Schools of Thought

This book is based on the assumption that the development of science has to be understood both as a social and as an intellectual process. The division between internal and external history, between history of ideas and sociology of science, has been harmful not only to our understanding of scientific rationality but also to our understanding of the social processes of scientific development. Just as philosophy of science must be informed by its history, so also must sociology of science be both historically and philosophically informed. Proceeding on this assumption, I examine in detail the contents of linguistic ideas and the changes they underwent, as well as the institutional processes of disciplinary development and school formation. The development of linguistics in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries has provided me with a convenient locus for a study of the processes of cognitive change and continuity in the context of modern academically institutionalized science. This book examines first the idea system and the institutionalization of historical and comparative linguistics in the first half of the nineteenth century, and then focusses on the for­ mation and development of three schools of thought: the Neogrammarians, the Neo-Idealists, and the Geneva School of Ferdinand de Saussure.

Contenu

I: Schools of Thought: Some Theoretical Observations.- Toward a Definition of Schools of Thought.- The Cognitive Divergence of Schools of Thought.- 1. Philosophical Divergence.- 2. Theoretical Divergence.- 3. Substantive and Methodological Divergence.- The Implications of the System of Cognitive Divergence.- Social Divergence.- Schools vs. Disciplines: Autonomy and Institutionalization.- Schools and the Legitimation of Scientific Results.- Schools in Academic Science.- The Dual Legitimation System.- Cognitive Consequences of the Dual Legitimation System.- Opportunities for Divergence: Center and Periphery.- Opportunities for Divergence: The Leader's Status.- Schools of Thought in Linguistics.- II: The Idea System of the Early Comparative Grammarians.- Early Comparative Grammarians: Philosophical and Theoretical Beliefs.- The Schleicherian Synthesis: To Save the Phenomena.- Linguistic Methodology Before 1870.- III: Linguistics at the German University.- The Idea of Higher Education and the Growth of Linguistics.- The Organization of Teaching and Research.- Linguistics and Philology: Modes of Institutionalization.- IV: The Neogrammarian Doctrine.- The Neogrammarian Inheritance: Linguistic Methodology.- A Method in Search of a Theory.- V: The Neogrammarian Revolution From Above.- The Problem.- A School of Thought as a Bid for Scientific Authority.- The Institutional Setting.- The Neogrammarian "Revolution from Above".- Cognitive Repercussions of Institutional Changes.- VI: The Idealist Reaction.- Causality and Explanation in Linguistics: the Denial of Science.- Language as Art and the Idea of Linguistic Study.- The Denial of Linguistics: Neo-Idealists and the Crisis of Learning.- VII: Saussure's Revolution From Within.- The Road to Synchrony: Overdetermination and Its Obstacles.- 1. Uniformitarianism.- 2. Theory of Analogy.- 3. Alternations as Synchronic Phenomena.- The Construction of a Linguistic Fact.- Structuralism: Language as an Autonomous Object.- VIII: Schools on the Periphery.- Saussure as a Marginal Man?.- Linguistics on the Periphery.- IX: Conclusions.- Notes and References.