L'enjeu épistémologique de la notion d'époque entre organisme et système au XIXe siècle

The heuristic function of the notion of epoch seems to have survived the distrust for its ontological implications, proper of the epistemic stance of historical research in XX Century.
An historical approach to this notion brings into light its role in the search for an epistemic framework for understanding the otherness of times past, since the emergence of a new perception of their discontinuity and uniqueness. Especially in the German tradition the featuring of epochs as intrinsically coherent wholes appears implicated, from XVIII to XIX Century, in a dialectic between two major metaphoric fields, "system" and "organism", revealing a positive interplay among philology, history and life sciences in the establishing of the notion. J.G. Droysen seminal nominalistic approach to the notion of epoch will entail a shift to the prominence of process as a unifying framework for historical understanding.