Greimas, the project of develop-
ing dynamical interpretations of the formal models and, already sketched inthe
above mentioned article from 1971, has of course a major historical significa-
14 14
This example of topological schematization of logical structure is a constant in Thom’s
thinking: no matter the domain (mathematics, philosophy or linguistics), the aim ”is not to
provide Geometry with a logical foundation, but to found logic [ le logique] on Geometry”
(Thom 1988, p. 16).
Page 24 Pagina 24
Thom and modern evolutionary linguistics
24 24
tion: it anticipates Jean Petitot's general schematism and naturalizationofstruc-
ture which initially was fulfilled in terms of a topologization of the semiotic
square (Petitot 1982, 1985, 1992).
Joseph Greenberg
It seems natural that Joseph Greenberg's search for linguistic universals should
appeal to a semiotic theory with the universalist and realist ambitions like
Thom's.
Especially Greenberg's basic syntactic typologies (SVO, SOV, etc)prompt
Thom to launch a detailed theory of sentence construction and understanding
(“Sur la typologie des langues naturelles” (from 1970, reprinted in
Thom1980a)). As mentioned above, the initial idea was thatacomplexsignified
be decomposed in (at most) four-dimensional units. How are these units now
further syntactically analyzed? Thom's idea is that the relevant manifoldissub-
jected to analysis by the continuous lowering of one parameter, counting the
attractor minima as they are reached, thereby generating a tree structure (some-
what like the possible tree structure in a chreod section of a Waddington land-
scape)—this tree structure now forming the relevant syntactical tree for ex-
pressing the content in question. Following Tesnière, the most basic part of
such trees will be the verbal part, privileging the VOS structure (rarely realized
in reality) from the sender's point of view -because the information of the verb
kernel of an utterance gives access to the scene connecting the actants and cir-
cumstants. The reason this syntax is not realized, Thom argues, is the receiver’s
point of view for which the opposite order SOV is the most natural, with VSO
and especially SVO as compromise possibilities. The receiver's first interest is
taken to be S – who is responsible for the action presented in the sentence, an
important issue in the prototypical case where the sentence relates to states-of-
affairs in the immediate space-time surroundings of the interlocutors. This also
prompts Thom to his analysis of the genitive: in expressions like “Le chien de
Jean”, X's Y, Jean (X) is “semantically destroyed” because the whole of the
expression refers to a dog, and only Jean's ownership is left of him in the ex-
pression. pressione. The genitive thus makes room for any possible relation between its
two relatees and only indicates their coexistence in some space—and thus fa-
cilitates abstract thought as liberated from any particular actant graph—:oneof
Thom's ideas as to the human semiotic privilege over animals which are sup-
Page 25 Pagina 25
Wolfgang Wildgen
25 25
posedly always caught in the actual actant graph of their present behavioral
purpose.
Peirce
References to Peirce's work occur stably in the later Thom. Among Peirce’s
detailed philosophy, they refer to two themes especially: Peirce's doctrine of
categories and the most well-known taxonomy of his semiotics, that of icon-
index-symbol. The initial reference to Peirce takes place in the 1972 paper “De
l'icone au symbole” (in Thom 1980a) which outlines a whole theory of the
man-animal difference on the basis of an interpretation of that “second trichot-
omy” between icons, indices, and symbols. This triad of concepts distinguishes
between the three ways in which the object of the sign may be indicated,
namely either by means of similarity between sign and object, of an actual con-
nection between them, or of a habit or convention. Thom's basic observation is
that all three of these are present already in animals, taking the roots of rational-
ity beyond any simple idea of a sharp borderline between man and animal.
Thom argues for the importance of iconic signs——as against a tendencytosee
them as trivial——because even simple images contain a tension between re-
versibility and irreversibility. Images are irreversible becausesomeinformation
is lost in the mapping, and the same image may refer to several objects, and,
conversely, the signified engenders an indefinite number of such signifiers of
itself. se stessa. On the other hand, a restricted reversibility is possible because, in some
cases at least, it is possible stably to recover the signified from the signifier.The
information thus recoverable is that which is structurally stable and hence able
to survive the noise inherent in any transaction— the physically pregnant fea-
tures (the later saliencies). Indices have the biological importance of leading,
spatio-temporally, to the object (important in the case of biological significant
objects, of course) and indices for that reason have the ability to form chains (if
one index leads to another which leads to the object), founding associationism.
