Such alternatives are, for example, foundationalism and coherentism. Foundationalism is os-
tensibly opposed tonaturalism, and seeks to break out of the “vicious circle” by relegating the
definition of science to philosophy, which in this case is seen outside the sphere ofscience proper:
The idea that we should do the philosophy of science from anexternal and more secure standpoint is often referred to as foundationalism. [...] Foundationalism requires that no assumptions be made about the accuracy of particular scientific ideas when doing philosophy of science.
Godfrey-Smith, 2003, 150, my emphasis
Thatfoundationalismimplies the adoption of a particular variant of philosophical epistemology is
our interpretation of this position and some would undoubtedly balk at it, given thatfoundation- alism is normally defined as the belief that “reasons rest on a foundational structure comprised of
‘basic’ beliefs” and “derive none of their justification from other propositions” (Routledge Con-
tributors, 2000, 247, epistemology). This statement can be seen to deny the dependence of
foundationalist reasoning on a ready-made philosophical system and seems to imply that “true
knowledge” – orscientificity – derive directly from either intuitive insight or experience.
Practically, this would hardly ever be observed to be the case; it is relatively safe to state that “foundations” of this sort are derived from some variant of rationalist (“interpretivist”) or empiricist (“positivist”) epistemology or their countless sub-variants (1) rather than from direct and/ or uneducated ratiocination or observation9, even if only indirectly, by merit of the fact that theoreticiansare trained in or otherwise acquainted with one or the other version of it10.
In some sense, the premise of foundationalism (if so understood) seems to be implicit in
the debate briefly discussed in the context of paradigmatic analysis11 (1.2.3.1). Here, we are
not so much concerned with the finer point of the debate than with the question as to what extent foundationalism can be seen to exert an influence on the thick concept ofscientificity in
terminology research andstereotypical conceptions that can be found in some discursive artifacts
in this context.
9
This would also be inopportune for philosophical or scientific writers, who would then have to leave their claims
unguarded by discursive “allies”; this will however explained further down.
10
This can be compared, by analogy, to the experience of medical students learning to interpret X-Ray images (Polanyi, cited in Chalmers, 1999, p. 8). In sum, one may consider the “foundations” talked about heretacitly and gradually acquired philosophical assumptions or beliefs thatinfluencethe use of the more basic faculties.
11
Whether or not paradigmatic analysis is a successful method of doing philosophy can now be considered an example for a debate between the adherents of empiricist and rationalistfoundationalism.
Specifically, we state thatterminological foundationalism confronts us in the form of the con-
tention that terminology research either already is a science or that it gains the potential of becoming one by way of adopting a specific philosophical or, more often, semantic concept the-
ory that provides itsfoundations – hence the termfoundationalism in the understanding we are
trying to develop:
Philosophy was [...] the first discipline to reflect on what a term is, what the relationship between terms and objects is, and whether terminology describes reality or constructs a representation of reality. According to Alexeeva, Philosophy has helped terminology to achieve the status of a science.
Alexeeva, 2003, 81, my emphasis
While this statement needs to be considered in the context of the historical development of traditional terminology from the logic of the Vienna Circle (ibid.), the argument recurs – with regard to semantics – also in “unorthodox” schools of terminology:
Terminology as a scientific discipline needs to open up to methods for studying
the role of language in the creative process of the growth of knowledge. From lin- guistics it could borrow precise methods for research such as the method explained
and exemplified by Geeraerts for the description of diachronic change based on cor- pus analysis and partially applied here in the description of molecular cloning (for a second example see Temmerman 1998, Chapter 6 on splicing).
Temmerman, 2000, 153, my emphasis
Our point in this regard is that foundationalism suggests that the foundations (in this case of
those of terminology research) are to be sourced from a different field rather than defined within the discipline itself, on the grounds of empirical observation or not. The strongest statement of this tendency can be found here:
If the conceptual description of terminology constitutes the theory of terminology, then this cannot be distinguished from the theory of linguistic semantics. What researchers are doing within the traditional theory of terminology
is thusno differentfrom what researchers are doing with lexical semantics in general
linguistics.
Kageura, 2002, 23, my emphasis
In this case, all concept-oriented aspects of terminology research are relegated – from thefounda- tions up – to the neighboring field of lexical semantics. From our standpoint, strategies like this
are likely to have lead to the phenomenon thatterminologists as a social group have developed
different conceptions (“schools”) of terminology researchfounded on the foundations of already
differing schools of semantics, e.g. theframe-based terminology (Montero-Martínez and Faber-
Benítez, 2009) or–if one takes the theory of cognitive semantics to be constitutive of the identity
of the theoretical edificeper se12 – sociocognitive terminology (ibid, and Montero-Martínez and
Garía de Quesada, 2004).
The problem with thefoundationalist conception ofscientificity becomes clear when contrast-
ing it withnaturalism on the one hand and withcoherentism on the other.
Unlike thenaturalist conception, which borrows and adapts models that are thought to explain
some empirical phenomenon in the natural sciences to a context in philosophy or terminology (e.g.
12
To us, it rather the innovativecombination ofdifferent methods and elements (epistemic anarchism, cognitive semantics and linguistics, deconstruction) with a uniqueepistemic interest (in polysemy, creativity, analogy in the life science) that constitutes the identity of sociocognitive terminology as a research program.
(Darwinian) evolution to (specialized) language change, Budin, 1996a) on the tacit assumption that they might explainsimilar phenomena equally well,foundationalismas it is here understood
might arguably lead to the gradualreplication of arguments, debates and discourses that have
already been carried forward in thefield of their origin for a long time before the fundamental
position in question was adopted in the respectivehost field, e.g. terminology research.
This phenomenon might become especially pronounced whenever the position in question comes “under fire” from anotherfoundationalist group whofundamentally disagrees with it; the
debate then will lead to stereotypical portrayals of the opposing approaches – whose output
is judged by the standards of “one’s own” school – and therefore to the proliferation of social stereotypes. A possible side-effect may be seen in the increasing rigidness (i.e. the “stereo-
”typicality) of the theorizing developed from the premises, although this may also become a feature ofcoherentism. To sum up, the foundationalist understanding of scientificity lives by a black-boxing – in the metaphorical sense of Latour, 1987, p. 21 rather than the literal/ technical
sense of the term – of the propositions produced in neighboring fields.
Foundationalism can – if applied to fields like terminology and the human sciences in general
– lead to the phenomena discussed in the final chapter of the thesis (8) and seems to be most productive in terms ofstereotypical concepts and terminology.