Table Of ContentLanguage as a Scientific Tool
Language is the most essential medium of scientifi c activity. Many historians,
sociologists, and science studies scholars have investigated scientifi c language
for this reason, but few have examined those cases where language itself has
become an object of scientifi c discussion. Over the centuries scientists have
sought to control, refi ne, and engineer language for various epistemologi-
cal, communicative, and nationalistic purposes. This book seeks to explore
cases in the history of science in which questions or concerns with language
have bubbled to the surface in scientifi c discourse. This opens a window
into the particular ways in which scientists have conceived of and construed
language as the central medium of their activity across different cultural
contexts and places and the clashes and tensions that have manifested their
many attempts to engineer it to both preserve and enrich its function. The
subject of language draws out many topics that have mostly been neglected
in the history of science, such as the connection between the emergence of
national languages and the development of science within national settings,
and allows us to connect together historical episodes from many understud-
ied cultural and linguistic venues such as Eastern European and medieval
Hebrew science.
Miles MacLeod is Professor for Philosophy of Science at the University
of Twente, The Netherlands.
Rocío G. Sumillera is Assistant Professor in the Department of English and
German, University of Granada, Spain.
Jan Surman is Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Leibniz Graduate
School at the Herder Institute for Historical Research on East Central Europe
in Marburg.
Ekaterina Smirnova is currently affi liated with Sciences Po (Paris) and the
STS Center in EUSP.
Routledge Studies in Cultural History
For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com
17 Politics of Memory 23 Disease and Crime
Making Slavery Visible in A History of Social Pathologies
the Public Space and the New Politics of Health
Edited by Ana Lucia Araujo Edited by Robert Peckham
18 Neutrality in Twentieth-Century 24 Critical Perspectives on
Europe Colonialism
Intersections of Science, Culture, Writing the Empire from Below
and Politics after the First World War Edited by Fiona Paisley and
Edited by Rebecka Lettevall, Geert Kirsty Reid
Somsen, and Sven Widmalm
25 Old World Empires
19 Americans Experience Russia
Cultures of Power and Governance
Encountering the Enigma, 1917
in Eurasia
to the Present
Ilhan Niaz
Edited by Choi Chatterjee and
Beth Holmgren
26 The Afterlife of Used Things
Recycling in the Long Eighteenth
20 A Social History of Disability
Century
in the Middle Ages
Edited by Ariane Fennetaux,
Cultural Considerations of
Amélie Junqua, and Sophie
Physical Impairment
Vasset
Irina Metzler
21 Race, Science, and the Nation 27 Holocaust Consciousness in
Reconstructing the Ancient Past Contemporary Britain
in Britain, France, and Germany Andy Pearce
Chris Manias
28 The Invention of Race
22 Identity, Aesthetics, and Sound Scientifi c and Popular
in the Fin de Siècle Representations
Redesigning Perception Edited by Nicolas Bancel, Thomas
Dariusz Gafi jczuk David, and Dominic Thomas
29 Indigenous Networks 37 Visualizing Jews Through
Mobility, Connections, and the Ages
Exchange Literary and Material
Edited by Jane Carey and Representations of Jewishness
Jane Lydon and Judaism
Edited by Hannah Ewence and
30 Shadows of the Slave Past Helen Spurling
Memory, Heritage, and Slavery
Ana Lucia Araujo 38 Higher Education and the
Growth of Knowledge
31 Expedition into Empire A Historical Outline of Aims
Exploratory Journeys and the and Tensions
Making of the Modern World Michael Segre
Edited by Martin Thomas
39 New Perspectives on Russian-
32 Luxury and Gender in
American Relations
European Towns, 1700–1914
Edited by William Benton
Edited by Deborah Simonton,
Whisenhunt and Norman E. Saul
Marjo Kaartinen, and Anne
Montenach
40 The Holocaust in the Twenty-
First Century
33 Reassessing the Transnational
Contesting/Contested Memories
Turn
Edited by David M. Seymour
Scales of Analysis in Anarchist
and Mercedes Camino
and Syndicalist Studies
Edited by Constance Bantman
41 Jesuits at the Margins
and Bert Altena
Missions and Missionaries in the
Marianas (1668–1769)
34 Conciliation on Colonial Frontiers
Alexandre Coello de la Rosa
Confl ict, Performance, and
Commemoration in Australia
and the Pacifi c Rim 42 Travelling Notions of Culture
Edited by Kate Darian-Smith in Early Nineteenth-Century
and Penelope Edmonds Europe
Edited by Hannu Salmi, Asko
35 Scotland and the Caribbean, Nivala, and Jukka Sarjala
c.1740–1833
Atlantic Archipelagos 43 Language as a Scientifi c Tool
Michael Morris Shaping Scientifi c Language
Across Time and National
36 Case Studies and the Tradition
Dissemination of Knowledge Edited by Miles MacLeod, Rocío
Edited by Joy Damousi, Birgit G. Sumillera, Jan Surman, and
Lang, and Katie Sutton Ekaterina Smirnova
This page intentionally left blank
Language as a Scientific Tool
Shaping Scientifi c Language Across
Time and National Tradition
Edited by Miles MacLeod, Rocío
G. Sumillera, Jan Surman, and
Ekaterina Smirnova
First published 2016
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2016 Taylor & Francis
The right of the editors to be identified as the authors of the editorial
material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted
in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: MacLeod, Miles, editor.
