La synonymie dans l'histoire du lexique des sciences

This paper illustrates the different types of synonymic relationships existing in scientific lexicon thanks to examples drawn from the fields of mathematics and physics, in which words and their synonyms exist within the conceptual networks of the respective domains. Terminology units can have total or partial synonyms. Synonymy can occur between designation and definition, between designation and the illustration of the same concept, between two equivalent terms in different languages, between designations in different registers, between equivalent designations in the same period in the history of a language. This paper verifies these statements at a synchronic level, for there exists no absolute diachronic synonymy, by offering commentary on examples from the fifteenth century (chiffre and figure, arithmétique). Furthermore, the paper analyzes synonymic relationships in the lexicon of quantum mechanics, taking its cue from Heisenberg’s “Uncertainty Principle”. The results of this analysis show that the naming of concepts is fundamental in establishing their ‘synonymic networks’, as well as the range of synonyms available to the rhetoric of scientific discourse.