Latin, the Enlightenment, and science
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From: Yusuf B Gursey on 25 Dec 2009 11:43 On Dec 25, 10:45 am, Andrew Usher <k_over_hb...(a)yahoo.com> wrote: > 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 I read that the Latin of the Vatican continuously makes up new words, as well as the Latin used for taxonomy. ditto for Modern Standard Arabic, which is very closely based on Classical Arabic, and spoken Arabic is quite divergent from it. there is also Neo-Syriac. Israeli Hebrew is rather more deviant from Biblical Hebrew though. 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- quotation from James Joyce) and "color" and "flavor",(characteristics of quarks, it is said that inspired by ice-cream types that came in different colors and flavors while the theoretician was musing over the theory). ironically, the man responsible for these coinages is seriously interested in linguistics.
From: Don Phillipson on 25 Dec 2009 13:19 "Andrew Usher" <k_over_hbarc(a)yahoo.com> wrote in message news:5e919970-8a23-4bd2-bd6d-25c8deaf87d8(a)upsg2000gro.googlegroups.com... > > 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. Price dealt with this. We have no agreed standards for "usefulness." Price simply measured the volume of published knowledge (his first sample being pages published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London 166? to 1960.) The figure of tenfold growth in each of six successive half centuries seems to have been confirmed several times (and we could by now count at least 350 years.) Price's practical point is that exponential growth never goes on for ever, as observed in nature: meaning we may live into the period when something happens to this growth pattern in total knowledge. See interesting discussion in his Science Since Babylon (1970, 1975) and Little Science, Big Science (1986, 1990) both highly recommended. -- Don Phillipson Carlsbad Springs (Ottawa, Canada)
From: Peter T. Daniels on 25 Dec 2009 13:54 On Dec 25, 11:43 am, Yusuf B Gursey <y...(a)theworld.com> wrote: > On Dec 25, 10:45 am, Andrew Usher <k_over_hb...(a)yahoo.com> wrote: > > > 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 > > I read that the Latin of the Vatican continuously makes up new words, There's a Latin radio station in Finland. > as well as the Latin used for taxonomy. ditto for Modern Standard > Arabic, which is very closely based on Classical Arabic, and spoken > Arabic is quite divergent from it. there is also Neo-Syriac. Israeli > Hebrew is rather more deviant from Biblical Hebrew though. What does Neo-Syriac (or any form of Modern Aramaic) have to do with the creation of modern scientific vocabulary? Israeli scholars do publish in Hebrew, but they realize that if they're going to get an international hearing, they have to publish in English (or maybe French -- when Israel was founded in 1948, its third official language was French rather than English). > 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?? > quotation from James Joyce) and "color" and "flavor",(characteristics Joyce _didn't_ write "three quarks for Mister Mork"? > of quarks, it is said that inspired by ice-cream types that came in > different colors and flavors while the theoretician was musing over > the theory). ironically, the man responsible for these coinages is > seriously interested in linguistics. Unfortunately he fell in with a "linguist" who is not taken seriously.
From: James Hogg on 25 Dec 2009 14:01 Peter T. Daniels wrote: > On Dec 25, 11:43 am, Yusuf B Gursey <y...(a)theworld.com> wrote: >> On Dec 25, 10:45 am, Andrew Usher <k_over_hb...(a)yahoo.com> wrote: >> >>> 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 >> I read that the Latin of the Vatican continuously makes up new words, > > There's a Latin radio station in Finland. > >> as well as the Latin used for taxonomy. ditto for Modern Standard >> Arabic, which is very closely based on Classical Arabic, and spoken >> Arabic is quite divergent from it. there is also Neo-Syriac. Israeli >> Hebrew is rather more deviant from Biblical Hebrew though. > > What does Neo-Syriac (or any form of Modern Aramaic) have to do with > the creation of modern scientific vocabulary? > > Israeli scholars do publish in Hebrew, but they realize that if > they're going to get an international hearing, they have to publish in > English (or maybe French -- when Israel was founded in 1948, its third > official language was French rather than English). > >> 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?? > >> quotation from James Joyce) and "color" and "flavor",(characteristics > > Joyce _didn't_ write "three quarks for Mister Mork"? Strictly speaking, he wrote "Three quarks for Muster Mark!" -- James
From: Peter T. Daniels on 25 Dec 2009 18:59
On Dec 25, 2:01 pm, James Hogg <Jas.H...(a)gOUTmail.com> wrote: > Peter T. Daniels wrote: > > On Dec 25, 11:43 am, Yusuf B Gursey <y...(a)theworld.com> wrote: > >> On Dec 25, 10:45 am, Andrew Usher <k_over_hb...(a)yahoo.com> wrote: > > >>> 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 > >> I read that the Latin of the Vatican continuously makes up new words, > > > There's a Latin radio station in Finland. > > >> as well as the Latin used for taxonomy. ditto for Modern Standard > >> Arabic, which is very closely based on Classical Arabic, and spoken > >> Arabic is quite divergent from it. there is also Neo-Syriac. Israeli > >> Hebrew is rather more deviant from Biblical Hebrew though. > > > What does Neo-Syriac (or any form of Modern Aramaic) have to do with > > the creation of modern scientific vocabulary? > > > Israeli scholars do publish in Hebrew, but they realize that if > > they're going to get an international hearing, they have to publish in > > English (or maybe French -- when Israel was founded in 1948, its third > > official language was French rather than English). > > >> 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?? > > >> quotation from James Joyce) and "color" and "flavor",(characteristics > > > Joyce _didn't_ write "three quarks for Mister Mork"? > > Strictly speaking, he wrote "Three quarks for Muster Mark!" Yeah, that's how I've seen it. So what's the misquotation? |