Title: Language as a scientific tool : shaping scientific language across
time and national tradition / edited by Miles MacLeod [and three others].
Description: New York : Routledge, 2016. | Series: Routledge studies in
cultural history ; 43 | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015041763 | ISBN 9781138101050 (alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Communication in science. | Science—Language. |
Language, Universal.
Classification: LCC Q223 .L264 2016 | DDC 501/.4—dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015041763
ISBN: 978-1-138-10105-0 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-65725-7 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Contents
List of Figures ix
List of Tables xi
Acknowledgments xiii
1 Introduction 1
MILES MACLEOD, ROCÍO G. SUMILLERA, JAN SURMAN,
AND EKATERINA SMIRNOVA
2 Modern Science and the Spirit of Language, Literature,
and Philology 9
MATTHIAS DÖRRIES
PART 1
Language, Rhetoric, and History
3 How Language Became a Tool: The Reconceptualisation
of Language and the Empirical Turn in Seventeenth-Century
Britain 25
MILES MACLEOD
4 The Beginnings of Scientific Terminology in Polish: Kłos’s
Algorithmus (1538) and Grzepski’s Geometria (1566) 42
JERZY BINIEWICZ
5 Language and History in the Context of the Société des
Observateurs de l’Homme (1799–1804) 57
MARTIN HERRNSTADT AND LAURENS SCHLICHT
6 Contested Boundaries: How Scientists Deal with Uncertainty
and Ambiguity in Language 74
PRIYA VENKATESAN HAYS
viii Contents
PART 2
The Creation of Scientific Terminology
7 Reading Astrolabes in Medieval Hebrew 89
JOSEFINA RODRÍGUEZ ARRIBAS
8 Opyt in the Social Lexicon of Modernity: The Experience/
Experiment Dichotomy 113
EKATERINA SMIRNOVA
9 Linguistic Precision and Scientific Accuracy: Searching for
the Proper Name of “Oxygen” in French, Danish, and Polish 131
JAN SURMAN
10 Mathematical Machines: Automating Thinking? 149
HELENA DURNOVÁ
PART 3
Imagining Universal Languages
11 Seventeenth-Century British Projects for a Universal
Language and Their Reception in the Augustan Age:
The Cases of John Wilkins and Jonathan Swift 167
ROCÍO G. SUMILLERA
12 One Second Language for Mankind: The Rise and
Decline of the World Auxiliary Language Movement
in the Belle Époque 187
MARKUS KRAJEWSKI
13 Impacts of a Global Language on Science: Are There
Disadvantages? 199
SCOTT L. MONTGOMERY
Contributors 219
Index 225
Figures
5.1 Illustration of the function of the judgement ( proposition)
from Sicard’s Cours d’instruction 65
11.1 Wilkins, A n Essay , Ddd2r 179
11.2 Wilkins, A n Essay, Ddd2 v 180
11.3 Wilkins, A n Essay, Eee2r 181
