Heiner Fangerau & Hans Geisler & Michael Martin & Stefanie Zaun - Concept Frames in Action – An example from the History of Medicine

The evolution of scientific knowledge has been examined thoroughly during the last decades. The aim of this project is to complement these mostly social-constructivist studies (Fleck, Kuhn, Latour etc.) with an analysis of the ontology of scientific knowledge as it can be inferred from the textual level. Furthermore, our project aims at clarifying the role of functional concepts in the language-based evolution of knowledge.
   On the basis of the hypothesis that it is possible to determine and visualise the concept structure implicite or explicite in medical texts in the form of frames as defined by Barsalou, the project intends to establish and standardise a method for examining shifting concepts frames, so to say “concept frames in action”. The development of concepts, techniques, and practice will be investigated on both the lexical and the cognitive level, comparatively for three different languages. Special emphasis will be put on functional concepts, because they directly denote attributes in the frames to be established. The goal is to analyse the historical process of integrating new references into existing concepts. Questions to be addressed are:

1.        How are attributes describing patients’ reports and the doctors’ interpretation of these reports interlinked by the means of Barsalou-constraints?

2.     How can these constraints be explained by the historical context of the text?

3.        In how far is it possible to reconstruct the hidden process of the dissolution of “thought styles” in the course of history by the means of analysing the integration of new attributes into existing frames and by examining shifts in constraints.

As an example will serve the development of uroscopy and urine diagnostics, a semiotic and diagnostic medical tool, which has integrated medical concepts, techniques, and practice for more than 2000 years.
   On the level of functional concepts, their genealogy will be examined in connection with the development of new techniques for urine analyses. The transfer of functional concepts from one language to the other will be investigated by the comparison of Latin, French, and German texts. Changes or shifts that occurred during the translation will be described and analysed. A special focus will be put on the question in how far functional concepts as attributes in frames reflect the “technisation” of medical diagnostics during the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century.
   On the level of concept frames, shifting thought styles or paradigm shifts in uroscopy will be focused. By visualising concepts in frames and comparing texts longitudinally, it will be possible to investigate thoroughly the way paradigm shifts occur on the cognitive level. Moreover, even small displacements on the lexical level that gradually dissolve concepts can be detected. A special emphasis of the analysis will be put on the level of constraints. It will be asked if and how many different concepts can be integrated into a frame until new constraints occur or older constraints become obsolete.
   First results of our research will be presented.