Certain critics claim that Paul Valery has, in his Cahiers (Notebooks), opened the way to a new study of man by approaching the subject with methods derived from the natural sciences. The present work investigates these claims by examining closely all the scientific analogies which Valery uses to clarify his analysis of the mental mechanism, in order to determine the relevance of these analogies, as well as their effectiveness. A comparison is drawn between the attempt of the poet and the general semantics of Alfred Korzybski, which also professes to ground its knowledge of man only on scientific and not philosophical foundations. / The search for bases taken from science yields few convincing results; thus, Valery's attempt appears to have failed. However, in a philosophical context this attempt is regained. The failure of a "science of man" is tempered by a "phenomenology of power"!

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