PRECISION IN TERMINOLOGY: EPISTEMOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS AND COGNITIVE PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

The article offers a comprehensive analysis of term precision understood as an epistemological and cognitive phenomenon. The relevance of the study arises from the need to reconsider traditional views on precision in terminology in the light of contemporary cognitive and philosophical approaches to scientific knowledge. In classical terminology studies, precision was primarily interpreted as a formal logical property that guarantees an unambiguous correlation between a term and a concept and ensures its consistent functioning within a terminological system. However, the development of cognitive linguistics, philosophy of science and social epistemology has contributed to transforming this paradigm, challenging absolutist assumptions about the nature of scientific truths, the stability of concepts and the transparency of the linguistic means of their representation. The purpose of the article is to substantiate the epistemological nature of term precision and to reveal the cognitive mechanisms underlying its formation through the integration of philosophical and linguo-cognitive analysis. The methodology combines epistemological analysis (to clarify the status of precision as a criterion of scientific knowledge and its relation to paradigmatic frameworks of science), cognitive modelling (to reconstruct the mental structures that support precise grasping and representation of specialised concepts), conceptual analysis (to describe the content parameters of precision at different levels of abstraction), frame semantics (to model the structure of terminological knowledge as a system of slots and fillers) and comparative-contrastive methods (to identify typological differences in the understanding of precision across various domains of knowledge). The research material includes terminological systems of the natural sciences (biology, physics), technical sciences (computer science, engineering) and the humanities (linguistics, philosophy), as well as definitions from explanatory and encyclopaedic dictionaries that codify traditional views on precision in scientific discourse. On the basis of the findings, the study proposes an integrative epistemological-cognitive model of precision encompassing five interrelated dimensions: ontological (correspondence between term and referent), epistemological (adequacy of scientific conceptualisation), cognitive (quality of mental representation), semantic (logical definiteness and systemic coherence within a terminological system) and pragmatic (communicative effectiveness in professional interaction). Precision is shown to be shaped not only by a set of formal criteria but also by the interaction between epistemological requirements, the cognitive resources of knowledge holders and institutional practices of scientific communication. The article outlines a possible typology of how precision manifests itself in different scientific fields and formulates criteria for its evaluation – semantic, referential, systemic and functional – which opens up further perspectives for research in cognitive terminology studies and the philosophy of science.