Symbols, finally, are tied to the threshold points between two attractors in the
life of the animal where a decision must be made whether to pursue the regula-
tion leading into the other attractor or not: here attractive and repulsivesymbols
lead in each their set of attractors. How can the purpose of the sign engender its
morphology?—This is, to Thom, the basic question of semiotics as such (or, as
he here says, of semiology). The answer is “the principle of the backwards
path” which takes 1) the spatio-temporal localization of the sign as first prereq-
Page 26 Pagina 26
Thom and modern evolutionary linguistics
26 26
uisite: the sign informs about the localization of the object, 2) aspects of the
virtual result of the encounter of the object (the cranium as a sign of danger,
knife and fork as a sign of a restaurant coming up) which is projected “back-
wards” toward the sign interpreter. The multiple possibility for such aspects–
and in general the multiplicity of different indices referring to any catastrophe,
such as the different pieces scattered in the road after a traffic accident–
accounts, in Thom's view, for the Saussurean arbitrarity of the signifier.
Thom's interpretation of the icon-index-symbol triad is developed further in
Thom 1980c, where the vector leading from signifier to signified is considered
in relation to time. The three Peircean sign types are taken, not unrelated to
Peirce's theory, to refer to the signifieds in the past (index), present (icon), and
future (symbol)
15 15
, respectively, which gives Thom the occasion to argueagainst
theories privileging the signifier over the signified or even reducing away the
latter (deconstructionism, Hilbertianism). Symbols are taken to arise out of the
chain-forming capabilities of indices along with a temporal reversal (Pavlovian
conditioning again taken as prototypical example), conforming, as it were, to
Peirce's idea of the symbol's “esse in futuro”. Both papers terminate with
speculations about the difference between animal and human semiotics, claim-
ing that the latter is characterized by the weakening of the source forms of bio-
logical pregnancies so that disinterested representations andthelong,branching
chains of human sign use arise. This part of Peirce's influence thus serves to
detail the sailence-pregnancy hypothesis.
The other Peircean influence thus concerns Peirce's category table—
Firstness-Secondness-Thirdness—which catches Thom's interestinconnection
with cognitive and linguistic universals. Thus, Thom has an idea, foreign to
Peirce, that there is a general syntax of thought and expression following these
categories: categorie:
“Firstness, Secondness, Thirdness. Exemple français : ça sent le brûlé.
La triade peircéenne Qualisign—Sinsign—Legisign comparée à
Prégnance—Saillance—Concept (Nom).” (Firstness, Secondness, Thirdness. Frenchexam-
ple: It smells like burnt. The Peircean triad Qualisign—Sinsign—Legisign comparedtoPre-
gnancy—Salience—Concept (Noun) (“Reflexions sur le continudeHansjakobSeiler”,1992,
2, in Thom 2003)
The idea is that “Ça” (it) represents undifferentiated Firstness, “sent”
(smells) indicates the Secondness catastrophe of perception confrontingsubject
15 15
Points also developed in “Morphologie du semiotique” (1981, in Thom 1992), and “Mathé-
matique et sémiotique” (Thom 1981).
Page 27 Pagina 27
Wolfgang Wildgen
27 27
and object and “le brûlé” (burnt, however nominalized in French) specifies the
kind of Thirdness regularity encountered in the perception—whilePeirce'sFirst
Trichotomy is taken to reflect the process of making a stable concept type out
of what was first only a vague pregnancy.
These ideas, however interesting, are not further developed, and occur as
clarification attempts in the context of Thom's discussion ofthesecondlinguist,
besides Tesnière, who influenced him the most, the Germanuniversalistlinguist
Hansjakob Seiler with whom Thom collaborated during many years.
Hansjakob Seiler
One of Seiler's main ideas is that of linguistic continua orienting andgoverning
a long range of linguistic phenomena. Seiler has an example of the continuum
from Deixis to Predication which Thom very often cites, viz. the long German
chain of predicates: “Diese erwähnten zehn schönen roten hölzernen Kugeln”
(“These above-mentioned ten beautiful red wooden balls”).
