@article{Sériot_2018, title={Biology for linguists: An obstacle or a royal path to concept building?}, volume={46}, url={https://ojs.utlib.ee/index.php/sss/article/view/SSS.2018.46.1.05}, DOI={10.12697/SSS.2018.46.1.05}, abstractNote={Exchanging models, metaphors and analogies between biology and linguistics is well known, and August Schleicher’s book <em>Die Darwinsche Theorie und die Sprachwissenschaft</em> (1863) is a typical work in this line of thought. Nonetheless, there is a “counter-mainstream” to this, which is less well known, but extremely interesting to follow: orthogenesis, an explicitly anti-Darwinian theory in biology, the consequences of which are fascinating to observe in the history of ideas in Soviet linguistics as well as in Russian émigré linguistics in the inter-war period. Here the names of Nikolaj Troubetzkoy and Roman Jakobson are of primary importance if we consider that they received most of their inspiration from Goethe’s ‘morphology’ (‘<em>Formenlehre</em>’) and Lev Berg’s ‘nomogenesis’. The discussion between Georges Cuvier and Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire in 1830 is also an important landmark to highlight the specificity of a Russian and Central European structuralism which is extremely different from Saussure’s.}, number={1}, journal={Sign Systems Studies}, author={Sériot, Patrick}, year={2018}, month={May}, pages={117–125} }