Latin, the Enlightenment, and science
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From: Peter T. Daniels on 25 Dec 2009 10:06 On Dec 25, 10:00 am, jmfbahciv <jmfbahciv(a)aol> wrote: > Andrew Usher 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. > > The third explanation is that English is more versatile. IOW, > people can make up new words easily. I did this as part of > my job. I take it you don't know Arabic? Which newsgroup are you in?
From: Andrew Usher on 25 Dec 2009 10:45 Peter T. Daniels wrote: > > The third explanation is that English is more versatile. IOW, > > people can make up new words easily. I did this as part of > > my job. > > I take it you don't know Arabic? Her 'explanation', if true, is just a variant of my first i.e. the classicists that control Latin insist on purity over accepting new words like any living language must. Andrew Usher
From: Andrew Usher on 25 Dec 2009 10:52 Peter T. Daniels wrote: > On Dec 24, 5:48 pm, bert <bert.hutchi...(a)btinternet.com> wrote: > > > Gauss's doctoral thesis "Disquisitiones Arithmeticae" > > of 1797 was the last major scholarly work to be > > published in Latin. > > Who are you to decide what a "major scholarly work" is? I'm not sure what he means. Anyway, he's made silly errors - DA wasn't Gauss's dissertation, and Gauss continued to publish his major papers in Latin until 1832. > Most of us happen to think that Wilhelm Gesenius's *Thesaurus Linguae > Phoeniciae* (1837) is a major scholarly work (and it treats not just > the Phoenician language, but all that was known of Semitic epigraphy > at the time.) (And don't bother looking at it in google books; they > don't bother to unfold the plates before they photograph them, so the > file is useless.) I'll take your word for it. Andrew Usher
From: Andrew Usher on 25 Dec 2009 10:54 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. Andrew Usher
From: Andrew Usher on 25 Dec 2009 11:08
Don Phillipson 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. > > Languages were not really considered "national" before the > 20th century. E.g. Galileo was the first scientist of lasting > historical importance to publish in the vernacular, but this was > not because Italian or Tuscan was a "national language:" it > was just more convenient for Galileo's current needs. Why was it, by the way? > Cf. (a century later) Newton published in both English in > 1671 (Fluxions) and 1704 (Optics) and in Latin in 1687 > (Princip. Math.) Another century later Alexander von Humboldt > chose to publish in French and Latin as well as his native > German; another century Einstein published only in German. Note also that the former importance of Latin is shown by the fact that Newton's Optics, like Galileo's and Descartes' vernacular works, was translated into Latin almost immediately. > The suitability of Latin to publish genuinely new information is > open to challenge. I would suggest Linnaeus's plant catalogue > (1753-1779) was the last great attempt to use Latin as the > international language of science. He nevertheless had > to coin a lot of new words -- and the Linnean System of > nomenclature worked in any language, thus did not require > Latin for its adoption or use. Linnaeus's work was, of course, a complete success. It's no great surprise that, in any language, new words need to be made in many cases to express new concepts. > 20th century scholar Derek de Solla Price was the first to > notice the growth pattern of modern science (since Galileo > or Newton) -- a tenfold growth in the volume of new knowledge > published in each half century. This means the volume of > information grew a millionfold in 300 years. Is this perhaps a slight exaggeration? After all, scientists today publish almost everything they do, unlike earlier times when they did not need to, because their careers didn't depend on it and there was no tradition of doing so. I don't think it can be said that the volume of useful knowledge has increased that rapidly. > During this period > investigators have used four successive "languages of science," > Latin, French, German and English. I believe the character > of languages had less to do with this change than the > contingencies of politics, viz. unique features of the German > academic system of the 19th century and the American > research machine of the 20th. Well French and German were never truly international languages, in which scientists the world over wrote their discoveries in. But Latin did have that status once, and English does today. The issue of where the largest volume of research was is different; and that was the reason for the apparent dominance of German in the 19th and early 20th century. > Non-scientists tried to go their own way by maintaining > Latin as the core of higher education (e.g. prerequisite > for admission to Oxbridge up to about 1960) and from > about 1800 adding Greek (which among late Victorians > displaced Latin as the preferred language for show-off > quotations) and adding to the "research" curriculum a > whole lot of Middle Eastern languages reconstructed > from writing (also handy for Biblical scholarship, a hot > topic i the 19th century) not to mention Persian, Sanskrit, > and Chinese and Japanese studies besides. This > offered a curriculum that appeared competitive with > hot science in the Victorian period -- but which failed to > transform the whole world the way science successfully > did: and never supported any scholarly lingua franca. Right, and this is where Latin gained its horrible reputation - generations of students were forced to learn Latin as a dead language, by dubious educational methods that gave few students real fluency, all to satisfy the snob-appeal of a 'classical' education. Andrew Usher |