Latin, the Enlightenment, and science
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From: jmfbahciv on 27 Dec 2009 08:22 chazwin wrote: > On Dec 24, 5:43 pm, Mahipal7638 <mahipal7...(a)gmail.com> wrote: >> On Dec 24, 8:58 am, Andrew Usher <k_over_hb...(a)yahoo.com> wrote: >> >> >> >> >> >>> 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 >> Science, enlightened or not, is Language independent, Language >> indifferent, Latin or otherwise. > > All thinking is language dependant. > No. /BAH
From: Andrew Usher on 27 Dec 2009 08:11 Peter T. Daniels wrote: > > > This does have advantages. For one thing, the Engs and the Americans > > > butcher the English language. Real English has a limited set of phonemes, > > > but the Engs and the Americans have this nasty habit of using every > > > phoneme from every language. And they're starting to insist that foreign > > > pronunciations be used. They're completely ignorant that there often are > > > more than one dialect in a language; for example, Spanish. > > > > Please don't use words you don't understand (such as "phoneme"). > > English hasn't added a (consonantal) phoneme since the 12th century or > so, when the distinction between s and z (and the other similar pairs) > was taken over with borrowings of French words. False. English added [Z] as in 'measure' in the 17c. , and I don't believe the distinction between voiced and unvoiced 'th' became phonemic until the 14c. in the standard dialect. It is also true - as Marvin said - that many English speakers do pronounce foreign words with foreign phonemes ex. the umlautted vowels in 'Goethe' and 'Fuehrer' (though Brits already have the first), and consider not using them improper. Andrew Usher
From: jmfbahciv on 27 Dec 2009 08:32 Ostap S. B. M. Bender Jr. wrote: > On Dec 26, 7:17 am, jmfbahciv <jmfbahciv(a)aol> wrote: >> Ostap S. B. M. Bender Jr. wrote: >> >>> On Dec 25, 7:03 am, jmfbahciv <jmfbahciv(a)aol> wrote: >>>> Ostap S. B. M. Bender Jr. wrote: >>>>> On Dec 24, 8:05 am, chazwin <chazwy...(a)yahoo.com> wrote: >>>>>> On Dec 24, 1:57 pm, Andrew Usher <k_over_hb...(a)yahoo.com> wrote: >>>>>>> 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 >>>>>> Latin provided an invaluable tool for the transmission of ideas >>>>>> throughout Europe, not bound my the restrictions of parochial >>>>>> languages long before the Enlightenment. This together with the >>>>>> invention of printing was the way that the Reformation exploded right >>>>>> across Europe without the need for learning all the various languages >>>>>> that were still unformed. >>>>>> Latin's use was maintained long into the 18thC. It use continued in >>>>>> Botany and other sciences in the coining of neologisms , and is still >>>>>> in use to this day. >>>>>> The 19thC saw the domination of English >>>>> In what field? Certainly not in math, science, philosophy, music, art, >>>>> cuisine, etc. >>>>> French was the overall lingua franca among educated people in the 19th >>>>> century. English dominated relatively minor fields like tea-drinking >>>>> and crumpet-making. >>>> And it stultified. France elides all words which aren't French to this >>>> day. Thus word creation and new meanings are expunged from the >>>> language. >>> What is the relevance between what I said and what you wrote? >> I thought I was having a conversation. The French make it >> almost impossible to do useful things in an efficient manner. >> You are not allowed to create new words until they are >> approved by some commission years later (can't recall the >> name). >> > > Why do you care? > JMF had a presentation which was supposed to teach 50-100 Frenchmen how to modify and work with a ship of new software. He was given an hour to present 5 hours worth of technical information. Every sentence he uttered had to be translated into French before he could go on to the next sentence. Having an interruption of a minute between sentences which have intense technical information disturbs the flow of knowledge. It also reduced the allotted time of his talk to 30 minutes. he did not get to talk about many details that the audience needed to learn about. He put up with this nonsense because he assumed there were people in the audience who didn't understand English. After the talk, he found out everybody knew English. So the French government edict, which required the seminar to be translated in French, prevented our knowledge getting into the heads of the very people who were trying to produce things in France. Work prevention is the goal. /BAH
