How does the debate on the classification of the sciences matter to the contemporary sciences of language? A tentative answer is to discover in that debate a plausible and flexible epistemological model to investigate the complexity of the contemporary sciences of language. In her recent book, Linguistica e classificazione delle scienze, Claudia Stancati fosters the emergence of an epistemology of linguistic research marked by some theoretical issues recognised, first of all, in the debate on the classification of the sciences. The epistemological implications are relevant to the contemporary sciences of language, namely cognitive linguistics and – more generally – all the sciences which envisage the risk of reductionism and/or monism.

The author defines a path which begins with l’Encyclopédie, the rising of the term “linguistics” and its relation to other research fields interested in language, taking into consideration new sciences, new terms and definitions, new classifications and the thought of Ampère, Comte, Cournot, de La Grasserie, Goblot and Naville, among others. The historical development of the classification of the sciences has been followed by the author who identifies the theory of language as the common thread to the matter of the classification of the sciences from the end of the eighteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth century in the French-speaking area, placing the general linguistics of Saussure as an epistemological model. While the choice of the historical period is due to the institutionalisation of sciences and research fields, the reference to the French-speaking culture is due to the role played by the philosophical nature of the debate on the classification of the sciences in France. Moreover, the time and the space in which Stancati moves outline a rich context in which sciences (e.g. sociology, philology, the newborn linguistics, logic, biology and psychology) meet one another in linguistic oppositions (antinomie linguistiche), such as individual vs. collective, nature vs. culture, linguistic vs. non-linguistic and orality vs. writing.

This cultural atmosphere is the theoretical place in which linguistics arose as an autonomous science and, on one hand, has stood out from a wide philosophical approach and, on the other hand, has stood out from philology.

The analysis of the development of the debate mentioned above sheds light on the relationship between linguistics and other sciences. However, the original outcome of this research is the attempt to place Saussure in relation to epistemology, philosophy of science, sociology and psychology. The influence of authors and social sciences in Saussure’s thought is testified by the notion of (linguistic) value, so that Stancati maintains that “lungi dallo smarcarsi da ogni filosofia, è proprio nella filosofia delle scienze che Saussure trova alcune delle sue idee portanti, come quella di un tipo di conoscenza in cui è il punto di vista a determinare l’oggetto, idea, come abbiamo visto, assai presente nella letteratura sulla classificazione delle scienze” (p. 116).

Stancati supports the idea that Saussure has defined his general linguistics in terms of the historical epistemology reaching three stages of the science of language, cut transversally by the linguistic opposition individual vs. collective:

Egli descrive la scienza del passato in progressione teleologica verso la linguistica generale, rompendo da un lato, con la linguistica naturalistica e, dall’altro, con la filologia. Per il presente della linguistica, il tema centrale è la costruzione dell’oggetto e la determinazione dei confini tra linguistica, sociologia e psicologia. Prospettando l’avvenire della linguistica generale all’interno della semiologia, gli elementi teorici che vengono in primo piano sono il valore, il tempo e il sistema, ma soprattutto la langue e gli altri sistemi semiologici (p. 121).

Semiology is crucial to the third stage of the science of language: it has been identified through sciences as sociology and social psychology, but the opportunity converges in the concept of value, borrowed from the earlier linguistic and economic theories. The extent of the Saussurean linguistic thought is glimpsed in his “successors” in the so-called “school of Geneva”. Stancati recalls the linguistic theories of Bally, Frei and Sechehaye and proposes two perspectives: first, the theoretical relation of each of them with Saussure; second, the place of their linguistics among the other sciences whose object is language.

Ultimately, the deal is the intertwining of the historical and theoretical reconstruction in order to provide an epistemological model to the current debates in the sciences of language in the name of pluralism and comparison with adjacent research fields.