Latin, the Enlightenment, and science
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From: Andrew Usher on 25 Dec 2009 23:46 Peter T. Daniels wrote: > Just recently, there was a long thread in sci.lang and > alt.usage.english about the word for "oxygen" in various languages, in > which it was repeatedly asserted, without contradiction, that > scientists understand the etymologies of their technical terminology. > Obviously that was a false assumption. > > But if you don't know the history of physics, you're a pretty poor > physicist. He's not a physicist. He's a crank, which makes it pretty hypocritical that he would complain about 'off-topic'' postings. Andrew Usher
From: Andrew Usher on 25 Dec 2009 23:53 Don Phillipson wrote: > Price dealt with this. We have no agreed standards for "usefulness." Can you provide the reference, or should I find it myself? > 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.) OK, so he's measuring journals. Well, in the 17th century, most new scientific knowledge was not published in journals. It took quite some time before it became the universal standard that new discoveries should be put into journals. > 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.) Well that's a millionfold total. There certainly hasn't been a millionfold growth in the number of scientists (there are probably not more than a million in the world today). > 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. Right, no exponential growth continues forever, except maybe that of the universe, though some doubts have been raised about that ( http://groups.google.com/group/sci.astro/browse_thread/thread/ef2e19c198e428c1# ). There sure seems to be a lot of people that don't get it when applied to various fields such as demographics, economics, or technology, though. > See interesting discussion in his Science Since > Babylon (1970, 1975) and Little Science, Big Science (1986, 1990) > both highly recommended. I shall look. Andrew Usher
From: Joachim Pense on 26 Dec 2009 02:45 jmfbahciv (in alt.usage.english): >> > 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. > Greek is versatile in making up new words by composition, and that's what western scientists did until recently. They mixed a lot of Latin words into this procedure, too. Chinese has been used for the same purpose in the east, and still is, (e. g., in Japan.) Joachim
From: Joachim Pense on 26 Dec 2009 02:52 Peter T. Daniels (in alt.usage.english): > > At least the Indians in sci.lang can write intelligible English. Like Purl Gurl? Joachim
From: PaulJK on 26 Dec 2009 02:54
Joachim Pense wrote: > Peter T. Daniels (in alt.usage.english): >> >> At least the Indians in sci.lang can write intelligible English. > > Like Purl Gurl? > Joachim I am only guessing that Peter meant Indian Indians. pjk |