16 16
The idea is thatin
such an adjective series, other constraints on syntax vanish, so that an underly-
ing continuum going from subject towards object becomes visible; the adjec-
tives spontaneously placing themselves on such a continuum going from the
most subjective: deixis, and to the most objective: the noun, over adjectives
referring to discourse, number, subjective and objective qualitites.Thom'srein-
terpretation of this continuum goes as follows:
“It seems to me that the fundamental findings of Professor Seiler, about the continuumofde-
termination could be stated as follows: any place in the standard syntactic tree which gives
rise to a subordinate predication may be exploded into an auxiliary continuum (a “tech-
nique”); this technique then involves an arbitrary number of terms, but the ordering of these
terms is not arbitrary, it is governed by order associated to the semantic nature of the corre-
sponding invading “pregnancy”.
The order seems to be the following:
- -
– -
Subjective generated pregnancies, originated by the speaker as: deixis.
- -
– Mental pregnancies associated to subjective appreciation of the speaker
- -
(subjective adjectives)
- -
– Physical qualities of accidental nature (eg color) (objective adjectives)
- -
– Material nature
16 16
Cf. Cf. W. Wildgen 1999.
Page 28 Pagina 28
Thom and modern evolutionary linguistics
28 28
Genitive—spatio-temporal localization” (Thom 1983c, 254).
Thom's claim is that this continuum of Seiler's no less than solves Kant’s
classic issue of schematism by continuously connecting subject and object.
Thom's central claim is that this subject-object continuum is identical to the
emic-etic axis (see above) but independent of another dimension which he
sometimes attempts to describe as the continuum of semantic complexity, ne-
cessitating a two-dimensional representation of universal grammar which he
gives several different outlines of (“La double dimension de la grammaire uni-
verselle”, 1978a; another takes the degree of freedom of pregnancypropagation
to substitute for semantic complexity, “Contribution”, 1983; in Thom 2003)
without necessarily assuming that two dimensions may be sufficient. The gen-
eral idea, thus, is that universal grammar requires a number of independent
continua for its description. The existence of such overarching continua makes
Thom state his anti-formalist credo as to syntax: “The generativityofgenerative
grammar (Chomsky's competence) is probably no more than a formalistic illu-
sion.” (Contribution 1983, p.12; in Thom 2003).Seiler's theory thus permits
Thom to embed his syntactical deliberations as motivated by overarchingstruc-
tures of semantic continua and leads him to many further interesting hypothe-
ses, partwise in collaboration with Seiler.
The anthropology of hunting—Gilbert Durand
In the semantic end of Thom's semiotics lie his surprising reflections onanimal
hunt as involved in the origins of symbolism. The main ideas rest on an
Uexküll-like idea of the circular structure connecting animal metabolism with
outer action, locating signs in the animal's search for prey. The animal must be
capable of recognizing certain signs for its prey (predators, sexual partners,
rivals, etc.), and thus also be able to imagine and fantasize about these Gestalts:
However, there can hardly be any doubt about the fact that any animal“fan-
tasizes” its preys (and its predators), for otherwise it would be unable of recog-
nizing them. The imagined “Gestalt” most certainly precedes and shapesthereal
Gestalt (as it is by the way shown in animal etiology by the phenomenon known
as “supranormal” releasers).
(Thom 2003: Letter to Gilbert Durand Jan. 27 1976, Inédits 1976; in Thom
Page 29 Pagina 29
Wolfgang Wildgen
29 29
2003)
17 17
Gestalts which have a certain idealized quality documented by Lorenz' fa-
mous discovery of ”supranormal releasers” like the artificial version of thesea-
gull mother's beak with two red spots (real seagulls having only one), able to
arouse the young more than any empirical beak. During the three consecutive
versions of the chapter 10 of Stabilité structurelle (the French 1972 version,the
English version, and the French 1977 version), Thom refines this basic idea,
and in ”Les racines biologiques du symbolique” (Thom 1978b), integrating a
model based on a cyclic path around the organizing center of a Fold catastrophe
on the one hand with, on the other, the French philosopher and anthropologist
Gilbert Durand's doctrine of symbolism in his Les structures anthropologiques
de l'imaginaire (1960). The former part follows the below model:
17 17
”Il ne fait guère de doute, cependant, que tout animal ”fantasme” ses proies (et ses préda-
teurs), sans quoi il ne pourrait les reconnaître. Très certainement, la ”Gestalt” imaginée pré-
cède et ”informe” la Gestalt réelle (comme le montre d'ailleurs, en éthologie animale, le
phénomène bien connu des déclencheurs ”supranormaux”).”
