Apresentação por Daniele Molinini.

Diagrams are widely used in science. And their study is not constrained to philosophy of science but has ramifications in different areas as for instance cognitive science, psychology, mathematics education, logic and history of science. Although the topic has many interdisciplinary aspects, the main philosophical question concerns the function that diagrammatic representations may have in science. There is a general consensus among philosophers that reasoning visually on diagrams is a valuable heuristic tool. Nevertheless, the question whether diagrammatic reasoning can have an epistemological import has remained largely unexplored. In this talk I shall approach this question and show how sometimes the function of diagrammatic representations can extend to that of `going beyond' the representation itself. To illustrate my point, I will present a very simple case of a physical phenomenon studied through the resources of Euclidean geometry and Euclidean diagrams.