Diagrammatic Gestures. Cognition, Mathematics, and Semiotics.

Abstract

here are words having an extraordinary evocative power. This is precisely the case of “Diagram” and “Gesture”. The frst term covers an interconnected network of concepts like “graph”, “schema”, “form”, “model”, “arrow”, and so on... And the same can be said of the second one: just think, for example, of the ideas of “movement”, “bodily action”, “practical activity” or, more generally, of “doing”. Accounting for them has been, over the last 50 years, the aim of signifcant portions of the work conduction in philosophy (Deleuze, Foucault, Merleau-Ponty), mathematics (Grothendieck, Lawvere, Thom), semiotics (Peirce), and theoretical linguistics (Culioli, Langacker, Pottier). The present issue aims to present the state of the art with regard to the diagrammatic gesture, in particular by taking into account the relations between the disciplines mentioned and the arts and sciences.