Latin, the Enlightenment, and science
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From: sjdevnull on 27 Dec 2009 18:21 On Dec 27, 2:16 pm, Marvin the Martian <mar...(a)ontomars.org> wrote: > On Sun, 27 Dec 2009 08:41:23 +0800, Robert Bannister wrote: > > chazwin wrote: > > >> All thinking is language dependant. > > > I have serious doubts about that unless you think that thinking you're > > hungry isn't thinking. > > It is a Chomsky thing. > > The rebuttal to Chomsky's assertion that thinking is language dependent > is simple: Observe how a chimpanzee has an ability to reason that is not > too far behind the average human; problem solving and primitive tool use. > Since chimps have no language, how is it that they think? Ergo, not >all< > thinking is language dependent. I believe that "since chimps have no language" is at least one place that your argument falls apart, though I'm inclined to agree that the original assertion is incorrect.
From: Robert Bannister on 27 Dec 2009 18:22 Yusuf B Gursey wrote: > On Dec 25, 7:31 pm, Robert Bannister <robb...(a)bigpond.com> wrote: >> Andrew Usher wrote: >>> bert wrote: >>>> I think that this adoption of national languages had >>>> more to do with rising national pride than with any >>>> consensus about the shortcomings of Latin. >>> This is kind of my point. My question was why this happened when one >>> would think that the Enlightenment would lead to more internationalism >>> among scholars - yet all the major Enlightenment figures wrote in >>> their vernacular. >> Moreover, particularly in Germany, many of them translated their names >> into Latin or Greek. >> > > but the German Romantics were for the vernacular (German) and were > very anti-Latin, and eventually a language reform movement started in > Germany removing many Latin or Romance based words, and Germanizing > scientific terminology. At least a century later. Most things happened later in Germany because the Thirty Years War and it accompanying devastation set the area back so much. -- Rob Bannister
From: Ostap S. B. M. Bender Jr. on 27 Dec 2009 18:57 On Dec 27, 5:32 am, jmfbahciv <jmfbahciv(a)aol> wrote: > 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. > Yes, most French people know English, Italian, Spanish, and/or German, etc. So do Canadians. They are educated people, unlike Americans and Englishmen, who are too busy reading comic books and cartoons to learn foreign languages. Your point well taken.
From: Peter Moylan on 27 Dec 2009 19:44 On 28/12/09 07:49, Brian M. Scott wrote: > On Sun, 27 Dec 2009 05:11:53 -0800 (PST), Andrew Usher > <k_over_hbarc(a)yahoo.com> wrote in > <news:55772067-ca57-4c5f-a8ac-304c203adaaf(a)n35g2000yqm.googlegroups.com> > in > sci.math,sci.physics,sci.lang,alt.usage.english,alt.philosophy: >> 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), > > Now there I disagree: they don't have [�:]. The BrE "er" vowel, as in "first", is so close to the German "oe" that few people would notice the difference. -- Peter Moylan, Newcastle, NSW, Australia. http://www.pmoylan.org For an e-mail address, see my web page.
From: Peter Moylan on 27 Dec 2009 19:50
On 28/12/09 08:23, Peter T. Daniels wrote: > On Dec 27, 3:50 pm, garabik-news-2005...(a)kassiopeia.juls.savba.sk > wrote: >> Blame aioe - they won't let me to post followups to more than 3 groups. > > Then use a decent newsreader like google groups! This must be a meaning of "decent" that I've never met before. -- Peter Moylan, Newcastle, NSW, Australia. http://www.pmoylan.org For an e-mail address, see my web page. |