Francesco La Mantia – författare

Drawing a line, and then another, and another. Go back from the lines to the movements they capture and see gestures in them: not spatial displacements, but modes of knowledge that pass through the exercise of the body. Discovering something new in a gesture: the line that contracts into a point or the point that expands into a zone, perhaps sinking into a hole. Thus experiencing a diagram: a becoming other inscribed in the novelty of the gesture and in the changes of the forms it shapes. This and much more is discussed in the essays gathered in Diagrams and Gestures. Resulting from trans-disciplinary work between mathematicians, philosophers, linguists and semioticians, the volume delivers an up-to-date account of the most valuable research on the connections between gesture and diagram. As one of the most important themes in contemporary thought, the study of these connections poses a challenge for the future: to elaborate a theory that is equal to new and stimulating research methodologies. We call this theory a philosophy of diagrammatic gestures.

This contributed volume explores the achievements gained and the remaining puzzling questions by applying dynamical systems theory to the linguistic inquiry. In particular, the book is divided into three parts, each one addressing one of the following topics:

1) Facing complexity in the right way: mathematics and complexity  2) Complexity and theory of language  3) From empirical observation to formal models: investigation of specific linguistic phenomena, like enunciation, deixis, or the meaning of the metaphorical phrases