On the History of the Concept of « Analogy ». The Greek-Latin Antiquity

Analogy is one of the very few phenomena which raises interest for a large number of sciences due to the fact that we are confronted with a very complex reality that has multiple and heterogeneous facets, with profound implications for human thought and knowledge (and thus, to the human understanding through language).The paper aims at tracing back the history of the concept of « analogy » within the Greek-Latin Antiquity, analyzing namely its role attributed by some ancient thinkers, philosophers and grammarians concerned with language functioning and organization. We paid a special attention to the famous controversy, held around the middle of the second century BC, between the Analogists and Anomalists, the subject of the dispute being to what extent language conforms to some rules or it is dominated by irregularities, ‘anomalies’.