Vers un paradigme des paradigmes: Analyse assistée par ordinateur du concept de paradigme dans The Structure of Scienti fic Revolutions (1962)

Margaret Masterman (1910-1986) greatly contributed to the study of natural language processing, notably through the development of algorithms and programs based on solid philo- sophical principles, inspired by the writings and teaching of her former professor and mentor, Ludwig Wittgenstein. From a conceptual analysis point of view, Masterman’s wittgensteinian computational linguistics various theses from the Philosophical Investigations, i.e. the con- cept as gestalt, of meaning as use and of semantic experience as aspect perception and family resemblances. In her article “The Nature of a Paradigm", Masterman applies this theoretical framework to the concept of “paradigm" as used in the first edition of The Structure of Scien- tific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn. In this work, Kuhn opposees the traditional conception of science as a cumulative, continuous and gradual process an antagonistic, haphazard and revolutional view of scientific change, based on the concept of paradigm shift. According to the author himself, if the concept of paradigm represents the most novel aspect of his book, it also and however constitutes its least understood one. For Masterman, this incomprehen- sion can be attributed to the strongly polysemic character of the term; in a famous analysis, Masterman reports as much as 21 different senses of the term “paradigm". Beyond this diver- sity of uses, however, Masterman identifies three main “semantic axes" on which the concept of paradigm is grounded: a metaphysical axis, a sociological axis and an artefactual one. After successively describing each axis and the different senses they encompass, Masterman argues that senses falling under the artefactual group constitute the foremost, foundational and literally “paradigmatic" aspect of Kuhn’s concept of paradigm. Vector-based semantic models representing a natural extension of Masterman’s theory and method of conceptual analysis, the present research aims to validate or corroborate her analysis of the concept of “paradigm" using a new automated method, based on hierarchical clustering and weighted graph generation.