Page 30 Pagina 30
Thom and modern evolutionary linguistics
30 30
Figure 2 Thom's hysteresis model
These two figures show - the circular process changing between the pres-
ence of one and two actants, respectively. The upper figure shows the basic
catastrophe "cusp" (the pointed figure consisting of two discontinuity lines
meeting at the origo). The circle indicates the movement in the cusp landscape,
and points J and K indicate the two catastrophe points where the circular trajec-
tory intersects with the cusp. Inside the cusp, that is between J and K, two mi-
nima exist which in Thom's interpretation corresponds to two actants. Outside
the cusp, only one minimum exists. These minima, in Thom's interpretation of
the hunt, now correspond to the predator and the prey. The lower figure shows
the cusp as the projection of a fold onto the u,v plane of the upper figure of the
Page 31 Pagina 31
Wolfgang Wildgen
31 31
fold. The bold line indicates the circular trajectory in the fold landscape - and
the two catastrophes occur where the trajectory shifts direction in thefolding-in
of the circle. In the upper figure, the phases of the hunt are as follows: in its
hungry state, the animal is between the v-axis and the point J on the trajectory.
Only one minimum exists here, corresponding to the predator, alienated in the
image of its prey. J constitutes the perception catastrophe where the image ac-
quires outer existence in a prey and the hunt begins. During the hunt, in the
phase between points J and K, two minima exist, corresponding to both preda-
tor and prey. The chase culminates in the capture of the prey in K, after which
alienation ceases. Now in the post-K phase, the predator consumes its prey and
thus becomes one with it, only one minimum again exist. In the upper part of
the tracjectory, the predator sleeps and digests its prey and so wakes up again,
hungry and again alienated, and the process starts over again. Thom's interpre-
tation of Durand now finds the roots of daytime symbolism in the JK section
inside the cusp with its clear, binary predator-prey distinction, evidentvalorisa-
tion and themes like friend-foe, war, victory, defeat, etc. The other, upper, part
of the cycle, then corresponds to nighttime symbolism with blurring of binary
categories, identification of predator and prey, dreamlike descent into another
worlds, etc.
It is based on the idea that there is a tension between two different identity
notions in biology–the persistence of the animal subject as opposed to its re-
peated, different actions. The idea of such a tension rests on the unspoken pre-
supposition that animal minds are tied to the present now and hence must
change according to the behavior type they indulge in. Therefore, the spatio-
temporal identity of the animal is opposed to the different mental-behavioral
”identity” states of the animal. In the model, this conflict of identities is con-
strued according to the following interpretation of the path indicated: in the
phase of the path approaching the catastrophic part, the animal is alienated by
the image of the prey, it is dominated by the urge to find a real counterpart to
match the image. The first catastrophe indicates the actual perception of prey
fitting the image, and the short interval to the next catastrophe is the huntwhere
the animal has regained its proper self. The second catastrophe indicates the
second discontinuity: the catching of the prey; doing so the animal finally
reaches the normal state and becomes its satiated self. During sleep, in the
smooth half of the pathway, the animal gradually again, by means of digestion,
internalizes the prey: it becomes its own prey, as Thom liked to put it. And E
when it wakes up hungry, alienation is active again. Durand's doctrine distin-
guishes between by a diurnal and a nocturnal symbolism in human imagination
which Thom identifies with the two separated phases of the cycle. The hunt
Page 32 Pagina 32
Thom and modern evolutionary linguistics
32 32
corresponds to Durand's daytime symbolism, covering rise, fight, and victory–
or being hunted, if the identification goes with the prey–in general,thissymbol-
ism is articulated in clear binarities. The digestion phase now corresponds to
Durand's nighttime symbolism, covering the coincidentia oppositorum where
the two sides of binarisms flow into each other, an imagery of descent into un-
clear worlds of subjective dissolution dominate. Finally,the structuretakenasa
whole may give rise to cyclic imagery, exchange and dialogue ideas. As is evi-
dent, the whole model is at the same time taken, once again, to mirror embryo-
genetic structures, the clear distinction between predator and prey being analo-
gous to endo- and ectoderm.
