LANGUAGE AS AN INDICATOR OF THE VISUALIZATION OF SCIENTIFIC THINKING

This article examines the changes in language that eventually led to the formation of a functional style representing scientific thinking. These changes begin to take place during the period designated by Jaspers as “axial time”, when reflexive thinking emerges, leading, in particular, to an awareness of language in poetic discourse. Poetry makes speech activities the subject of attention, which is reflected in attitudes toward texts. They are framed according to certain well-formulated rules, synonymy is used, and new words are invented. Under the influence of poetry, philosophy emerging at this time begins to reconstruct pictures of certain fragments of reality, creating an abstract vocabulary that in principle did not exist in the languages of previous societies. It is the emergence of a common vocabulary that becomes a condition for the proper organization of definitions, and hence for the emergence of a new type of classification. Thus, in mythological consciousness, classifications, however lengthy they may be, do not go beyond the visually represented, while the appearance of words not correlated in principle with the objects of the external world (like being, space, infinity, atom, etc.) allows the formation of new generic chains. This is the expression of a reflective attitude to reality, the new way of thinking about the world. The Sophists, with their language games, prepare the possibility of representing general knowledge at the level of logic, which is necessary for the formation of scientific methodology, primarily in the works of the Aristotelian school. Attention to language leads to the creation of grammars (independently in India in the 5th century and in Greece in the 3rd century) and, consequently, to the emergence of literary language. On a new level, attention is paid to the way of expressing thought including the scientific style.

science, scientific thinking, language and speech, poetry, “axial time”, reflexion