Formal Thought and the Sciences of Man

I. The Problem of Forms and the Philosophy of the Sciences.- The Possibility of Science and the Fact of Science.- Perception and Science.- Linguistic Expression and Scientific Forms.- Coordination and Subordination of Forms.- A 'Ptolemaic' Revolution.- II. Language as a Vehicle of Information.- Rhetoric and Contents.- Epistemology, Genetic Psychology and Axiomatization.- Critique of the Notion of 'Grouping' as a Form of Logical Thought.- Ordinary Language and Formalized Language.- Pure Informational Language.- Semantics and Syntax.- III. Scientific Languages and Formalisms.- The 'Mixed' Language of Science.- The Formation of the Language of Chemistry.- Reversal of the Relations between Oral Language and Writing.- Multi-Dimensionality and Spatiality of Signs.- Semantic Polyvalence.- IV. The Decoupage of Phenomena.- The Myth and the Concept.- Experienced Meanings and Scientific Objects.- Organized Practice, the Cultural Environment of the Concept.- An Example of Structural Objectivation: the 'Wager'.- Two Apparently Opposed Movements: 'Formalist' Decoupage and 'Operational' Decoupage.- The Saussurian Reduction.- The Phonological Decoupage.- Hierarchy of Phonological Structures.- Dynamics of Linguistic Structures.- 'Language Engineering'.- The Theory of Queues.- Theories of Learning [apprentissage] as Dynamic Games.- V. Quality and Quantity.- Quality of the Object and Quality of the lived Experience [vecu].- Difference and Similarity.- Qualitative Responses and Information.- Probability of Response, and Division into Latent Classes.- Scaling Structure.- Search for a Metric.- The Interpretation of 'Principal Components.' Return to Structural Organization.- The General Theme of Linear Structures.- Disorder and Order.- Qassifications.- Linear Structures, Vectorial Spaces.- The Random Schemata.- Conclusion: Dialectic of Quality and Axiomatization.- VI. Structuring and Axiomatizing.- 'Energetic' Models and 'Cybernetic' Models.- Causality in the Models.- Meanings and Functions of Axiomatization in Mathematics.- Axiomatization in the Natural Sciences.- Axiomatization in the Sciences of Man.- The Evaluative Structure of Random Situations.- The Definition of a Norm of Decision.- Conclusions: Consciousness and Concept.- VII. The Understanding of the Individual.- The Clinical Situation and Structures in Psychoanalysis.- Diachronic and Synchronic: Personalities as Informational Systems.- Practice as Art and the Individual.- Individual and Alienation.- History as a Clinical Undertaking without Practice.- History and the Present.- Individual and Field.- Conclusions.- Postface to the English Edition (1982).- Notes.- Bibliography of Works Cited.- Index of Names.