The biological semiotics integrating Peirce, Gestalt Theory, and embryol-
ogy is here extrapolated to constitute a basis for general anthropological im-
agery involving the destruction and resurrection of the self.
Different small influences
In addition to the main inspirations which we have charted here, a series of
smaller ones may be listed. A negative one is Jacques Derrida, highlighted by
the fact that Thom was among the originators of the 1992 protest address
against his nomination as a honorary doctorate at the University of Cambridge
(along with Quine, Ruth Marcus, Barry Smith, David Armstrong, and others),
and in Thom's works the idea that one sign, allegedly, refers to the next in a
never-ending sequence is taken as the opposite to his own realist semiotics: “a
theory that is very popular in the Parisian salons claims: 'there is no signified,
only signifiers; each sign refers to other sign in an endless regression' ” (“De
l'icône au symbole”, Thom 1980a).
Edmund Husserl is sometimes referred to as a subjectivist who, along with
Heidegger, has destroyed French epistemology, at other occasions he is recon-
sidered as anticipating Thom's theory of the basic status of hunt and caption
( Erfahrung und Urteil is interpreted as saying that “recognizing the object is
nothing but grasping it” (“Temporal Evolution of Catastrophes”,Thom1973,p.
42)), or he rightfully defends Euclidean geometry as the necessary basis of all
other geometries, or he is taken to support the idea that the recognition of a
shape constitutes consciousness rather than the opposite (also with reference to
Erfahrung und Urteil , cf. “Préhension et perception”, 1992, p. 165).Apartfrom
being used as a subjectivist scoundrel, Heidegger is mostly credited with the
one-liner “Die Wissenschaft denkt nicht” and its subsequent “and it is not its
Page 33 Pagina 33
Wolfgang Wildgen
33 33
purpose either.” which Thom quotes with negative acclamation, complaining
about this divorce between (rigorous) science and (meaningful) philosophy.
Bernhard Riemann is several times quoted for the idea: “....Riemann, who
'comitted' a few philosophical pages, in which you encounter the following
essential idea: if a mental process, taken in its neurophysiological reality, is
described by a set, a variable variety W(t) of the space of neurophysiological
states of the brain, then the (subjective) signfication of that process is defined
by the form (in a sense which is still be made clear) of the variety W in the
space of the states” (Thom 1983, p. 195)
18 18
– a very catastrophe-theoretical idea
indeed; that the signification of a thought is constituted by the form of the un-
derlying neurophysiological process. A related idea is Paul Valéry's idea from
Eupalinos which Thom quotes over and over; here Socrates is portrayed as
saying that a forme is geometrical if it can be finitely described in few words;
which basically means that relative geometrical simplicity and the ability to
serve as symbol are related.
In the epistemological end of his semiotic musings, Thom oftenreferstothe
theorist of science Gerard Holton and his doctrine of “themata”: ie, his ideas
that scientific discoveries are often prompted by deep epistemological (and
unsolvable) thematic tensions such as unity-diversity, order-disorder, perma-
nence-change, simple-complex, holism-reductionism, formalism-empiricism,
conventionalism-realism, continu-disconitnu, etc.Thisbasicsemanticinventory
for scientific (and other) imagination leads Thom to his doctrine of “ apories
fondatrices ”, the idea that different scientific disciplines have, as their organiz-
ing center, an unsolvable antinomy (tied to its partition in saliencies and preg-
nancies, forms and forces) constantly urging scientific discovery onwards
(geometrical continuity vs. algebraic discontinuity in mathematics,emptyspace
vs. physical entities in physics, metabolism vs. organismic stability in biology,
the semiotic inability for sign systems to talk about their own foundation in
linguistics etc.). The overall conclusion being:
At any rate, the only way we can attain an explanation, a generation of empirical
diversity from one unique principle is by resorting to a process of emanation, of “pro-
cession”, as the Neo-platonicians saw very well. If this process is assimilated with a
propagation of pregnancy (accompanied by a convenient oscillation between saliency
18 18
” Riemann, qui 'commit' un petit nombre de pages philosophiques, dans lesquelles on peut
trouver cette idée essentielle : si un processus mental, dans sa réalité neurophysiologique,est
décrit par un ensemble, une variété va- riable W(t) de l'espace des états neurophysiologiques
du cerveau, alors la signification (subjective) de ce processus est définie par la forme (en un
sens à préciser) de la variété W dans l'espace des états.”
