(From mimesis to representation: empiricism and language in the origins of modern science)

Abstract

This paper is part of an attempt to offer a better understanding of the origins of modern science in the light of the transformations of the concept of representation through XVIth and XVIIth centuries. My aim here is to point out how Francis Bacon had to revise naturalistic and mimetic conceptions of language for drawing up his particular methodical empiricism. In other words, it was not possible to formulate the modern scientific empiricism without advancing a criticism of those naturalistic philosophies of language which had so great success in the XVIth century. To get to this conclusion, I set out here how the results achieved by those who united their empirical study of nature with mimetic and naturalistic conceptions of language were irremediably far from the open and progressive model of scientific knowledge which was an essential element of the Baconian project.