A Knowledge-oriented Approach to Semantic Changes

1. In this paper we present methodological solutions that were proposed for maintaining knowledge attached to long term space missions and to scientific data. It turned out that the question of maintaining the intelligibility of the information processed, i.e. facing the semantic change issue, was closely associated to the knowledge preservation issue as its very motivation. This orientation had a significant impact upon the nature of the research and the type of methodology that was developed at a later stage: the research was multidisciplinary and the methodology evolved toward a multi-viewpoints semiotics. However if the methods we used allow us to detect semantic changes they cannot guarantee to allow us to detect knowledge changes. The reason is that knowledge is a semiotic notion and not a semantic one. This paper is an epistemological contribution to the issue of knowledge changes.