RDST
Mohamed SOUDANI, Olfa SOUDANI-BANI, Ezio ROLETTO… 180RDST | N° 9-2014 ABSTRACT • Semiotic operating and construction of models in chemistry. A Peircian analytical framework Our contribution consists of a semio-epistemological analysis of the process of modeling of matter and its transformations, especially during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, mobilizing Peirce's semiotic theory for an analytical framework. In accordance with contemporary physicists' defi nition of modeling, this theory enables us to approach the experimental fi eld as a set of signs that extends the theoretical at the same time as it founds it in a spiral weave of the triptych SOI (Sign-Object-Interpretant). In addition, this approach makes it possible to highlight the guiding authority the iconic sign exercises over scientifi c reasoning. Far from being a sign of a primitive thought from the remote past, the iconic sign is considered as a true "neo writing", with the status of a privileged heuristic instrument. Used by chemists to probe matter in search of indices of a structure in order to interpret its behavior, it has enabled them, after many controversies, to arrive at a particulate structure, and thus to construct the concepts of atom and molecule. This semiotics, fundamentally epistemological, proposes that these concepts are just hypothetical signs for interpreting the answers to the questions raised by experiments designed for this purpose. Moreover, this new perspective on the history of chemistry promises to transform this history into a laboratory for the didactics of chemistry. Thus the iconic sign could serve as a link in or a marker of the evolution of the pupil's chemical thought just as it is for the scientist.