Page 34 Pagina 34
Thom and modern evolutionary linguistics
34 34
and pregnancy), we will be led to look for the “source forms” of this pregnancy: a black
hole which can only be filled by a fantasmatic image, a local and temporary solution of
the founding aporia) (Thom 1992, p. 481)
19 19
Explanation must take the shape of the propagation of pregnancies across
saliencies, and the relevant science is tempted to the impossible task of finding
the unitary origin of that pregnancy. Thom later discovers (fromJeanLargeault)
that largely similar ideas had been proposed by the FrenchNeo-KantianCharles
Renouvier already in his Les Dilemmes de la Métaphysique Pure from 1901.
Concluding remarks Osservazioni conclusive
Our intention has been to introduce to the major sources of Thom's semiotics
and the way they fit into his original biosemiotics or biolinguistics. Thom’s
semiotics develops from its topological and biological core to span linguistics
and epistemology, semantics and ontology, and during unfolding it grafts upon
this germ a growing number of influences, adding to both the richness, the
complexity and the inner tensions of Catastrophe Theory semiotics.
References Riferimenti
Durand, G. 1960. Les structures anthropologiques de l'imaginaire , Paris, Dunod.
Holenstein, E. 1992. (interview with Roberto Benatti) Phenomenological structualism andcogni-
tive semiotics, Scripta Semiotica (1).
Holton, Gerald. Thematic Origins of Scientific Thought: Kepler to Einstein . Cambridge, MA: Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1973.
Jakobson, R. Essais de linguistique générale , t. I-II. Paris: Minuit.
Peirce, CS 1931-58. Collected Papers , London: Thoemmes Press.
Petitot, J. 1985. Morphogenèse du sens . Paris: PUF.
Petitot, J. 1992. Physique du sens . Paris: Ed. du CNRS.
19 19
Dans tous ces cas, le seul espoir d'arriver à une explication, un engendrement du divers à
partir d'un principe unique, est de faire appel à un processus d'émanation, de procession
comme l'avaient bien vu les néo-platoniciens. Si ce processus est assimilé à la propagation
d'une prégnance (assortie d'une oscillation convenable entre saillance et prégnance),onsera
ramené à chercher les « formes-sources » de cette prégnance : un trou noir qu'on ne pourra
jamais remplir que par une image fantasmatique, solution locale et temporaire de l'aporie
fondatrice.”
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35 35
Petitot, J. 1995. Approche morphodynamique de l'iconicité des stemmas. In F. Madray-Lesigne
and J. Richard-Zapella (eds.), Lucien Tesnière aujourd'hui . Louvain: EditionsPeeters.:
105-122.
Pike, Kenneth L. Language in a unified theory of the structure of human behavior ,
2ndrev.
ed., The Hague [ua]: Mouton, 1971
Renouvier, C. Les Dilemmes de la Métaphysique Pure , Paris.
Saussure, F. de, 1915. Cours de linguisitique générale , Paris, Payot.
Seiler, H. 1995. Diversité des langues et conceptualisation : le cas de la
détermination nominale, Intellectica , 1/20: 127-137
Stjernfelt, F. 1992 Formens betydning. Katastrofeteori og semiotik (“The Meaning of Form.
Catastrophe Theory and Semiotics”) Copenhagen: Akademisk
Stjernfelt, F. 2007 Diagrammatology. An Investigation on the Borderlines of Phenomenology,
Ontology, and Semiotics , Dordrecht: Springer
Tesnière, L. 1959. Eléments de syntaxe structurale . Paris: Klinksieck.
Thom, R. 1972. Stabilité structurelle et morphogenèse .
Thom, R. 1973.L'évolution temporelle des catastrophes. Collection Applicationsofglobalanaly-
sis, I. Symposium Utrecht State Univ. , Utrecht, 7-9 février 1973: 61-69. Comm. Comm. Math. Math.
Inst. Inst. Rijksuniv. Utrecht, 3 , 1974.
Thom, R. 1974. La linguistique, discipline morphologique exemplaire, Critique (322), 235-245. |
