Le transfert des termes entre les disciplines scientifiques: sur l’exemple du génie biomédical

Résumé

Transfer of terms among contemporary scientific disciplines – as seen in biomedical engineering 

One of the basic features of each scientific discipline is its openness to dialogue and to exchange of research results, observations and views. As a result, each discipline can develop and its field of research gradually expands. What is more, various disciplines can enter into dialogue with one another, which leads to a constant flow of terms. Very often a term coined in one discipline is borrowed by another. This happens mainly when interdisciplinarity comes into play. Although a lot has been written about the topic, from the point of view of both philosophy and language, certain issues are yet to be explained. In the article the author aims at examining terms borrowed by biomechanics, an interdisciplinary field, from various original disciplines such as physics, medicine and computer science. On the basis of her analysis of specialist texts and a corpus of Polish and French terms, the author specifies the disciplines from which biomechanics borrows its terms. Next, the author presents the linguistic determinants of the points of view assumed by researchers. This part is devoted solely to terms borrowed from anatomy, because they are the best illustration of the change in the point of view we can observe within an interdisciplinary field.