Philosophical Foundations of Rene Thom's Theory of Language

The paper’s main research topic are the philosophical foundations of French philosopher and mathematician Rene Thom’s (1923 – 2002) theory of language. There was shown that the investigated theory is a part of his major philosophical and methodological project, which is in turn a response to M. Heidegger’s “Science does not think” challenge. Thereby the main subject of the analysis were correlations between Thom's project and M.Heidegger’s thought, and, more particularly, the correlation between their key concepts, namely the historically understood being, Seyn (M. Heidegger) and catastrophe (R. Thom). Clarification of these correlations was made by appellation to Heraclitean idea of “Logos”, because both thinkers pointed it out as a source of their clue notions. The research demonstrates the likeness of these concepts. This fact indicates that Thom's theory of language is founded, on one hand, on the interrelationship of language and being as such (which “enunciates” itself in language) and, on the other hand, on the pre-conceptual human understanding of the given phenomena: expressions of a language are the deployment of this understanding. Thom conceptualised this understanding in such terms as “salient forms” (Les forms saillances) and “pithiness” (prégnance in French), It has been suggested that salient forms and pithinesses, as parts of a whole, form a "grammar" of the phenomena in the horizon of isness. Besides, Rene Thom's theory of language implies a structural isomorphism of the syntactic form of a sentence and the state of affairs that this sentence represents. These facts, among others, bring together the ideas of Rene Thom and L. Wittgenstein, which similarities were, as far as possible, a focus of discussion in this study.