From: Andrew Usher on 27 Dec 2009 08:27 Dennis wrote: > In English and other languages a lot of scientific vocabulary is > drawn from Latin, though somewhat less in German, which has been a pre- > eminent language of science. English may be the most Latinate of all the modern languages, actually. > I think Peter Daniels is right, you can express the ideas of > science in any language, though historically a lot of scientific > vocabulary has Latin/Greek roots, with the exceptions noted. Well, if you work hard enough. Languages that don't have a history of intellectual use would be extremely hard to use for science without borrowing a lot of words and senses. > > 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. > > I think it's the other way around; people in the humanities are the > ones who adopted national languages! For literature, yes. But they have always promoted the teaching of Latin in schools, and until recently, insisted that all students should learn this language which they'd probably never need again. I'm saying that they were not inclined to intervene to support Latin after it was no longer used for new literature (which happened in the 17c.). > I'm trying to think of examples of scientific works in Latin. > Newton and Leibnitz wrote in Latin, of course, but Descartes did his work > in French, and Galileo in Italian. They wrote in Latin also, and their vernacular works were also translated into Latin. Obvious later examples are the mathematicians Euler and Gauss, and also Linnaeus's taxonomy. Peter Daniels mentioned a linguistic work from 1837. Almost all important works before 1660 were Latin in any case. > I think somewhat Swedenborg wrote > scientific works in Latin, but he was probably the very last one. I don't think of Swedenborg as a scientist, but yes, you're right. > > 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. > > More likely the explanation lies in the history of the development > of science, and the groups that supported it, such as the British Academy > of Sciences. It may simply be that the use of Latin was too far gone in > general by the time experimental science really got going, in the 1700's. > I don't know enough to comment further. Do you mean the Royal Society? Yes, they worked in English from the beginning and the Phil. Trans. was always mostly English. But that didn't stop Newton from using Latin for his major work, because it hardly affected the international comprehension of English. Andrew Usher
From: Chuck Riggs on 27 Dec 2009 08:33
On Sat, 26 Dec 2009 09:18:30 -0800 (PST), "Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim(a)verizon.net> wrote: >On Dec 26, 10:04�am, Yusuf B Gursey <y...(a)theworld.com> wrote: >> On Dec 26, 8:58�am, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...(a)verizon.net> wrote: >> > On Dec 25, 11:18�pm, Yusuf B Gursey <y...(a)theworld.com> wrote: >> > > On Dec 25, 11:11�pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...(a)verizon.net> wrote: >> > > > On Dec 25, 8:01�pm, Yusuf B Gursey <y...(a)theworld.com> wrote: >> > > > > On Dec 25, 1:54�pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...(a)verizon.net> wrote: >> > > > > > On Dec 25, 11:43�am, Yusuf B Gursey <y...(a)theworld.com> wrote: >> > > > > > > why isn't this cross-posted to a medical or biological NG? Latin based >> > > > > > > coinages are AFAIK more alive in those fields. philosophy tends, AFAIK >> > > > > > > towards german. particle physics is inovative: quark (a fundamental >> > > > > > > particle, IIRC from a type of german cheese, but based on a miss- >> >> > > > > > Did Gell-Mann ever claim any connection with Ger. Quark?? >> >> > > > > no, he didn't. >> >> > > > Then why did you say he did? >> >> > > I said the word was from German, not that Gell-Mann claimed the >> > > connection. >> >> > So now it's your claim that Joyce was writing about three cottage- >> > cheeses for Muster Mark? >> >> I don't have any idea what Joyce had in mind, but I know that quark is >> a type of cheese in German.- > >Everyone knows that. But it has nothing to do with the name of the >subatomic particle, unless Joyce was referencing it in that passage. It was the other way around. Quarks were named after one of the many unusual words in Finnegans Wake. -- Regards, Chuck Riggs, An American who lives near Dublin, Ireland and usually spells in BrE |