Abstract

The domain of cognitive semantics-insofar as it deals with semantic neighborhood and semantic fields-is discussed from a historical perspective. I choose four distinct stages in the evolution in philosophy of language: Raymundus Lullus and his Ars Magna ; Giodano Bruno and his artificial memory system ; Charles Sanders Peirce and his diagrammatic logic ; and, Kurt Lewin and his topological psychology. Their proposals furnish steps toward a kind of space-oriented model of semantic neighborhood and semantic fields. Linguistic developments since 1920 and more recently in cognitive semantics are compared to the evolution in the frame of philosophy as put forth above. The result is that we criticize cognitive semantics insofar as the field does not reflect the philosophical work done since Raymundus Lullus, which is highly relevant for contemporary cognitive science.