Latin, the Enlightenment, and science
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From: Andrew Usher on 24 Dec 2009 08:57 The use of Latin in the sciences and other learned fields basically ceased in the 18th and 19th centuries. I have long wondered why people accepted the use of national languages exclusively in this endeavor where international understanding is more imperative than any other. It is true, that the use of Latin by 1700 had already passed almost everywhere else, but its last remaining use should still have been enough to support it, given that Latin was the one language that every educated man in the Western world knew, and that Latin, having such a long tradition of use, was at least suitable for scientific and technical purposes as any other language at the time. And so, some explanations suggest themselves. The first is that the predominant advocates and defenders of Latin, from the Renaissance to now, are from the humanities; and so once Latin had disappeared from live literary use, their support was no longer important. The second is to blame it on the French: they abandoned Latin earlier than anyone else, and are well-known to have an inflated view of the greatness of their own language. But that does not seem to explain how it happened everywhere else: had they wanted to emulate the French, they would have started writing in French, and if they had wanted to oppose them, they should have re-emphasised the role of Latin. Now, of course, I can't propose the revival of Latin for these purposes: English has virtually replaced it as the international scientific language. But it look a long time during which dealing with many different languages was a considerable problem, and it seems as though this should have been avoided. Andrew Usher |