Complexity of the "basic unit" of language

some parallels in physics and biology

Evelyne Andreewsky

pp. 351-367

in: Mioara Mugur Schchter (ed), Quantum mechanics, mathematics, cognition and action, Berlin, Springer, 2002

Abstract

It is first brought into evidence that such fundamentally different domains of research as physics, biology, and language sciences, present—with remarkable unity—the same tendency to base their theoretical constructs upon "bricks," from where "information" is carried upwards by a one-way flow of causal determinations. It is then shown that in all these three domains, such theoretical constructs are far to be supported by the present data and conceptions. This brings into evidence the interest of a formalized epistemology, enabling the general mould in which are cast our representations of "reality" to be explicitly reconsidered in keeping with these data and conceptions.