Abstract

In his book Action et Réaction (1999), Jean Starobinski examines the history of a pairof concepts that seems at first peripheral, initially implemented in the natural sciences by Newtonianphysics in particular. Starting with Newton, however, the dyad ›action and reaction‹ migratedinto multiple fields of discourse (biology, medicine, psychology, literature, politics). Founded methodologicallyon the conception of polysemy introduced by the French linguist Michel Bréal, Starobinksi’sdistinctive version of conceptual history provides precise reconstructions of the varioustheoretical and practical constellations into which ›action‹ and ›reaction‹ have entered. Thus, as thisarticle argues, the history of concepts is grasped and explained not as a teleological sequence ofdistinct conceptual variants but rather as a multi-faceted process of polysemisation.